The hydraulic synchronous lifting system has been well applied in the salvage of sunken ships, breaking through the traditional salvage methods. In view of the instability of the salvage process caused by the up and down movement of the barge affected by waves, the working principle of passive wave compensation is analyzed. Through system dynamics analysis, a passive wave compensation system is designed and simulated using MATLAB/Simulink to study the working characteristics of the wave compensation system. The simulation results show that the designed wave compensation system can effectively reduce the impact of waves on the salvage process of sunken ships.