[The New Year is here, busy and free, I wish you all a happy New Year! 】

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On January 15, 1896, the first day of the 21st lunar month of Guangxu, there was still a month to go for the New Year, but Wang Chenhao had to leave for St. Petersburg.

Tianjin Shuiguan Wharf is crowded.

Almost all the people who were familiar with Wang Chenhao came to see him off, and the scene was spectacular.

Because Li Hongzhang pretended to be sick and it was inconvenient to come over at home, he sent representatives of Li Jingshu and Zhang Peilun to see him off, and Wang Shizhen, Ruan Zhongshu, Zhang Feng and other major members of the Xiaobeiyang Staff Group were sideways. Officers and soldiers at all levels of the Beiyang Army also planned to come to see them off, but due to the large number of people, Wang Shizhen was afraid of arousing the suspicion of the imperial court, so he only allowed Duan Qirui, Jiang Guidi, Feng Guozhang and other major officers of the Beiyang Army to come over on behalf of the whole army to see them off, even if they were so low-key, there were still nearly 200 people on the wharf.

originally planned to take Li Youyi with her, but recently when Wang Chenhao took Li Youyi to drive the Jiaolong to the sea, she was always seasick, and it became more and more serious.

Wang Chenhao was glad that his plan to create a man was successful, but he was disappointed that Li Youyi could not accompany him to St. Petersburg, because she would definitely not be able to bear it if she had to take a steamer for several months.

There was no way, Wang Chenhao had to go on the road alone. But before leaving, Li Youyi suddenly sent the two pretty maids, the waiter and the chess, on the boat.

"Bring the book and the chess!"

"The whole fleet is full of men, I'm afraid it's not good to take two girls!"

Li Youyi smiled and said, "How can a group of big men have a woman's heart? Let the two girls, the waiter and Si Qi, take care of the husband, and the concubine can rest assured. ”

Wang Chenhao said with a smile: "I have been training in the military camp for more than eight months, and I can already take care of myself. ”

Li Youyi said with a straight face: "That's not good, husband, you are now a first-class member, you must have official authority, and you have to let your subordinates do the things of taking care of people." You are not allowed to object. ”

Wang Chenhao stared at Li Youyi, suddenly hugged her tightly, and asked with a smile: "It seems that someone is worried about something else, right?" ”

Li Youyi looked at Wang Chenhao slyly, and finally couldn't resist him and admitted: "Yes, people are afraid that you will go out to mess with flowers and grass, so they will send the two of them to spy on you." ”

Wang Chenhao was speechless for a moment, and he really guessed it.

At this moment, the whistle sounded, and it was time for the Maria to set sail.

Wang Chenhao and Li Youyi had a thousand words, but they couldn't express them at this time, they just hugged each other deeply, and then waved goodbye in reluctance.

The Maria left the Shuiguan Wharf in Tianjin and joined the Thebes and Lawrence in a sea area southeast of the Bohai Sea to form an ocean-going fleet and set off together.

When the fleet sailed to the Yellow Sea, it was encountering the Beiyang Naval Division for its annual exercise, in which the Zhiyuan ship fired a 21-gun salute to see off Wang Chenhao, who knew that it was Deng Shichang, the first friend he knew in this era, greeting him.

Because of the easing of Sino-British relations, the British Royal Naval College reopened its doors to China, allowing Qing Zhengaxe to send naval cadets to Britain for further study, so this annual exercise of the Beiyang Naval Division is related to the future of many people's study abroad, and at the same time, the Beiyang Naval Division also has to select officers and soldiers to go to Britain to hand over two Dengyun-class battleships, and the fierce internal competition is all on this exercise, and all the officers and men of the Beiyang Naval Division are full of strength in this exercise.

Deng Shichang gave Wang Chenhao a 21-shot salute to see him off, which was agreed by Ding Ruchang, after all, Wang Chenhao was still the admiral of the Beiyang Naval Division, and he was the benefactor of the Beiyang Naval Division, so it was reasonable to talk about both public and private.

Wang Chenhao did not salute here, but he also responded, ordering the captain of the Maria to sound the whistle twenty-one times in response.

After separating from the Beiyang Naval Division, Wang Chenhao put his mind on searching for the treasure of the shipwreck on the bottom of the sea.

The shipwrecks in the Bohai Sea were basically searched, and Wang Chenhao harvested millions of taels of silver, which had a great encouraging effect on him and his salvage team, and strengthened the confidence of this windfall. All the team members knew that Wang Chenhao's Jiaolong submarine could help them find the treasure of the shipwreck, and the huge interests drove them to regard Wang Chenhao as a leader and cash cow in their hearts, and were willing to be loyal to him and follow him.

Most of the shipwreck treasures unearthed in the Bohai Sea are left behind in the war-torn era at the end of the Ming Dynasty, and the number is not large, accounting for no more than 10% of the shipwreck treasures in China's coastal waters.

