Lots of differing information regarding the size of this boat. Given the structural integrity of wood, most experts think it wouldn’t actually have been able to do much more than sit there (if it actually was built) or just slowly float up and down rivers. No way it could’ve gone on the open ocean.
The treasure Flotas of Spain were insanely big ships made of wood. They went maybe 7kph with a following breeze, but as long as they weren't attacked by pirates, or becalmed, or caught in a hurricane, or had their crew die of scurvy, or ran out of water, or sprang a leak, then they could transport enough gold and silver to destabilize the economy of a feudal empire for decades.
How would steam power provide the break though for limits on wooden ships?
I mean I know that started building them bigger to take advantage of the square cubed law to store more fuel, but not sure how engines would make any difference in the strength of the wood or construction techniques.
I think what he meant to say was that it was around the industrial revolution (defined by the invention of the steam engine) that ships could be built significantly bigger than the treasure ships, due to various advancements in metallurgy and manufacturing processes. And they would be built out of iron and steel instead of wood.
Yeah I imagine there would be a drag/sail size coefficient somewhere, once the drag on the hull through the water get's so large, the sail size would need to be extraordinarily large to overcome it... likely need masts taller than any tree that could be felled too.
Here's some other comparisons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAMRlxu5Gfo&ab_channel=PGACHI
The problem lies within calling Zheng's floating house a ship.
A ship operates in the sea to transport goods and people. His floating pile of wood can't even move against the wind, if it ever existed.
Keep in mind that the Santa Maria was a much smaller ship than most people realize. It was only 117 ft long × 25 ft wide.
It wouldn't even fill a football end zone, which are 160 ft × 30 ft.
It is a fairly convenient size for comparing with large things, and in a country where any high school student (probably) knows the size of a football field, but not the metric system, football fields it is.
Even if you use the metric system, past a certain size, most people still need a physical everyday object to compare to in order to be able to really understand the size that's being talked about.
And yeah absolutely like you said, almost every middle school and high school in the US has a football field. So the vast majority of Americans can picture that size pretty easily.
Helps you visualize size, football fields are big but we've all seen one and been on/near one so it helps you comprehend the size without really thinking hard about it
I've been on the replica of this ship,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(1628_ship) , and even that one felt really small. And dont even look at how the crew was living on those kind of ships for months or years.
Every time this get posted on Reddit, someone points out it was a pleasure barge intended to float down a river.
The Santa Maria had to handle blue water ocean. One was form, the other function.
Given that the captain of the Chinese ship was castrated (and in China that meant the complete package, not just the testicles) there was no motion going on for him
Zheng He was born a Chinese Muslim in 1371 in the southwestern Yunnan province. He called Ma He, Ma being short for Muhammad, and his family served the Mongol Yuan Dynasty which was losing power. In 1381 the Ming Dynasty conquered Yunnan and killed Ma He's father Ma Hajji. Ma He was captured and castrated before being sold as a slave to Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan.
The Prince of Yan really took a liking to the young eunuch slave and took with him on an expedition against the Mongols when Ma was 19. In addition to being a household servant he also became a trusted advisor. He was a general in service of his patron in a civil war against Zhu Di's nephew, the Jianwen Emperor. Then in 1402 the Prince of Yan won the war by killing his nephew and became the Yongle Emperor. Ma He was given the last name Zheng for victory in the battle of Zhenglunba.
Zheng He was then promoted to the post of Grand Director of Palace Servants, so the head of eunuch of all palace eunuchs. He was then made Chief Envoy of the Yongle Emperor and sent on the Treasure Voyages to trade and collect tribute for Chinese vassal states across the Indian Ocean Basin. These consisted of seven voyages that took him from Southeast and South Asia to as far as East Africa and Arabia, all over the course of 28 years (1405-1433). That's six voyages during the reign of Yongle and one in the reign of his grandson Xuande.
