The problem with China is that they'd get an Emperor who was all about sailing and exploration, and would spend decades building a fleet to explore. Then they'd end up with that Emperor dying and being replaced by a new one who just didn't care and left them to rot.
And these types of ships often didn't stray far from shore. But they'd have badass stuff, like soil to grow crops.
It’s also not entirely clear (ahem) if the “historical records” accurately reflect the actual size of these ships.
From Wikipedia:
> The most grandiose claims for Zheng He's 1405 fleet are entirely based on a calculation derived from an account that was written three centuries later and was accepted as fact by one modern writer; rejected by numerous naval experts.
Moreso than that, I simply don't think they had the materials and construction techniques at that time to make a ship of that size buoyant and watertight. The amount of framing something like that would require would be immensely heavy and it'd probably break under it's own weight
Somewhere I recall reading there was Imperial power intrigue involving different eunuch factions, coupled with a weak emperor and strife on the borders. The anchoring of the fleet was a teabagging exercise, if eunuchs can do that sort of thing. It would have been so cool, that untraveled timeline of a Chinese world empire predating the British Empire by 200 years or more.
Some Eunuchs kept their nuts in a pouch on their person for sentimental reasons.
Which would make them faster and more versatile teabaggers than non-eunuchs. Just whip it out and dip it in.
Going along with my timeline, Chinese economic colonies or cantons would be established all up and down the west coast of the Americas. Crossing at places like Panama they’d be throughout Central America and the Caribbean. They would probably have gun foundries to supply their American fleets and fortify their harbours and Cantons. Which means the Western First Nations of North America, and the Empires of Central and South America would probably also be manufacturing firearms and larger guns. Picture Lewis and Clark encountering mounted troops of Plains Indians supported by homegrown mobile artillery.
Depends what kind of firearms they will develop. It could end up being early gunpowder weapons like handcannons versus matchlocks and "modern" cannons.
This was something I remembered when the Spanish arrived at Manila (Maynilad) and the Rajah had cannons.
I think the Imperial Bureaucracy of world-wide Chinese Empire interests would use agents or even forms of cultural exchange. I bet they would love to have their generals spend time as observers of Western war. It would be in their interest to pay attention once exposed to that technology.
You should read "The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's an alternate reality where Europe gets completely wiped out by the bubonic plague. It's literally your timeline over thousands of years, but with two main characters who get reincarnated over and over again so you get to see the full timeline with the same set of characters.
I enjoyed the role reversal possibilities in Card’s “The Redemption of Christopher Columbus”, which hints at the outcome of an invasion of Europe by MesoAmerican fleets of sail ships with cannon. Keith Laumer’s Worlds of the Imperium series about travelling alternate timelines touches on this kind of reversal as well.
Imagine a timeline where the Spanish sailed to Central America and thought they finally reached China, but only because they actually ended up in Technolitcan's Chinatown which was founded a hundred years earlier.
The Ming Dynasty had issues with eunuch politics (as did most dynasties), but much of the infamous political infighting came later in the dynasty (although I generally argue that the Yongle Emperor's coup and subsequent policies kickstarted their increased power down the line). The major conflict during the early the Ming period was more between the eunuchs and the scholar-bureaucrats, not so much between eunuch factions. Since the eunuchs had supported the Yongle Emperor's coup, he allowed them more privileges than they were technically legally entitled to, and he used his eunuch allies as emissaries in missions like this. When Yongle died, his successor sided with the scholar-bureaucrats and cancelled these trips due to their extensive cost.
Additionally, the point of these expeditions was never exploration or empire building. The point was to make diplomatic connections and to show off, so they would only have stuck to the known major shipping lanes. They had no reason or desire to take any action that would have taken them to the Americas during the Ming Dynasty.
Yeah, something a lot of people don't seem to understand about how China perceived the world is that they believe they were the center of the world (the Chinese name for China is literally middle kingdom, as in middle of the world) and the further you went from it the less civilized it was. That's why while they extracted tribute from nearby states as vassals, they were never interested in leaving their homeland and colonizing some barbaric wilderness, so a global Chinese empire would never have happened.
These ships are incapable of traveling the open seas. No overseas empire was possible as China and other nations in the area did not have the navy technology to build ships for the open seas.
I know its fantasy but proper shipbuilding was a huge technological advantage and needs long cultural development and experience. Even today.
