"The boat is 30.5 metres long and 9.3 metres wide, which is the oldest, largest and best preserved off-shore merchant ship in the world," said Chen Zhiyue, vice mayor of Yangjiang city.

"We estimated that there were 50,000 to 70,000 relics on it."

The ship was first discovered in 1987 at a depth of 30 metres and buried in a two metre thick layer of silt.

Twenty years after the find, archaeologists raised the ship to the surface in a giant steel box -- a process that took two hours as a crane lifted the box.

"We haven't seen any silt or water leakage from the box," said Wu Jiancheng, lead archaeologist.

"The boat is still in almost the same environment as it has been over the centuries."

Dubbed the Nanhai Number 1 or 'South China Sea Number 1' by archaeologists, the ship has been transported to nearby Yianjing where it will be displayed in a tank known as the 'Crystal Palace.'

This huge glass tank simulates the water temperature, pressure and other environmental conditions of the seabed where the Nanhai was found.

The Nanhai will be the centrepiece of a museum opening in 2008 that will offer visitors the chance to watch the painstaking excavation of the silt encrusting the hull -- a process that could take years.

It is hoped that the Nanhai may prove that ancient China and the West were engaged in trade across the seas, in parallel with overland trade via the Silk Road.

"The Marine Silk Road, like the ancient Silk Road which connected China with south, west and central Asia and Europe, was also a bridge linking Eastern and Western cultures," said Huang Zongwei of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong province.

"But evidence for existence of the route has been rare."

That could all change once the Nanhai finally gives up its secrets.