The deepwater channel of the Yangtze River will be continue upward to Nanjing,and need much more dredge vessels.This paper studies the Yangtze River deepwater channel maintenance dredging and dredging ship characteristics,and puts forward configuration scheme based on the medium and large trailing suction hopper dredger,and then probes into the design of trailing suction hopper dredger and the means to improve the dredging efficiency.