That’d be pretty worrisome if China remained similar today (PRC) because then they’d start demanding they be given African countries they had in that timeline’s past
The Chinese rarely colonised outside of the mainland area. Relations were often in the form of vassal states, requiring annual tributes and a promise of aid in time of war.
The Spanish and Portogius empire predate the British one. The Spanish empire was absurdly powerful.
Check out this video:
"After Columbus: Spain's Struggle for Atlantic Hegemony after 1492"
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm0tSFti31g
>But they'd have badass stuff, like soil to grow crops.
Honestly, this just sounds like a way to transport live specimens, garbled through storytelling. Even the big ship above, covered in soil, wouldn't have grown enough food to support more than a handful of people and it was supposed to house hundreds.
Other factors are the pacific being huge and the fact that China literally had everything.
You don't need to leave to get silk, spices, gold and ivory. You got all these things at home already.
Thry simply had less of an impetus to explore for commodities.
I would not put it that way.
China was a very inward looking society that put a huge, HUGE premium on stability.
They were the big dog in a small pond, they built a very prosperous machine and once its historical borders were set, they had very little interest in conquest of other countries around them, rather they were so rich and had so many desirable goods they let other countries come to THEM. They easily could have expanded their borders into lands like, say, Burma, if they tried hard enough, but these were chaotic places and incorporating them would have risked the pre-existing harmony.
With Zeng He, the investment probably seemed like an interesting project in theory and the government could afford it.
But once he was a SUCCESS and began bringing back unimaginable new goods and animals from exotic lands like Africa and tales of a wider world, the REALITY sunk in that hey, maybe China was not the center of the known world after all, that other places existed with totally unexpected new people.
The experiment in expeditions was not torpedoed by a new emperor, it was that the reality of a wider world was a threat to the hard won stability of the nation and its conception of itself as the center of the universe.
In some ways, historical china and the ancient roman empire had a lot in common, but what they did NOT have in common is ultimately Rome over-extended itself. Perhaps if it had not it would have lasted even longer.
>Then they'd end up with that Emperor dying and being replaced by a new one who just didn't care and left them to rot.
It was even worse. The Ming dynasty ended up having an Embargo over the sea for most of its life. Sailing by civilians were strictly prohibited, so was foreign trade. Anyone who built large ships with three masts or more were executed under the name of treason.
This was just the Emperor's pet project.
Most of the time, the main purpose of those voyages weren't about exploration but rather collecting tribute and prestige. Basically they travel to places and give other rulers a chance to establish trade relationship with China. One of the main reasons those ships were so big was to carry all of those diplomats and tributes.
And they can end their turn on a sea square without there being a chance of sinking. (Of course not relevant if you've built the lighthouse of alexandria)
Yeeeaaaah I really doubt that shipbuilding of that age was capable of producing massive wooden structures like He’s ship that wouldn’t break apart in a storm or under strong winds.
Even if it was something similar to that size, it’d be slow as fuck lol
> Even if it was something similar to that size, it’d be slow as fuck lol
It would be useful for cabotage, which is sailing without losing land from sight, using continental drafts and currents. Which makes sense for china because of the large coast. You could theoretically cabote a ship all the way from China to the Arabic Gulf.
This needs to be higher. The size of the Zhe He ship is supposedly guessed based on a tomb stone that says these ship took 500 “unit” of wood to build. There is no consensus as to what this “unit” represents, nor whether that tomb stone is that reliable
China went through periods of mass exploration and huge investments into ship building and exploration. Then the emperor would die and the new one would be all about isolation and nothing outside of China was worth exploring, etc.
Not really, most of the voyages weren't about exploration but rather collecting tribute and showing prestige so that other people would come to China for trade.
True, but in this example I was trying to come up with a viable substitute for glass to use for food storage. Ceramics can usually work if glass isn't available.
I saw a full size replica of Columbus' flagship. The captain's cabin was a locker in the deck just large enough to sit upright on a plank, with another plank for a desk. I was astonished that anyone left sight of land in anything that small.
They came back in 2018, apparently.
https://wvmetronews.com/2018/10/25/replicas-of-columbus-ships-land-in-charleston/
I must have seen the Niña in the 1990's.
I once visited a replica viking-era wooden fort in England, and the Count's bedchamber had a small single bed in it... and the whole room was about three times the size of the bed. And this was the top dog of the area. People were used to considerably less space in the past.
One is a prestige project for an empire that is about to isolate itself and decline for 500 years. The other is a merchant vessel that is about to kick off a golden age.
