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Our understanding of Song ships is far more complete than it is for earlier Chinese craft. In the summer of 1974, Chinese archaeologists excavated a wreck from beneath 2-3 meters of mud on a beach that had once been a channel along the shores of Quanzhou Bay.
The ship’s structure survived only below the original waterline, but the hull contained a number of artifacts, including 504 copper coins. Seventy of the coins were minted during the Song dynasty, with the latest coin dated to 1272 AD. No later coins were discovered in the ship, leading archaeologists to believe the ship sank not too long after 1272.
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The hull remains revealed that the ship, when built, was 34.6 meters long, with a breadth or beam of 9.82 meters. It drew only three meters of water and displaced 374.4 tons, “as large,” notes archaeologist Donald Keith, “as any merchant vessel known from the same period in the West.” But it was nothing like any western vessel of the period, nor did it conform to what scholars expected a Chinese oceangoing ship of the period should look like. With a pointed bow, a V-shaped bottom, a keel and 12 bulkheads separating the hull into watertight compartments, the hull was built for sea keeping and strength.
The rugged construction included a double-planked hull that becomes triple-planked at the turn of the bilge. The planks were fastened with iron clamps and spikes. Like ancient Mediterranean ships, the wreck was built shell-first, that is the planks were fitted together to make a strong, flexible hull, and then the frames (ribs) were fitted inside. Another surprise was revealed when the shipwreck was lifted out of the beach. Most scholars of Chinese shipbuilding agreed before the excavation that early Chinese ships did not have a keel, or backbone. The Quanzhou ship did – made out of three separate pieces of timber. The rudder was fitted into the flat stern, suspended and angling down along that watertight transom but not attached to a sternpost. The interior of the hull contained the tabernacles, or mounts, for two masts, and their spacing indicated that a small, third mast had probably been fitted at the stern.
The Quanzhou ship demonstrated a remarkable, sophisticated and incredibly strong hull that to Keith indicated it was “the product of an evolutionary development of considerable antiquity.” It was also vastly ahead of European ships of the same period, with features like the transom stern, axial rudder, its carrying capacity, and multiple masts not coming into use in Europe until the mid-15th century. Western shipbuilders would not adopt watertight bulkheads until iron ships were built in the 19th century, and then not always satisfactorily, as the sinking of the Titanic shows. Archaeologist Jeremy Green, also analyzing the Quanzhou ship, sees strong similarities between it and Southeast Asian craft. Perhaps, he reasons, the Quanzhou ship is a hybrid, representing Chinese adoption of external shipbuilding influences.
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