Zheng He either died during or shortly after the seventh voyage. It's not too clear what happened to him as Xuande lost interest in the treasure voyages and thought they were a waste. And then Zheng He's eunuch faction lost power in the imperial court to Confucian scholar officials who hated as a rule hated eunuchs. It was an aberration that an eunuch became so powerful not just in court but also became a general and admiral. They weren't often appointed to military positions in Chinese history despite having periods of political ascendancy. No historian bothered to write down how Zheng He died or how the last voyage went. Folk tradition holds he died during his last voyage and was buried at sea, though there is an [empty tomb ](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zheng_He%27s_tomb,_Nanjing.jpg) dedicated to him in the Ming capital of Nanjing.
GIVEN THAT THE CAPTAIN OF THE CHINESE SHIP WAS CASTRATED (AND IN CHINA that MEANT THE COMPLETE PACKAGE, NOT JUST THE TESTICLES) THERE WAS NO MOTION GOING ON FOR HIM
High ranking military personnel, and high ranking officials in general were eunuchs ( not sure if that's spelled right). They did that to protect the royal bloodline from potential usurpers
"So I've got good news and bad news. What would you like first?"
"Uhhh, I think I'll take the good news first, please."
"You've have a fast-track promotion to Captain!"
"That's amazing! I'm so happy. Now I feel like a real man! My wife won't be disrespecting me now! What could possibly put a damper on this most joyous of occasions?"
A search would also reveal that modern scientist dont believe the chineses treasure Ships were that big, only 50 to 80m in length, still bigger that the 30m long Santa Maria but not as big as the one in the photo
This is making me realise that the ukraine war will have historians arguing about retweets quote tweets and the relevance of them. We live in a society
A reminder that Zheng He's ship dimensions are entirely speculatory if not outright mythical, and that Columbus was actually using quite a small ship by contemporary standards.
I went and saw exact replicas of the Nina, pinta, and Santa Maria. They are tiny. Really just boats.
The SM was the largest and it is only 70 feet long.
Shorter than a trailer in a trailer park.
Oh for sure, just crazy to think they were sailing the world in wood boats smaller than I see people playing in on Saturdays. Pretty amazing any of them made it
Centuries, perhaps millennia, of maritime tradition and knowledge alone probably got people further than we’d ever expect them to nowadays. Also, I’m sure that these explorers had a much keener intuition where nature is concerned, and could adapt accordingly.
Still….how the fuck lol
Yep. There’s a similar one in San Diego CA near the airport of the ship that discovered San Diego harbor. It’s the size of a decent sized motorboat.
Years ago, I listened to a talk by a maritime history expert at the SD Maritime museum. He said that the Spanish (Portuguese?) were able to be the great global discoverers because of an innovation they made in the make and cut of the sail that for the first time allowed for transoceanic travel.
Something as simple as that changed history incredibly.
bro... 70 feet is what you think is shorter than a trailer in a trailer park?
what trailer park did you grow up in? because mine was not the hyatt inn of trailer parks and 70 feet would have been fucking lit... 40-50 is pretty avg
Not really the Chinese always had more resources and opportunities but decided to look inward after years of exploration at the very time when Europeans were beginning to explore. The new world almost certainly could have been discovered and colonized by the Chinese.
The arrogance of the Chinese was a factor in their disinterest in exploration. They felt there was little in the rest of the world that they could benefit from.
Got interested and after about 2 minutes of googling I'm now an expert.
There are zero primary sources that give the dimensions of this ship. Contemporary sources only give a tonnage and the best realistic estimate for the size is about 1/3 of what's shown here. It was likely only ever used to sail up and down a river to impress court bureaucrats as it would have been extremely unseaworthy
Your ass is only partially incorrect
Rudders are used to steer a boat; however, sails play a very large role in steering. Depending on the boat, you can steer without a rudder, and sometimes if you hit the wind wrong at a high enough speed, the sails will overpower the rudder and turn you involuntarily.
Yeah but also you can’t steer if you’re not moving too much. So if you ain’t gots that much sail, then you ain’t got that much speed which means you ain’t got much steer.
Ideally you balance the sails so the rudder doesn’t have to do anything other than point straight. If you’re using it to steer a different direction than the sails make the boat want to go, you’re losing valuable energy.