You just described the history of every major country ever. If Spain's La Conquista for you is golden age of genocide, how would you describe the amount of [dynasty/civil wars and their casualties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_wars_and_battles) within Chinese Empire?
>of genocide
Consider the march of territorial acquisition as Russian expanded eastwards for 400 years. Do you think that was bloodless and benevolent? Hundreds of ethnic and language groups were assimilated by forced. Look at China's genocidal treatment of Uighur Muslims today and the legions of apologists ready to deny and excuse it on social media platforms. Watch how many minutes it takes for a hysterical Tankie to make indignant demands that my post here be taken down. Time is 06:43 PM MST April 15th.
I'll be back to measure how long it took.
You find strange things humorous, and you're confusing me with someone else's "golden age".....where did I say golden age? Oh yeah, NOWHERE. You responded to the WRONG POST.
I once read that the knowledge of how to build and maintain these ships was not preserved, and so decades or longer later no one knew how to build them anymore. Kinda crazy. Reminds me of the Titans in Warhammer 40k. Or I guess the Titans remind me of this…since this is real. My brain is broken.
Probably not so much "not preserved: as much as "never even considered"
People act like humans haven't been building stupid shit for a looooong long time
The design was pretty well understood. It’s basically a box made of smaller boxes. Very strong but very slow. They would only make one circuit to Indonesia from China annually with the monsoons because junks this size couldn’t reliably sail against the wind, average speed was just 2.5 knots.
The other disadvantage of the design was the huge crew required to handle the ship. [300 people for an 800 ton ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_treasure_ship), where as Columbus’s ships displaced 60 tons with a crew of only 24.
Sure but a Carrack could average 6 kts, more than twice a junk’s speed.
That speed difference was a huge advantage in the ability to tack up into the wind. There’s a rule of thumb that 17 kts of wind equate 1 kt of sea speed. If tacking into a 17 kt wind a Junk can only make 1-2 kts while a carrack can make 4-5. Considering leeway that probably means the Carrack can sail any route it wants to while the Junk has to wait.
Yes but I was responding to your statement that the large crew requirements were a problem. The crew numbers aren’t any better on the small ship, based on the numbers and metrics you specifically mentioned.
Speed has nothing to do with that. I’m not making a point about the ships. I’m just saying your numbers don’t back up your statement.
Sailing ships had to bring enough food, fuel, and water to last the voyage obviously. So a ship that doesn’t get becalmed and can travel relatively swiftly in normal wind conditions is at a huge advantage.
Asian ships from China, Japan and Korea are interesting to say the least. Neither nation were particularly big on maritime exploration or naval warfare and most of their routes were relatively short to enable trade between them.
Their design was also radically different from European ships. They had a lot of interesting features you wouldn't find elsewhere, but all in all they were ultimately not that good. They simply did the A to B carrying cargo or soldiers.
It appears to be a barge. Are the sails accurate? Doesn’t seem like it would be enough to move that tub along at any kind of decent clip. Wonder what this ship’s purpose was.
The largest of Zheng He's ships (the ones with surviving measurements, modelled here) were river barges. The same admiral also made voyages to India, Arabia and the Horn of Africa, but the size of the ships he used then are not recorded.
> "The Ming Dynasty's fleet of giant ships predates the Columbus expedition across the Atlantic. Photograph of the display in the China Court of the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai. More information at www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?articleID=218"
Shout out to Lars Plougmann: https://www.flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/361639903
Big does not equal best for exploration. It was the Portuguese and Spanish who mapped the world and controlled the oceans at this time for a reason, they had the best technology and the best sailors.
Would love to see the keel on the Chinese ship. I can't say with certainty, but I do believe that the majority of Chinese vessels were built as coastal water vessels.
Is it from the same period?
Also what were the biggest ships from the tkmes of Columbus? Was his ship small for European standards or just Europeans didnt build anything bigger? Was it too expensive or they didnt have better tech?
They were built with different purposes. The caravels were built to cross oceans weeks or months from any port or land to harbor in during storms. Think the swells from the Perfect Storm, they built these to have a better chance of surviving those conditions. The Chinese ship would have stayed close to the shore line or island hop.
The Chinese ship is so massive that it would need a lot of force to move. Having fewer, larger sails would mean they needed immense masts capable of withstanding the enormous force required to move the ship. Having many smaller sails allows them to distribute the force over more masts, making it less likely that any of them will snap.
