A wooden vessel, dating back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and found sunken in the Yangtze River estuary, will have its mysterious veil lifted after eight years with the launch of China's biggest-scale ancient vessel salvage and protection project in Shanghai on Wednesday.

The vessel, named Yangtze River estuary No. 2 ancient vessel, is a wooden sailing boat built around 1862-75 during the reign of Emperor Tongzhi.

It is buried in sludge 5.5 meters deep and the water area where the ship sank is 8 to 10 meters deep.

The remains of the ship are about 38.5 meters long and 7.8 meters wide and it has 31 cabins based on current findings.

The upper deck and mainmasts of the ship are complete.

The ship is probably a sand vessel with flat bottom, widely used for water transportation in Shanghai during the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing dynasties, according to Zhai Yang, deputy director of the Shanghai Cultural Heritage Protection and Research Center.

In 2015, an underwater archeological investigation in the Hengsha area of Chongming Island detected a sunken iron vessel via sonar scanning technology.

The iron warship was named the Yangtze River estuary No. 1 ancient vessel. As archeologists expanded the scanning scope, the wooden vessel was found north of the warship.

Exquisite items, including porcelain kilns of Jingdezhen, a world-famous porcelain capital in northeast Jiangxi Province, have been found in four cabins.

A large number of cultural relics such as Yixing zisha (purple clay) wares, hookah cans made in Vietnam, wooden buckets, ship masts and iron anchors have been unearthed near the ship.

"There are diverse categories and large amounts of cultural heritage items which are well preserved or can be repaired," Zhai revealed.

Between July and September last year, big wares, including porcelain works of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) and a 60-centimeter-high blue and white porcelain vase, were found.

"Some porcelain wares have signs indicating they were made during the reign of Emperor Tongzhi, providing important proof of the vessel's history," said Zhai.