An 18-ton plate armor from an iconic Chinese battleship sunk in the Yellow Sea by the invading Japanese fleet in 1894 was out of water, Chinese archaeologists revealed on Saturday.

The protective plate armor from the ironclad Dingyuan Battleship is the only exposed armor of the kind belonging to the vessels of the Beiyang Fleet of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) fought during the First Sino-Japanese War, better known in China as the War of Jiawu, according to the Center of Underwater Cultural Heritage of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, one of the conductors of the excavation.

Measuring 2.86 meters in length and 2.5 meters in width, the complete piece of plate armor is the key proof in identifying Dingyuan Battleship.

The archaeological team used ten hours to clean the plate armor, thread rope around it, and sling it before it came out of water and was sent to the nearby old command center of the Beiyang Fleet in Liugong Island, east China's Shandong Province.

"With its strong armor protection, Dingyuan Battleship, the flagship of the Beiyang Fleet, fought a heroic battle amid the siege of the invading Japanese vessels," said Zhou Chunshui, leader of the Dingyuan Battleship archaeological team.

"The 126th anniversary of the outbreak of the war was just passed on September 17, the exposed plate armor is the best object to remind people of the history," he added.

Chinese archaeologists started the underwater archaeological survey of the First Sino-Japanese War site in 2017 and confirmed the wreck site of the Dingyuan Battleship in the summer of 2019.

So far, more than 1,000 shipwrecked relics from the Dingyuan Battleship have been retrieved.