When Bai Yu and his two companions arrived at the cabin, there were already two staff members working there.
They also came in a lifeboat, and they brought a pumping device from the salvage ship, specifically for pumping the seawater out of the cabin.
It was only when Bai Yu got closer to the cabin that he could more clearly appreciate just how big it was.
It's unclear whether the main business of this shipwreck was to sell porcelain by sea, but this particular cabin appears exceptionally large.
The hatch is a very ordinary wooden hatch, about 1.3 or 1.4 meters wide and 2 meters high.
However, the interior space of this cabin is very large. The interior space is about three meters high, nearly four meters wide, and almost ten meters deep.
It's worth noting that this Song Dynasty shipwreck is only about twenty meters long in total, and this single compartment containing porcelain takes up about half of that length.
It's hard not to wonder if porcelain is their main business.
After all, sailing at sea in ancient times was not like it is today. In addition to carrying some goods for sale, ancient ships also needed to carry a considerable amount of storage, which required carrying living supplies, such as food and drink.
Due to technological limitations, ancient ships often took months to sail. If they didn't carry enough supplies, they could easily make it out but never return.
The fact that the ship could still leave such a large hold for porcelain under these circumstances is enough to show how important porcelain was to this shipwreck.
A cabin that is ten meters long, four meters wide, and three meters high can hold an enormous amount of seawater, and it would not be an easy task to pull out the pole.
Although the pumping work had just begun, the seawater was relatively clear. When Bai Yu and his two companions arrived at the cabin, they could still see some things inside the cabin through the seawater.
"Wow, Brother Yu, this cabin is quite big. It seems that this ship brought a lot of porcelain with it before setting sail. Those shadows underwater must be porcelain fragments."
Li Shuang pointed to the large black shadow at the bottom of the cabin and said.
"Pretty much, but more than those porcelain shards, I'd like to know if there's any porcelain left in those boxes, and if there are any complete pieces of porcelain among them."
While Li Shuang was looking at the bottom of the hold, Bai Yu's attention was focused on the boxes inside the cabin, where there might be some intact porcelain pieces.
There are quite a few boxes here. Just from what Bai Yu saw, there was a pile of boxes stacked up high.
Unfortunately, there's still too much seawater in the cabin, so even if Bai Yu and the others wanted to go down, they couldn't for the time being.
However, although they couldn't go down, they weren't just left watching from above the cabin. When Bai Yu and the other two came over, they brought a secret weapon with them.
A folding landing net!
The landing net that Bai Yu and his team brought is incredibly powerful. They bought it online specifically for fishing, in case the net is too far from the surface and a regular landing net can't catch the fish.
The longest extension of this net is ten meters. They brought this net with them this time, and it unexpectedly came in handy under these circumstances.
The cabin was indeed quite deep. Before the seawater was drained, Bai Yu and the others would have to dive down to get down.
But I think even Uncle Liao on the salvage boat probably didn't expect that Bai Yu and his two companions would be able to carry a spreadable net with them when they went out to sea to salvage the sunken ship.
Then, before the seawater is drained, supplies can be retrieved directly from inside the ship's hold.
The current situation is that the cabin in front of us is like a large, round fish tank, and the white-haired fisherman is using a net to scoop fish out of it.
However, Bai Yu's target was the broken porcelain at the bottom. He cast the net down, stirred it slightly at the bottom, and the net contained several pieces of porcelain.
And you know what? Even though these porcelain pieces are broken, they still have a considerable weight to them.
When Bai Yu cast his net for the first time, the broken porcelain he caught weighed as much as a six- or seven-pound sea fish.
These porcelain pieces are otherwise identical except that they don't move.
As Bai Yu pulled the net back in, he only managed to scoop up four or five pieces of broken porcelain. Although the quantity was small, Bai Yu was quite lucky, as the pieces he scooped up were all quite large.
One of them should be the spout of a vase, with part of the neck still attached. This single piece of broken porcelain is worth about two or three pounds.
This broken piece of porcelain alone shows that if it were still intact, it would have been a very large porcelain vase.
Besides being quite large, this broken porcelain piece is also very beautiful in appearance. The base color is white, and there are a few small sky-colored flowers on the neck of the pot.
Unfortunately, Bai Yu wasn't a porcelain major and didn't know much about it. If you asked him to describe it, he could only say "beautiful" and couldn't think of any other adjectives.
Apart from this piece of porcelain, the remaining broken pieces are not in very good condition. Although they are quite large, it is impossible to tell what kind of porcelain they are or what part of the porcelain they are from.
As for whether it was related to the fragment of the pot neck, Bai Yu and the other two couldn't tell.
Bai Yu and his team carefully stored all the broken porcelain pieces they retrieved in a box. After the salvage operation was completed, they planned to find some professionals to restore some of the porcelain pieces to their original state.
Then, while the water pump was pumping water, Bai Yu and the other two were using nets to retrieve the broken porcelain.
In order to pump out the seawater more quickly, three water pumps were put into operation at the same time, and by 1 p.m., the seawater in the cabin had been almost completely pumped out.
Meanwhile, what were the three Bai Yu brothers doing? They had been collecting broken porcelain all morning, and after collecting hundreds of kilograms of broken porcelain, their arms were incredibly sore.
After all, the three of them have girlfriends and wives, so they don't have superhuman arms. Retrieving porcelain requires a lot of arm strength, and it gets really sore after a while.
After lunch, they went back to their cabin to rest and wait for the pumping to stop.
As soon as the news arrived, the three brothers jumped out of their beds and, while putting on their life jackets, headed towards the deck.
A few minutes later, the two brothers came to the cabin again and stood on the side of the cabin looking inside.
At this point, there was only a tiny bit of seawater left inside the cabin, which was no longer a problem for the cleanup work, and all the water pumps stopped working.
This exposed the entire interior of the cabin. Even though Bai Yu and his team had retrieved several hundred kilograms of broken porcelain, some porcelain fragments were still scattered at the bottom of the cabin.
Besides what's visible, dozens of wooden crates are scattered throughout the cabin. These crates were piled up because the crane hadn't properly positioned the cabin during the lifting process.
It was layer upon layer, with the top layer only a little over a meter away from the hatch.
At the same time, these wooden crates weren't actually that big. You've probably all seen those anti-Japanese war dramas; there were crates in them used to hold Type 38 rifles, right?
The wooden crates inside this cabin are similar to those crates; they are all long and narrow.
Upon seeing the situation, Bai Yu immediately took action, stepping onto the gantry crane ladder prepared by the salvage ship to begin working on the boxes.
When cleaning these boxes, you can't just go straight to the bottom of the ship's hold; you have to start from the top and clean them layer by layer.
The reason is simple: these boxes are piled up to a height of eight or nine meters. If you start cleaning from the bottom and clear away the base of the pile first, you'll be buried in the boxes yourself.
Therefore, the cleanup must begin from the top. The salvage vessel was already prepared, and a platform was extended directly from the crane.
This platform is adjustable in height, which perfectly meets the needs of staff to stand on it and clean up the pile of boxes.
Since he was going to experience it firsthand, Bai Yu was naturally prepared to get his hands dirty. He led Wang Hai over and then followed the platform to a box.
Before Bai Yu even started moving the boxes, he peeked through the gaps in the boxes and saw a blue and white color scheme.
Most importantly, Bai Yu did not see any signs of breakage in this color. The gap in the box was 30 to 40 centimeters long, and this color also extended 30 to 40 centimeters!
What the heck? Could it be that the porcelain in this box is a complete piece?
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