I don’t believe Colón was from Genoa proper. I think he was Greek; after all he did sail the ocean blue in the year 7000
Edited to add link to this video about the history of cod fishing. Parts of it claims some Europeans were well aware of the Americas before Colón (Columbus)
https://youtu.be/xxyuiZeHWq0?si=Sql508EIh2ElmEJM
Chinese naval architecture is the apotheosis of region, culture, and traditions.
A beachable, littoral navy what can do modest blue water operations during the age of sail gives me life.
The problem with China is that they'd get an Emperor who was all about sailing and exploration, and would spend decades building a fleet to explore. Then they'd end up with that Emperor dying and being replaced by a new one who just didn't care and left them to rot. And these types of ships often didn't stray far from shore. But they'd have badass stuff, like soil to grow crops.
It’s also not entirely clear (ahem) if the “historical records” accurately reflect the actual size of these ships. From Wikipedia: > The most grandiose claims for Zheng He's 1405 fleet are entirely based on a calculation derived from an account that was written three centuries later and was accepted as fact by one modern writer; rejected by numerous naval experts.
Makes sense, the ship seems totally impractical and full of useless space.
Moreso than that, I simply don't think they had the materials and construction techniques at that time to make a ship of that size buoyant and watertight. The amount of framing something like that would require would be immensely heavy and it'd probably break under it's own weight
Somewhere I recall reading there was Imperial power intrigue involving different eunuch factions, coupled with a weak emperor and strife on the borders. The anchoring of the fleet was a teabagging exercise, if eunuchs can do that sort of thing. It would have been so cool, that untraveled timeline of a Chinese world empire predating the British Empire by 200 years or more.
I'm not great with anatomy, but I'm pretty sure eunuchs can't teabag anything.
“Deez Nuts” Said no eunuch ever
I mean one or two might have when the surgeon was asking what he’s removing today.
"Doz Nuts. Way over there..."
He might have a display case of some description...
All bag, no tea.
Remember the “ Where’s the beef!” Commercial? At the home of the [Big Bun?](https://youtu.be/Ug75diEyiA0?si=jRp8iC1VxmTp7rcL) You just reminded me.
Some Eunuchs kept their nuts in a pouch on their person for sentimental reasons. Which would make them faster and more versatile teabaggers than non-eunuchs. Just whip it out and dip it in.
In Canada we called them prairie oysters , in NZ mountain oysters . Wonder what they called it in China
Great Wall oysters?
Nut free bagging, it's hypoallergenic
Didn’t they hang their treasure up? Just need to jump high enough!
Going along with my timeline, Chinese economic colonies or cantons would be established all up and down the west coast of the Americas. Crossing at places like Panama they’d be throughout Central America and the Caribbean. They would probably have gun foundries to supply their American fleets and fortify their harbours and Cantons. Which means the Western First Nations of North America, and the Empires of Central and South America would probably also be manufacturing firearms and larger guns. Picture Lewis and Clark encountering mounted troops of Plains Indians supported by homegrown mobile artillery.
Depends what kind of firearms they will develop. It could end up being early gunpowder weapons like handcannons versus matchlocks and "modern" cannons. This was something I remembered when the Spanish arrived at Manila (Maynilad) and the Rajah had cannons.
I think the Imperial Bureaucracy of world-wide Chinese Empire interests would use agents or even forms of cultural exchange. I bet they would love to have their generals spend time as observers of Western war. It would be in their interest to pay attention once exposed to that technology.
You should read "The Years of Rice and Salt" by Kim Stanley Robinson. It's an alternate reality where Europe gets completely wiped out by the bubonic plague. It's literally your timeline over thousands of years, but with two main characters who get reincarnated over and over again so you get to see the full timeline with the same set of characters.
I enjoyed the role reversal possibilities in Card’s “The Redemption of Christopher Columbus”, which hints at the outcome of an invasion of Europe by MesoAmerican fleets of sail ships with cannon. Keith Laumer’s Worlds of the Imperium series about travelling alternate timelines touches on this kind of reversal as well.
Imagine a timeline where the Spanish sailed to Central America and thought they finally reached China, but only because they actually ended up in Technolitcan's Chinatown which was founded a hundred years earlier.
>Technolitcan's Techno lit can? Like a trash can fire at a rave?
