On the ship “Nanhaijiu 116,” a crew member observes sea conditions from the wheelhouse.
At Zhuhai Base’s Jiuzhou Airport, members of the South China Sea First Rescue Flight Team are conducting rescue drills.
A diver from the Rescue and Salvage Bureau is performing underwater construction work in the South China Sea. Members of the professional maritime rescue team include divers, who are responsible for locating the remains of victims or salvaging objects underwater.
In the early hours of July 31, 2013, the anchorages at Green Mountain in the East China Sea were calm. Moored there was the “Donghaijiu 101,” representing China’s largest and most advanced all-weather ocean-going rescue vessel. The crew on board are all members of China’s only professional maritime rescue team.
Stretching from the Yalu River estuary between China and North Korea in the north to the Beilun River estuary between China and Vietnam in the south, along China’s 18,000-kilometer-long coastline, this nearly ten-thousand-strong professional maritime rescue team shoulders the critical responsibilities of saving lives, protecting the environment, safeguarding property, and conducting emergency rescues and salvage operations at sea.
At 3:30 a.m. on July 31, Zheng Xingxing, a third officer trainee on the “Donghaijiu 101,” got up and headed to the fifth-floor wheelhouse to hand over the night watch with Second Officer Zhu Liang.
The four-hour rotation of watch duty keeps everyone on edge. After their shift, they head to the control room deep in the ship to assist the chief officer with monitoring instruments. The work here is intense.
The control room located at the bottom of the ship is the heart of the vessel. The temperature here exceeds 50 degrees Celsius, and the noise from the operation of the main engine and other equipment can reach up to 100 decibels. However, all of this pales in comparison to navigating through waves for at least eight months each year.
Despite this, the crew is happy to be working on the “Donghaijiu 101.” It is the flagship of the East China Sea Rescue Bureau, and its crew are all members of the professional maritime rescue team.
From its establishment in 1951 to the end of 2012, Chinese rescue and salvage personnel successfully rescued 62,412 people in distress and 4,298 vessels, including 835 foreign ships and 9,173 foreign individuals. In addition, they salvaged 1,706 sunken ships.
Steel cables capable of lifting oil tankers weighing hundreds of thousands of tons
On the “Donghaijiu 101,” the steel cables equipped onboard are worth millions of yuan each and can tow massive oil tankers weighing hundreds of thousands of tons—over a hundred times the weight of the ship itself.
The water cannons installed around the hull have a maximum range of 190 meters. When all are activated, they create a protective shield, allowing the ship to approach a burning vessel for rescue. These technologies represent the world’s most advanced standards.
But not just the “Donghaijiu 101”—China’s 24 rescue bases along the coast, 11 aviation bases, and 77 standby points are home to a permanent fleet of over 200 rescue and salvage vessels and 16 rescue aircraft. Among them, some rescue vessels and helicopters are already at the forefront of global technology.
But compared to the vastness of the ocean, these pieces of equipment still seem small. Every rescue on the edge of life and death relies more on the fearless courage of the rescue and salvage personnel.
“Come on, I’ll take you home.”
The fearless rescue and salvage personnel include not only those on the ships but also the divers, who do their “invisible work” underwater.
“It really is invisible,” said Chen Peicai from the South China Sea Rescue Bureau. “It’s not like the seawater is crystal clear where you can see little fish and coral.” He explained that due to factors such as diving depth, light, and water conditions, most of the time, divers underwater are practically blind. “The work is mostly done by feeling.”
Before diving to salvage a sunken ship, divers must carefully study the blueprints, understand every part of the hull, and memorize them well—otherwise, they might not find their way out of the maze-like compartments.
Usually, Chen Peicai will feel for a relatively stable and solid object near the sunken ship or heavy object, “such as a steel frame or mast, then tie the other end of the rope around his waist to it. Using this object as the center, he lets out a 5-meter radius of rope and searches in a circle,” he said.
“After finishing the 5-meter radius, he lets out another 5 meters. This kind of underwater search ensures nothing is missed,” he said. After figuring out the underwater conditions, the diver ties ropes to the objects that need to be salvaged, which are then hoisted out of the water by the salvage vessel’s crane.
Sometimes, what he needs to find underwater is the remains of a victim. “Come on, I’ll take you home.” This is what every diver says upon finding remains.
The condition of divers underwater is monitored by dive supervisors on the ship or on land via walkie-talkies. “This is also a technical job,” said Sun Jianming, a dive supervisor from the East China Sea Salvage Bureau. An experienced technician can often tell what a diver is doing and how they’re doing just by listening to their breathing rhythm, without even needing to speak.