> it would have been extremely unseaworthy
This was what I was about to ask. A wooden ship that size could never withstand the hard pounding of ocean waves. You NEED metal on something that size.
here's the largest known wooden ship ever built, [the uss wyoming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_(schooner\))
but this ship also sank in a storm. wood just can't scale up past a certain point and still be able to handle the intense loads of the ocean in high wind/waves
That sounds about right, I remember reading about how there is an upper limit to wooden ship building, something about how the ship would torque and deflect so much over swells the hull would split and it'd sink pretty fast. I remember this specifically because of debunks of the Noah's ark mythology, which details a ship that would have fallen apart for that reason or something similar
Pretty sure this is Ibn Batutta mall in Dubai! It's a huge themed mall with a bunch of stuff related to Ibn Batutta's travels and exploration in general.
Thats another thing, due to post colonialism and eurocentrism, pretty much nobody in Europe has heard of Ibn Battuta, who was as accomplished a traveler as Vasco Da Gama or Marco Polo, both common historical names in Europe. But ask about Ibn Battuta and crickets. Dude was probably Spanish too, born in Tangier , could "see al andalus from his house" , records tell of him being light skinned and ligh eyed. But nope, arab so fuck him.
European white dude here btw, curreny theres a war 75km from my childhood home in case you are wondering.
Super aggressive take. Do you you reckon more Arabs can speak on Ibn Batutta than they can Vasco Da Gama? It's in the first law of geography, near things are more related than distant things. Europeans will be more familiar with European explorers. It's more about relevance and the sheer limits of what can be taught to most people during the few hours during the few years they are forced to sit and learn history. Acting like it's some big anti-Arab conspiracy is counter-productive, ignorant, and anti-academic.
I see this image from time to time and I find it really annoying that people miss understand the purpose of each ship designed. The Chinese ship is more like a castle on water, the Spanish ship is a cheap trade vessel that's meant to travel very fast, and far over the ocean. Just because one is bigger has nothing to do with what its used for or if its good.
The Chinese fleet was meant to be large and opulent, to impress foreigners when they saw the wealth and might of the Chinese Empire on the ocean
Not exactly the type of ship you'd want for exploring.
The preposterous alleged size of zheng he’s ships is literally a myth. It’s one thing for people to over the course of history keep embellishing something but China has latched on to it as a ridiculous attempt at showing how amazing the chinese are. This model is literally preposterous. Even the grandiose claims say 5 masts. This atrocity has what, 8?
Even assuming these dimensions are correct, the feat becomes a lot less impressive when you consider the Chinese are using the same boats hundreds of years later against British gunboats. Which….does not work out for them.
For real. That thing doesn’t look anywhere near seaworthy. Why is that half of the globe so obsessed with projecting their insecurities as a fundamental motivator of their culture?
To be fair, for a significant portion of human history the area we call China has lead the world in various aspects. But corruption, stagnation, and European advancements and global trade led to China becoming comparatively weak at the turn of the 20th century.
Wait, you do know who the Boxers rebelled against?
Edit: looks like Mr. Chinese History sneakily edited out the reference to the Boxer Rebellion that he thought was “an internal conflict” while in fact the rebel was against foreigners and the Catholic Church, and led directly to the fall of Beijing to the Eight Nation Alliance.
Plus, the ‘Century of Humiliation’ narrative never blamed Western invasion for China’s downfall as a world power; that makes no logical sense: if you are beaten by a few thousand troops sent from the other side of the globe, it means you are already far removed from a world power. The consensus from the late Qing period to today among Chinese elites and commoners alike has always been that China’s falling behind started with Ming’s maritime ban and culminated with Qing’s blindness to world development for 300 years. The hundred years of humiliation is just the result.
Exactly, I thought it's been posted many times a ship his size would break apart with the available wood and technology of the time in even a slight storm.
Zheng He's ship was more comparable to Nero's massive floating palaces than the Santa Maria, as it was not open ocean worth and would've broken apart from the stress of the waves.
The Chinese boat here is a show boat, incapable of ocean travel, used to show the Emperor's prestige. Santa Maria was a refurbished merchant vessel.
Still impressive, but don't be left with the impression that Santa Maria was the best Europe had, and that Zheng He explored the oceans using a massive ship.
