Wednesday, October 7, 2015

BEIJING, CHINA—Underwater archaeologists have returned to the Yellow Sea and the wreckage of the Zhiyuan, a Chinese warship of the Beiyang Fleet that was sunk in 1894 by the Japanese navy during the first Sino-Japanese War. The team recovered an armor-piercing shell and a porthole, in addition to the remains of seven of the more than 250 people, including the captain, Deng Shichang, thought to have died on board the ship. More than 100 other artifacts have been recovered, including a second china plate bearing the ship’s name. Other items on board the ship have helped to confirm the identification. “The machine gun’s data plate indicates its date of production, model and manufacturer. And all of this information coincides with the historical record of the Zhiyuan’s arms,” Chen Yue, a historian of the Navy History Study Society, told The People’s Daily Online. To read more about nautical archaeology, go to "History's 10 Greatest Wrecks."