There are also many shipwrecks in the Yellow Sea, but because the depth of the Yellow Sea is generally very shallow, most of the valuable shipwrecks have been salvaged by people nearby. Wang Chenhao did not focus on the Yellow Sea, but on the East China Sea and the South China Sea.

The East China Sea is a developed area of maritime trade in ancient China, and most of the shipwrecks departing from Dengzhou in Shandong, the Yangtze River Estuary in Shanghai and Quanzhou in Fujian Province are concentrated around the East China Sea, especially in the Taiwan Strait, which is seriously affected by Pacific storms, and there are 10,000 shipwrecks of all sizes over the past 2,000 years. In the 100 years from the beginning of the Republic of China to modern times, with the popularization and civilianization of salvage equipment, coastal people have begun to salvage the treasures in shipwrecks on the seabed. More than 300 shipwrecks have been salvaged by ordinary people along the coast of Fujian alone, accumulating 700,000 pieces of cultural relics worth more than $40 billion.

Since the Han and Tang dynasties, the Chinese have created overseas transportation routes through the South China Sea, opening up the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and Mombasa in Africa, forming the famous "Maritime Silk Road". Maritime trade reached its peak in the Song Dynasty, the maritime trade in the Yuan Dynasty declined, and the Western Ocean in the era of Zheng He in the Ming Dynasty experienced its peak again, even in the Qing Dynasty, which was closed to the country, there were still thirteen lines in Guangdong to develop maritime trade, and the maritime Silk Road had ups and downs for more than 1,000 years, but it was never interrupted.

The South China Sea is vast, the only way to trade with Southeast Asia, and it is also a paradise infested by pirates, so there are far more shipwrecks in the South China Sea than in the East China Sea, and most of the shipwrecks in the South China Sea are ocean-going cargo ships, with large tonnage and large cargo, so the underwater treasures in the South China Sea are also the most valuable and valuable, accounting for 60% of the underwater treasures in China's coastal waters.

Wang Chenhao is not very clear about the underwater shipwrecks in the East China Sea, but he is very clear about the location of several submarine shipwrecks in the South China Sea, the famous Nanhai No. 1 and Huaguang Reef No. 1 are well known, and Wang Chenhao knows more, because he once paid attention to the British professional sea treasure thief Hatcher, he knows that the Chinese call Nanhai No. 1 can only be regarded as Nanhai No. 3, the real Nanhai No. 1 and Nanhai No. 2 have long been stolen by Hatcher and his gang, and the Chinese rose up to find the underwater treasure after being humiliated for decades, And then found the so-called 'Nanhai No. 1'.

Hatcher, a British professional sea treasure thief, and his accomplices sneaked into the South China Sea in 1985 to find the Fuxiang, a large Chinese merchant ship that had set sail from Guangzhou to Manila in 1752. At that time, the Thirteen Lines of Guangdong was the only maritime trading point in the Qing Empire, and the Fuxiang was loaded with hundreds of thousands of goods to Manila, and then transferred back to Amsterdam by the Dutch East India Company's Van Yat. Unfortunately, the Fuxiang was wrecked and the deal was cancelled, but it was recorded in the trade records of the Dutch East India Company.

In 1983, when the document fell into the hands of Hatcher, China did not have any awareness of the protection of undersea cultural relics, nor did it have the technology. Hatcher and his accomplices then set out to search for the Fuxiang, which had sunk in the South China Sea.

Finally, in the spring of 1985, Hatcher found the Fuxiang, which sank in 1752, and secretly salvaged 250,000 ancient Chinese porcelain, gold and silver objects. After hiding on the high seas for a year, Hatcher handed them over to Christmast for auction in Amsterdam, in accordance with the international convention "Unclaimed Shipwrecks Allowed to Be Auctioned". Because there were too many of them to be sold one by one, Hatcher finally agreed to organize all 250,000 artifacts into more than 30 categories and bundle them up for auction in groups of ten. The artifacts from the Fuxiang, which were originally worth $100 million, were sold at the wholesale price that Hatcher finally chose, and the final total value of all the artifacts at the Amsterdam auction was only 37 million guilders (about $20 million).

More than a decade later, in May 2001, Hatcher and his gang of treasure thieves did it again, secretly finding another ancient Chinese shipwreck from the Northern Song Dynasty 'Taixing' from the South China Sea, unearthing 40,000 cultural relics, also auctioned in Amsterdam, and Hatcher finally broke his own record, bidding for $43 million after tax.

The Fuxiang and Taixing were supposed to belong to the Chinese's own treasures, and they should have won the honor of Nanhai No. 1 and Nanhai No. 2, but due to China's ignorance of maritime rights and interests at that time and the backwardness of their own technology, they could only give it to others.

Now, Wang Chenhao, with his powerful salvage team, is bound to dig out the No. 1, 2, and 3 in the South China Sea, and may even find No. 4, 5, and 6 in the South China Sea, who knows?