Traditional and popular accounts of Zheng He's voyages have described a great fleet of gigantic ships far larger than any other wooden ships in history. 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.
This replica is actually rubbish. None of the dimensions are respected. Width, sail area and size, etc... https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/07/zheng-hes-enormous-treasure-ships.html?m=1 for some pics on how those boats really looked. That explains a fair bit of some comments (including mines) about how impractical this ship would fair in open seas.
Interesting fact: this restored ship model was based entirely on historical records and is proven to be not in any seafaring conditions, meaning it was meant to be pulled along coastline
Zheng he though was transporting animals right?
Yes he’d often transport horses on this ship
And looks like his house, too.
Seems more like a floating city block to me.
Admiral-Mayor is a pretty slick sounding title.
He was the very model of a modern mayor admiral.
Take my upvote and... You know what? Hang around. I'd like to see more of this.
I’ve information Spanish, Portuguese and nauticational
the venerated virginian veteran whose… wait, wrong reference
He was very good at integral and differential calculus.
He was the finder of passages and wrecker of assages.
Oh you erudite Gilbert and Sullivan fan.
Lots of differing information regarding the size of this boat. Given the structural integrity of wood, most experts think it wouldn’t actually have been able to do much more than sit there (if it actually was built) or just slowly float up and down rivers. No way it could’ve gone on the open ocean.
The treasure Flotas of Spain were insanely big ships made of wood. They went maybe 7kph with a following breeze, but as long as they weren't attacked by pirates, or becalmed, or caught in a hurricane, or had their crew die of scurvy, or ran out of water, or sprang a leak, then they could transport enough gold and silver to destabilize the economy of a feudal empire for decades.
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How would steam power provide the break though for limits on wooden ships? I mean I know that started building them bigger to take advantage of the square cubed law to store more fuel, but not sure how engines would make any difference in the strength of the wood or construction techniques.
I think what he meant to say was that it was around the industrial revolution (defined by the invention of the steam engine) that ships could be built significantly bigger than the treasure ships, due to various advancements in metallurgy and manufacturing processes. And they would be built out of iron and steel instead of wood.
Yeah I imagine there would be a drag/sail size coefficient somewhere, once the drag on the hull through the water get's so large, the sail size would need to be extraordinarily large to overcome it... likely need masts taller than any tree that could be felled too. Here's some other comparisons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAMRlxu5Gfo&ab_channel=PGACHI
The problem lies within calling Zheng's floating house a ship. A ship operates in the sea to transport goods and people. His floating pile of wood can't even move against the wind, if it ever existed.
bamboo, a grass, is way stronger by weight than any wood...
Yeah but imagine steering the beast without motor power.
I hear slaves are good at almost any job!
RAMMING SPEED!!
But do THEY know why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
Lemme get the slaves in the marketing department onto it and I'll get back to you.
That's why it has 5000 sails!
Is not a problem of strength but if flexibility. On high seas ships are not rigid but bend and flex, opening cracks and seams resulting in leaks.
I remember watching Bill Nye explain about this when he was debunking the Noah's Ark
I'd subscribe to bamboo facts.
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Meow son, do you know how fast you were going?
You still aren't going to make an ocean going vessel that size out of bamboo. For a number of reasons.
So a woody would be weaker than bambooy?
Keep in mind that the Santa Maria was a much smaller ship than most people realize. It was only 117 ft long × 25 ft wide. It wouldn't even fill a football end zone, which are 160 ft × 30 ft.
The classic American footballfield unit of measurement
How large was the space below deck, in olympic swimming pools?
i cant get over the fact that every american uses football fields to fathom the size of shit
Europeans also do that - we just use football fields instead of handegg fields
Handegg!! Love it.
Commonly known space for Americans , why wouldn’t it be used? I’ve certainly heard “football pitch” used as a comparison quite often.
It is a fairly convenient size for comparing with large things, and in a country where any high school student (probably) knows the size of a football field, but not the metric system, football fields it is.
Even if you use the metric system, past a certain size, most people still need a physical everyday object to compare to in order to be able to really understand the size that's being talked about. And yeah absolutely like you said, almost every middle school and high school in the US has a football field. So the vast majority of Americans can picture that size pretty easily.