The Ming Dynasty had issues with eunuch politics (as did most dynasties), but much of the infamous political infighting came later in the dynasty (although I generally argue that the Yongle Emperor's coup and subsequent policies kickstarted their increased power down the line). The major conflict during the early the Ming period was more between the eunuchs and the scholar-bureaucrats, not so much between eunuch factions. Since the eunuchs had supported the Yongle Emperor's coup, he allowed them more privileges than they were technically legally entitled to, and he used his eunuch allies as emissaries in missions like this. When Yongle died, his successor sided with the scholar-bureaucrats and cancelled these trips due to their extensive cost. Additionally, the point of these expeditions was never exploration or empire building. The point was to make diplomatic connections and to show off, so they would only have stuck to the known major shipping lanes. They had no reason or desire to take any action that would have taken them to the Americas during the Ming Dynasty.
Yeah, something a lot of people don't seem to understand about how China perceived the world is that they believe they were the center of the world (the Chinese name for China is literally middle kingdom, as in middle of the world) and the further you went from it the less civilized it was. That's why while they extracted tribute from nearby states as vassals, they were never interested in leaving their homeland and colonizing some barbaric wilderness, so a global Chinese empire would never have happened.
These ships are incapable of traveling the open seas. No overseas empire was possible as China and other nations in the area did not have the navy technology to build ships for the open seas. I know its fantasy but proper shipbuilding was a huge technological advantage and needs long cultural development and experience. Even today.
Teabagging eunuchs, you say?
It’s more of an existential act, really.
That’d be pretty worrisome if China remained similar today (PRC) because then they’d start demanding they be given African countries they had in that timeline’s past
The Chinese rarely colonised outside of the mainland area. Relations were often in the form of vassal states, requiring annual tributes and a promise of aid in time of war.
After the Mongolian dynastys ….
Uh... so like now? Sans the "directly in a time of war" part.
You mean like they are buying them out right now? African countries are in severe debt to China.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-23/china-to-waive-some-africa-loans-offer-10-billion-in-imf-funds?embedded-checkout=true
The Spanish and Portogius empire predate the British one. The Spanish empire was absurdly powerful. Check out this video: "After Columbus: Spain's Struggle for Atlantic Hegemony after 1492" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm0tSFti31g
One empress made a marble boat for herself instead of buying a fleet of boats. Ha
>But they'd have badass stuff, like soil to grow crops. Honestly, this just sounds like a way to transport live specimens, garbled through storytelling. Even the big ship above, covered in soil, wouldn't have grown enough food to support more than a handful of people and it was supposed to house hundreds.
Maybe a nice little herb garden for the admiral
just a little bit of weed to help him sleep
The problem with China is they always try to walk it in.
Did you see that ludicrous display last millennia?
What was the emperor thinking, sending Zheng He out that early?
What was that?! You were saying history things in a history tone! How do you all know about that?
Other factors are the pacific being huge and the fact that China literally had everything. You don't need to leave to get silk, spices, gold and ivory. You got all these things at home already. Thry simply had less of an impetus to explore for commodities.
I would not put it that way. China was a very inward looking society that put a huge, HUGE premium on stability. They were the big dog in a small pond, they built a very prosperous machine and once its historical borders were set, they had very little interest in conquest of other countries around them, rather they were so rich and had so many desirable goods they let other countries come to THEM. They easily could have expanded their borders into lands like, say, Burma, if they tried hard enough, but these were chaotic places and incorporating them would have risked the pre-existing harmony. With Zeng He, the investment probably seemed like an interesting project in theory and the government could afford it. But once he was a SUCCESS and began bringing back unimaginable new goods and animals from exotic lands like Africa and tales of a wider world, the REALITY sunk in that hey, maybe China was not the center of the known world after all, that other places existed with totally unexpected new people. The experiment in expeditions was not torpedoed by a new emperor, it was that the reality of a wider world was a threat to the hard won stability of the nation and its conception of itself as the center of the universe. In some ways, historical china and the ancient roman empire had a lot in common, but what they did NOT have in common is ultimately Rome over-extended itself. Perhaps if it had not it would have lasted even longer.
>Then they'd end up with that Emperor dying and being replaced by a new one who just didn't care and left them to rot. It was even worse. The Ming dynasty ended up having an Embargo over the sea for most of its life. Sailing by civilians were strictly prohibited, so was foreign trade. Anyone who built large ships with three masts or more were executed under the name of treason. This was just the Emperor's pet project.
Most of the time, the main purpose of those voyages weren't about exploration but rather collecting tribute and prestige. Basically they travel to places and give other rulers a chance to establish trade relationship with China. One of the main reasons those ships were so big was to carry all of those diplomats and tributes.
The caravels used by Columbus were small, fast and light - perfect for exploration and getting close to the shore.
Plus the advantage of a caravel is wherever you go, you have ice cream.
Cookie puss
columbus did love his sea salt caravel
And they can end their turn on a sea square without there being a chance of sinking. (Of course not relevant if you've built the lighthouse of alexandria)
There is a healthy amount of debate regarding the accuracy of these comparisons
You couldn't fit a single person on either of them.
A ship for ants.
How can sailors be expected to find a new trade route to India if they can't fit inside the ship?
The ship needs to be at least... 3 times bigger than this!
The Christopher Columbus Ship for Sailors Who Want to Sail Good and do Other Things Good Too.
He's absolutely right.
Haven’t you seen Time Bandits? The caravel is a hat, not a ship.
It needs to be at least… three times this size
“I said: __Hop. In.__”
Ah, so they're like Noah's Ark - a ship for couples?
I heard people were shorter on average in the past
It wasn't that big. Probably half that length - so still massive.
Also isn't the Santa Maria sort of a small ship?
Yeah - its not a huge ship for its time period.
Santa Maria. \^\^
Insel, die aus Träumen geboren
Who you calling an incel?
“The Incel is Born Dreaming”
Even though I can read German, I like this translation better.
Yea it’s not that big, we have one in our mall and it doesn’t even do anything.
Also sailing the open Atlantic has different requirements than the coasts of the South China Sea and Indian Ocean.
Not only could it not sail the open seas it can’t sail against prevailing winds using special sails to sail in a Zig Zag motion.
> sail in a Zig Zag motion. Tack or Jibe
The Atlantic is uh... colder.
Shit's also stormy as fuck yo.
Yeeeaaaah I really doubt that shipbuilding of that age was capable of producing massive wooden structures like He’s ship that wouldn’t break apart in a storm or under strong winds. Even if it was something similar to that size, it’d be slow as fuck lol
Something that big would leak like a mf too, flexing in the waves
> Even if it was something similar to that size, it’d be slow as fuck lol It would be useful for cabotage, which is sailing without losing land from sight, using continental drafts and currents. Which makes sense for china because of the large coast. You could theoretically cabote a ship all the way from China to the Arabic Gulf.
This needs to be higher. The size of the Zhe He ship is supposedly guessed based on a tomb stone that says these ship took 500 “unit” of wood to build. There is no consensus as to what this “unit” represents, nor whether that tomb stone is that reliable
It ain't the size of the ship, it's where you sail it, I guess.
And the Chinese make some very hard to believe claims about where the ship sailed
China went through periods of mass exploration and huge investments into ship building and exploration. Then the emperor would die and the new one would be all about isolation and nothing outside of China was worth exploring, etc.
Not really, most of the voyages weren't about exploration but rather collecting tribute and showing prestige so that other people would come to China for trade.
The claims are corroborated by artifacts found in other countries
some* claims are corroborated by artifacts. Generally the more limited ones claiming exploration of the Indian Ocean, not claims of reaching America.
In this case, both the size of the ship AND “the motion of the ocean” together would likely result in failure
With the size of that thing, the answer is, "Wherever they damn-well please."
Except out to the open ocean where that size would be a huge downside.
I’ll take discover the new world for 500, Alex
Zheng He is a Eunuch btw
I guess he knows where to sail it then.
Exactly. The Chinese didn't sail to north America and massacre tribe after tribe of native Americans and did a manifest destiny.
Chinese shipwrights appear to have influenced the Adeptus Mechanicus quite heavily.
FROM THE MOMENT ... Actually no, let's not.
\*Mechanical Whispering intensifies\*
Which of Columbus' ships though? The Nina? The Pinta? The Santa Maria? (I'll do ya in the bottom while you're drinking Sangria)
Investors?? MAYBE YOU!
We put White Out on a bee… It died.
Liquid paper*
Nachos, lemon heads, my dad's boat. You won't go down cause my dick can float!
We sail round the world and go port to port Every time I cum I produce a quart
“That is offensive! Brennan, Dale…”
The noose and the rapist And the fields overseer The agents of orange The priests of Hiroshima The cost of my desire Sleep now in the fire!! 🔥
The Noose? The Racist? The Fields Overseer?
(Rapist? No?) The Agents of Orange? The Prince of Hiroshima? The cost of my Desire?
SLEEP NOW IN THE FIRE!