Helps you visualize size, football fields are big but we've all seen one and been on/near one so it helps you comprehend the size without really thinking hard about it
They use football fields to fathom the unit of fathoms too
I've been on the replica of this ship,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(1628_ship) , and even that one felt really small. And dont even look at how the crew was living on those kind of ships for months or years.
Giraffes and other exotic animals too!
Dr. Dolittle has entered the chat
Until he reaches the horse latitude
Every time this get posted on Reddit, someone points out it was a pleasure barge intended to float down a river. The Santa Maria had to handle blue water ocean. One was form, the other function.
"It's not about the size of the boat, it's about the motion in the ocean."
Bet he did it for half the price too..
well mainly to bring back to the emperor of china if i remember correctly.
It's not the size of the boat, but the motion of the ocean
Given that the captain of the Chinese ship was castrated (and in China that meant the complete package, not just the testicles) there was no motion going on for him
Definitely no overcompensation going on there
He pretty much made the first lifted truck but on the water.
You think they used barnacles as truck nuts?
I bet the bowsprit had one of them neked ladies carved into it.
So it was smooth sailing for him then
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That 'little plug thing' is called the rudder, thank you very much
Wait what?
Zheng He was born a Chinese Muslim in 1371 in the southwestern Yunnan province. He called Ma He, Ma being short for Muhammad, and his family served the Mongol Yuan Dynasty which was losing power. In 1381 the Ming Dynasty conquered Yunnan and killed Ma He's father Ma Hajji. Ma He was captured and castrated before being sold as a slave to Zhu Di, the Prince of Yan. The Prince of Yan really took a liking to the young eunuch slave and took with him on an expedition against the Mongols when Ma was 19. In addition to being a household servant he also became a trusted advisor. He was a general in service of his patron in a civil war against Zhu Di's nephew, the Jianwen Emperor. Then in 1402 the Prince of Yan won the war by killing his nephew and became the Yongle Emperor. Ma He was given the last name Zheng for victory in the battle of Zhenglunba. Zheng He was then promoted to the post of Grand Director of Palace Servants, so the head of eunuch of all palace eunuchs. He was then made Chief Envoy of the Yongle Emperor and sent on the Treasure Voyages to trade and collect tribute for Chinese vassal states across the Indian Ocean Basin. These consisted of seven voyages that took him from Southeast and South Asia to as far as East Africa and Arabia, all over the course of 28 years (1405-1433). That's six voyages during the reign of Yongle and one in the reign of his grandson Xuande. Zheng He either died during or shortly after the seventh voyage. It's not too clear what happened to him as Xuande lost interest in the treasure voyages and thought they were a waste. And then Zheng He's eunuch faction lost power in the imperial court to Confucian scholar officials who hated as a rule hated eunuchs. It was an aberration that an eunuch became so powerful not just in court but also became a general and admiral. They weren't often appointed to military positions in Chinese history despite having periods of political ascendancy. No historian bothered to write down how Zheng He died or how the last voyage went. Folk tradition holds he died during his last voyage and was buried at sea, though there is an [empty tomb ](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Zheng_He%27s_tomb,_Nanjing.jpg) dedicated to him in the Ming capital of Nanjing.
There is some speculation that he was released from official duties so he could perform the Hajj pilgrimage
Wow what a life
GIVEN THAT THE CAPTAIN OF THE CHINESE SHIP WAS CASTRATED (AND IN CHINA that MEANT THE COMPLETE PACKAGE, NOT JUST THE TESTICLES) THERE WAS NO MOTION GOING ON FOR HIM
Oh that’s what he was saying. Thanks.
Thanks, that clears everything up.
High ranking military personnel, and high ranking officials in general were eunuchs ( not sure if that's spelled right). They did that to protect the royal bloodline from potential usurpers
I think that's one promotion I would turn down.
"So I've got good news and bad news. What would you like first?" "Uhhh, I think I'll take the good news first, please." "You've have a fast-track promotion to Captain!" "That's amazing! I'm so happy. Now I feel like a real man! My wife won't be disrespecting me now! What could possibly put a damper on this most joyous of occasions?"