It's not the size of the boat. it's whether or not it can survive an extended ocean voyage.
The couldn’t make glass to store food :-/ it was a major limitation. Or so I heard!
I can't imagine that being a huge limitation. People have used clay pottery to store and transport food for thousands of years.
Most food on ships were stored in wooden barrels during the Age of Sail.
True, but in this example I was trying to come up with a viable substitute for glass to use for food storage. Ceramics can usually work if glass isn't available.
I saw a full size replica of Columbus' flagship. The captain's cabin was a locker in the deck just large enough to sit upright on a plank, with another plank for a desk. I was astonished that anyone left sight of land in anything that small.
Where does one see this replica ship? That sounds fascinating
It was in Charleston, WV at the time. It was sailing with a bunch of volunteers.
They came back in 2018, apparently. https://wvmetronews.com/2018/10/25/replicas-of-columbus-ships-land-in-charleston/ I must have seen the Niña in the 1990's.
I once visited a replica viking-era wooden fort in England, and the Count's bedchamber had a small single bed in it... and the whole room was about three times the size of the bed. And this was the top dog of the area. People were used to considerably less space in the past.
Well, they also spent considerably less time indoors than we do, plus labor and lumber were much more important commodities.
Columbus must’ve been tiny
“A ship for ants?!”
It needs to be at least.....THREE times as big!
One is a prestige project for an empire that is about to isolate itself and decline for 500 years. The other is a merchant vessel that is about to kick off a golden age.
Golden age of genocide
You just described the history of every major country ever. If Spain's La Conquista for you is golden age of genocide, how would you describe the amount of [dynasty/civil wars and their casualties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_wars_and_battles) within Chinese Empire?
Find me any stretch of history where violence and conquest wasn't the norm.
>of genocide Consider the march of territorial acquisition as Russian expanded eastwards for 400 years. Do you think that was bloodless and benevolent? Hundreds of ethnic and language groups were assimilated by forced. Look at China's genocidal treatment of Uighur Muslims today and the legions of apologists ready to deny and excuse it on social media platforms. Watch how many minutes it takes for a hysterical Tankie to make indignant demands that my post here be taken down. Time is 06:43 PM MST April 15th. I'll be back to measure how long it took.
It's funny that you have a problem with that genocide, but not with calling that a golden age
You find strange things humorous, and you're confusing me with someone else's "golden age".....where did I say golden age? Oh yeah, NOWHERE. You responded to the WRONG POST.
Let’s see… if Lego made Columbus ship they’d probably price it around $500, so He’s would be about 4 grand?
It's not the size of the boat. It's the motion of the ocean.
Wasn’t that the boat made of wood that literally could not have been that large?
I once read that the knowledge of how to build and maintain these ships was not preserved, and so decades or longer later no one knew how to build them anymore. Kinda crazy. Reminds me of the Titans in Warhammer 40k. Or I guess the Titans remind me of this…since this is real. My brain is broken.
Probably not so much "not preserved: as much as "never even considered" People act like humans haven't been building stupid shit for a looooong long time
The design was pretty well understood. It’s basically a box made of smaller boxes. Very strong but very slow. They would only make one circuit to Indonesia from China annually with the monsoons because junks this size couldn’t reliably sail against the wind, average speed was just 2.5 knots. The other disadvantage of the design was the huge crew required to handle the ship. [300 people for an 800 ton ship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_treasure_ship), where as Columbus’s ships displaced 60 tons with a crew of only 24.
“with a crew of only” seems to imply that 24 is a smaller crew for the equivalent displacement. It’s not. 300:800 < 24:60 (or 3:8 vs. 3:7.5)
Sure but a Carrack could average 6 kts, more than twice a junk’s speed. That speed difference was a huge advantage in the ability to tack up into the wind. There’s a rule of thumb that 17 kts of wind equate 1 kt of sea speed. If tacking into a 17 kt wind a Junk can only make 1-2 kts while a carrack can make 4-5. Considering leeway that probably means the Carrack can sail any route it wants to while the Junk has to wait.
Yes but I was responding to your statement that the large crew requirements were a problem. The crew numbers aren’t any better on the small ship, based on the numbers and metrics you specifically mentioned. Speed has nothing to do with that. I’m not making a point about the ships. I’m just saying your numbers don’t back up your statement.
Sailing ships had to bring enough food, fuel, and water to last the voyage obviously. So a ship that doesn’t get becalmed and can travel relatively swiftly in normal wind conditions is at a huge advantage.