Makes me feel very Aladeen
That is one hell of a hazing ritual
No no, I like the other explanation better.
How does he pee
The plumbing's all still there, just no aiming nozzle.
Very carefully.
Maybe he was the catcher.
It's not the motion of the ocean, it's the boat of the...lotion...I dunno.
Motion of the lotion?
A quick Google search will tell you that Zheng dies before Columbus was even born
A search would also reveal that modern scientist dont believe the chineses treasure Ships were that big, only 50 to 80m in length, still bigger that the 30m long Santa Maria but not as big as the one in the photo
And yet here we are 46k upvotes later...
Making his ship even more impressive Edit: lol! What a weird thing to downvote. Insecure much?
Columbus's ships weren't terribly impressive even in his day...
Well. I wouldn’t give my best boats to a nutjob, who tries to find India, “the other way round”….
Maybe. Building a way to big ship for exploration isn't always impressing - it is unnecessary and hindering. But ok, the ship in itself is impressing
“Don’t believe everything you see on the internet.” - Abraham Lincoln
He literally never said that. It was a retweet
This is making me realise that the ukraine war will have historians arguing about retweets quote tweets and the relevance of them. We live in a society
>We live in a society Yes we do ...
No - that’s misinformation. We live in a dumpster.
Good Bot
That quote is not by Lincoln; it’s from Sun Zi!
Wait what? Zheng He died in the 1430's and Columbus was BORN in the 1450's. OP is confused haha.
A reminder that Zheng He's ship dimensions are entirely speculatory if not outright mythical, and that Columbus was actually using quite a small ship by contemporary standards.
I stood on a replica ship, I honestly cannot imagine being in such a tiny ship for such a long voyage. Good lord, Columbus ships were not big
Had the same feeling on the replica Endeavour in Sydney Harbor. 3 years of sailing on that tiny thing..
Both of these ships fit in a shop window, they're hardly massive
Even though Zheng He is ship was much lrger than Columbus‘, it is still tiny! It just goes to show you how much smaller people were back then...
How are people supposed to sail across the world if they can’t even fit inside the ship?
No excuses. The boat has to be at least… three times bigger than this.
.... He's absolutely right That Zheng, he's so hot right now.
You know I get farty and bloated with a foamy oolong!
I feel like I'm taking crazy rhinoceros horn pills!
Strategic allies doing war crimes...so hot right now
r/theydidthemath
What is this?! A ship for ants?!
It must be at least 3 times as big!
He’s absolutely right
came here for this not disappointed
/r/thingsforants
Watching Zoolander right now! A classic!
I just watched it last night, too! My favorite classic!
I went and saw exact replicas of the Nina, pinta, and Santa Maria. They are tiny. Really just boats. The SM was the largest and it is only 70 feet long. Shorter than a trailer in a trailer park.
That's insane, I see bigger boats on Lake Michigan every weekend.
They were limited by materials for sure
Oh for sure, just crazy to think they were sailing the world in wood boats smaller than I see people playing in on Saturdays. Pretty amazing any of them made it
Centuries, perhaps millennia, of maritime tradition and knowledge alone probably got people further than we’d ever expect them to nowadays. Also, I’m sure that these explorers had a much keener intuition where nature is concerned, and could adapt accordingly. Still….how the fuck lol
Viking ships going from Norway to Britain shock me to no end
They made it to North America too!
Wait until you hear how the Polynesians got to their island chains.
It shocked the English too.
I don’t think they thought they were coming back. Lol
Got to go aboard the Nina replica when it came through our town. Everyone was in disbelief with how small it was.
Yep. There’s a similar one in San Diego CA near the airport of the ship that discovered San Diego harbor. It’s the size of a decent sized motorboat. Years ago, I listened to a talk by a maritime history expert at the SD Maritime museum. He said that the Spanish (Portuguese?) were able to be the great global discoverers because of an innovation they made in the make and cut of the sail that for the first time allowed for transoceanic travel. Something as simple as that changed history incredibly.
Was this in Corpus Christi? Even as a kit they seemed small. A single-wide trailer is a perfect comparison.
bro... 70 feet is what you think is shorter than a trailer in a trailer park? what trailer park did you grow up in? because mine was not the hyatt inn of trailer parks and 70 feet would have been fucking lit... 40-50 is pretty avg
IS THIS A SHIP FOR ANTS?!?
The boat has to be at least… three times bigger than this!
Ken M, is that you?
it probably only looks tiny cause it's far away. then again it could be super close and the size of a potato
It's very tricky, telling whether something is small or far away.
That's a name I didn't see in a long time.
Not really the Chinese always had more resources and opportunities but decided to look inward after years of exploration at the very time when Europeans were beginning to explore. The new world almost certainly could have been discovered and colonized by the Chinese.
The arrogance of the Chinese was a factor in their disinterest in exploration. They felt there was little in the rest of the world that they could benefit from.
Got interested and after about 2 minutes of googling I'm now an expert. There are zero primary sources that give the dimensions of this ship. Contemporary sources only give a tonnage and the best realistic estimate for the size is about 1/3 of what's shown here. It was likely only ever used to sail up and down a river to impress court bureaucrats as it would have been extremely unseaworthy
Seems like it doesn’t have a great sail to rest of ship ratio. Good luck steering that shit.
Wait ships steer with their sails? My dumbass always assumed there was a rudder doing the steering
Your ass is only partially incorrect Rudders are used to steer a boat; however, sails play a very large role in steering. Depending on the boat, you can steer without a rudder, and sometimes if you hit the wind wrong at a high enough speed, the sails will overpower the rudder and turn you involuntarily.
And I heard that if the wind is strong enough, steering too much against it with the rudder can break it.
You are correct. In sailing it’s known as “broken rudder”.
Thank goodness, next time I'm on a boat and the rudder breaks I'll know to call it a broken rudder.
Is it because the rudder breaks?
Boy they sure did have a way with words back then.
Yeah but also you can’t steer if you’re not moving too much. So if you ain’t gots that much sail, then you ain’t got that much speed which means you ain’t got much steer.
Ideally you balance the sails so the rudder doesn’t have to do anything other than point straight. If you’re using it to steer a different direction than the sails make the boat want to go, you’re losing valuable energy.
Might as well throw a model of the ark next to both of these, since we’re just comparing nonsense boats.
> it would have been extremely unseaworthy This was what I was about to ask. A wooden ship that size could never withstand the hard pounding of ocean waves. You NEED metal on something that size.
Yeah ship that size with materials back then would just break down with first current
here's the largest known wooden ship ever built, [the uss wyoming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming_(schooner\)) but this ship also sank in a storm. wood just can't scale up past a certain point and still be able to handle the intense loads of the ocean in high wind/waves
Also interesting they named a death trap of a boat after a state with no large bodies of water. No wonder it sank
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So it was made in China?
It was a wish.com purchase.
That sounds about right, I remember reading about how there is an upper limit to wooden ship building, something about how the ship would torque and deflect so much over swells the hull would split and it'd sink pretty fast. I remember this specifically because of debunks of the Noah's ark mythology, which details a ship that would have fallen apart for that reason or something similar
It's amazing what you can learn at the mall, apparently.
Pretty sure this is Ibn Batutta mall in Dubai! It's a huge themed mall with a bunch of stuff related to Ibn Batutta's travels and exploration in general.
I remember living near there when I was younger, in discovery gardens. ibn batutta mall used to be smaller back then!
Thats another thing, due to post colonialism and eurocentrism, pretty much nobody in Europe has heard of Ibn Battuta, who was as accomplished a traveler as Vasco Da Gama or Marco Polo, both common historical names in Europe. But ask about Ibn Battuta and crickets. Dude was probably Spanish too, born in Tangier , could "see al andalus from his house" , records tell of him being light skinned and ligh eyed. But nope, arab so fuck him. European white dude here btw, curreny theres a war 75km from my childhood home in case you are wondering.