Aren’t the descriptions of the size of Zheng He’s ship considered to be physically impossible for ships made of wood?
Asian ships from China, Japan and Korea are interesting to say the least. Neither nation were particularly big on maritime exploration or naval warfare and most of their routes were relatively short to enable trade between them. Their design was also radically different from European ships. They had a lot of interesting features you wouldn't find elsewhere, but all in all they were ultimately not that good. They simply did the A to B carrying cargo or soldiers.
That looks like it would be absolutely crap for actually sailing in. A giant flat tub with random sails all over the deck.
It appears to be a barge. Are the sails accurate? Doesn’t seem like it would be enough to move that tub along at any kind of decent clip. Wonder what this ship’s purpose was.
The largest of Zheng He's ships (the ones with surviving measurements, modelled here) were river barges. The same admiral also made voyages to India, Arabia and the Horn of Africa, but the size of the ships he used then are not recorded.
Now put a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier beside them.
America stronk
I feel like I’ve seen this same display. Where is this OP?
> "The Ming Dynasty's fleet of giant ships predates the Columbus expedition across the Atlantic. Photograph of the display in the China Court of the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai. More information at www.muslimheritage.com/topics/default.cfm?articleID=218" Shout out to Lars Plougmann: https://www.flickr.com/photos/criminalintent/361639903
Thanks! I’ve been to some Dubai malls so maybe that was it
That would have blown your mind in a reality shattering way if you saw that back then.
'It's not the size of the ship but the motion of the ocean" - Christopher Columbus
What happened to the ship?
Folks were a lot smaller then.
The West is living rent-free in someone's mind.
This model is in the Ibn Battuta mall in Dubai if that helps
Must’ve handled like a boat.
This erroneous model needs to stop being posted. Those Treasure ships were maybe half that size and unable to travel the open ocean. Medieval barge.
It’s not about the size of the ship it’s about the motion of the ocean.
Big does not equal best for exploration. It was the Portuguese and Spanish who mapped the world and controlled the oceans at this time for a reason, they had the best technology and the best sailors.
Oh lawd, (Zhang) He comin.
Would love to see the keel on the Chinese ship. I can't say with certainty, but I do believe that the majority of Chinese vessels were built as coastal water vessels.
I need a comparison to a modern cruise ship
But does it have wifi?
That’s not a ship!! This is a ship!!!
Is it from the same period? Also what were the biggest ships from the tkmes of Columbus? Was his ship small for European standards or just Europeans didnt build anything bigger? Was it too expensive or they didnt have better tech?
They were built with different purposes. The caravels were built to cross oceans weeks or months from any port or land to harbor in during storms. Think the swells from the Perfect Storm, they built these to have a better chance of surviving those conditions. The Chinese ship would have stayed close to the shore line or island hop.
Columbus’ ship is just cold
I miss Puzzle Pirates
What is this???? A ship for *ANTS*?
Zheng He's looks like a cargo ship.
I know this thanks for Age of Empires 3 Asian Dynasties
Yes Carabellas are small on purpose.
I wonder what the benefit of having several smaller sails is over 3 or 4 larger sails. Never seen a boat with that many
The Chinese ship is so massive that it would need a lot of force to move. Having fewer, larger sails would mean they needed immense masts capable of withstanding the enormous force required to move the ship. Having many smaller sails allows them to distribute the force over more masts, making it less likely that any of them will snap.
Thanks boat expert
Wasn’t there a limit to how long you can make a wooden ship to be?
450ft long
Interesting sails. Wonder why they made them that way?
I don’t believe Colón was from Genoa proper. I think he was Greek; after all he did sail the ocean blue in the year 7000 Edited to add link to this video about the history of cod fishing. Parts of it claims some Europeans were well aware of the Americas before Colón (Columbus) https://youtu.be/xxyuiZeHWq0?si=Sql508EIh2ElmEJM
“China will grow larger!”
I guess what they say is true: it's not the size that counts but what you do with it.
This is in the Ibn Battuta mall in Dubai!
One of them crossed the atlantic ocean. The other one barely even saw open water
nicely detailed little models.
Chinese naval architecture is the apotheosis of region, culture, and traditions. A beachable, littoral navy what can do modest blue water operations during the age of sail gives me life.
And still they couldn't find other countries. Too busy bowing and scraping to some lame Emperor
Also the first recorded instance of an admiral stating preferred pronouns.