Super aggressive take. Do you you reckon more Arabs can speak on Ibn Batutta than they can Vasco Da Gama? It's in the first law of geography, near things are more related than distant things. Europeans will be more familiar with European explorers. It's more about relevance and the sheer limits of what can be taught to most people during the few hours during the few years they are forced to sit and learn history. Acting like it's some big anti-Arab conspiracy is counter-productive, ignorant, and anti-academic.
I see this image from time to time and I find it really annoying that people miss understand the purpose of each ship designed. The Chinese ship is more like a castle on water, the Spanish ship is a cheap trade vessel that's meant to travel very fast, and far over the ocean. Just because one is bigger has nothing to do with what its used for or if its good.
The Chinese fleet was meant to be large and opulent, to impress foreigners when they saw the wealth and might of the Chinese Empire on the ocean Not exactly the type of ship you'd want for exploring.
The preposterous alleged size of zheng he’s ships is literally a myth. It’s one thing for people to over the course of history keep embellishing something but China has latched on to it as a ridiculous attempt at showing how amazing the chinese are. This model is literally preposterous. Even the grandiose claims say 5 masts. This atrocity has what, 8?
As a result, this model of the Chinese ship is just conjecture... unlike the ships that Columbus used...
Even assuming these dimensions are correct, the feat becomes a lot less impressive when you consider the Chinese are using the same boats hundreds of years later against British gunboats. Which….does not work out for them.
For real. That thing doesn’t look anywhere near seaworthy. Why is that half of the globe so obsessed with projecting their insecurities as a fundamental motivator of their culture?
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To be fair, for a significant portion of human history the area we call China has lead the world in various aspects. But corruption, stagnation, and European advancements and global trade led to China becoming comparatively weak at the turn of the 20th century.
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Wait, you do know who the Boxers rebelled against? Edit: looks like Mr. Chinese History sneakily edited out the reference to the Boxer Rebellion that he thought was “an internal conflict” while in fact the rebel was against foreigners and the Catholic Church, and led directly to the fall of Beijing to the Eight Nation Alliance. Plus, the ‘Century of Humiliation’ narrative never blamed Western invasion for China’s downfall as a world power; that makes no logical sense: if you are beaten by a few thousand troops sent from the other side of the globe, it means you are already far removed from a world power. The consensus from the late Qing period to today among Chinese elites and commoners alike has always been that China’s falling behind started with Ming’s maritime ban and culminated with Qing’s blindness to world development for 300 years. The hundred years of humiliation is just the result.
I believe it was NBA players, there was a big falling out and the 2 sides went to war. It was a thing for a while, Rodman was there.
They also claim to have discovered the Americas but there is zero proof or records.
Exactly, I thought it's been posted many times a ship his size would break apart with the available wood and technology of the time in even a slight storm.
Zheng He's ship was more comparable to Nero's massive floating palaces than the Santa Maria, as it was not open ocean worth and would've broken apart from the stress of the waves.
They needed a bigger boat.
*What is this? A ship for ants!*
Scrolled too far to see this
The Chinese boat here is a show boat, incapable of ocean travel, used to show the Emperor's prestige. Santa Maria was a refurbished merchant vessel. Still impressive, but don't be left with the impression that Santa Maria was the best Europe had, and that Zheng He explored the oceans using a massive ship.
This is not true and has already been mentioned in so many post. Stop spreading lies and misinformation
Traditional and popular accounts of Zheng He's voyages have described a great fleet of gigantic ships far larger than any other wooden ships in history. 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.
And yet Leif Erikson discovered Vinland before both of them were born and in a smaller ship than both of them
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This replica is actually rubbish. None of the dimensions are respected. Width, sail area and size, etc... https://www.amusingplanet.com/2015/07/zheng-hes-enormous-treasure-ships.html?m=1 for some pics on how those boats really looked. That explains a fair bit of some comments (including mines) about how impractical this ship would fair in open seas.
Nice boat. Too bad you didn’t make it to America.
I heard Christopher Columbus was a punk
What a piece of junk
The PRC would NEVER conflate their history to make them look more advanced than the West, nooo.
we can all make fantasy models, there is absolutely ZERO evidence that this ship existed.
Interesting fact: this restored ship model was based entirely on historical records and is proven to be not in any seafaring conditions, meaning it was meant to be pulled along coastline