MONUMENTA SERICA Journal of Oriental Studies
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Monumenta Serica
53 (2005): 1-43
ZHENG HE:
AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE PLAUSIBILITY
OF 450-FT TREASURE SHIPS
S ALLY K. C HURCH
This paper examines the issues and arguments surrounding the question of whether Zheng He’s 鄭和ships could have been the size recorded in the official Ming history (Ming shi明史), that is, 44 zhang long by 18 zhang wide, or 447 by 183 feet.* It first examines the written sources, which include stone inscrip-tions, first-hand accounts, the Ming Shilu實錄 or “Veritable Records,” official and unofficial histories, illustrations, and shipyard treatises. It focuses primarily on sources dating before 1597 because of the relatively recent (in the last decade) assertions that the dimensions recorded in the Ming shi may have originated in the novel by Luo Maodeng 羅懋登 published in that year. In addition, it investi-gates the archaeological evidence derived from shipwrecks that have been exca-vated off the coast of China and Korea, and analyses the way in which one fine in particular – the 11-metre-long rudderpost discovered at the treasure-ship shipyard in Nanjing – has been interpreted. The paper examines what can be gained from comparisons of Zheng He’s treasure ships with non treasure ships, both non-Chinese ships and Chinese ships of other periods. It probes what can be known about the si
ze of the ships by reference not only to their dimensions, carrying ca-pacity, and displacement, but also to their complement (the number of men needed to sail the ship), the amount of wood it would take to build them, and the impact of the resulting demand for wood on China’s forests at the time. This question leads to consideration of such issues as the total number of ships that were built for the voyages, whether they were built from scratch or converted from ships used for other purposes, and ship repair schedules that help determine how often they had to be rebuilt over the 28-year period of Zheng He’s maritime expeditions. The results of this investigation support the conclusion of Xin Yuan-ou 辛元歐, professor of shipbuilding engineering at Shanghai Jiaotong Univer-
*I would like to thank the following people for their help of various kinds: D.W. Chalmers, Chen Shiwei, Martin Evans, Guo Shirong, Michael Langford, Raymond Mercier, José Manuel Malhão Pereira, Roderich Ptak, Brian Titus, Sunny Wang, Rex Warner, Janet West, Wu Haili, and the Needham Research Institute in Cambridge.
S ALLY K. C HURCH
2
sity, who argues that it is highly unlikely that Zheng He’s treasure ships were 450 ft long, and suggests
that they were probably closer to 200–250 ft in length.
***
At a conference entitled “Venture Toward the Seas” held in Taibei in September 2001,1 Xin Yuan’ou, shipbuilding engineer and professor of the history of science at Shanghai Jiaotong University, presented a paper entitled “Guanyu Zheng He baochuan chidu de jishu fenxi” 關於鄭和寶船尺度的技術分析 (A Technical Analysis of the Size of Zheng He’s Ships).2 In this paper he argued that Zheng He’s ships could not have been as large as recorded in the official Ming history (Ming shi 明史). According to that work, the ships constructed for Zheng He’s maritime expeditions were 44 zhang丈 long and 18 zhang wide, equivalent to 447 ft by 183 ft (138.4 m by 56 m).3 A ship this size would have been roughly 1.4 times the size of an American football field,4 and approximately the same size as the USS Minnesota (456 ft long by 78 ft 10 in wide), a steel battleship launched in 1905 and later used in the First World War.5 In arguing against this size, Xin was motivated in part by an immediate, practical concern. Preparations were being made for the 600th anniversary of Zheng He’s first expedition in 2005, and proposals were being put forward for the construction of replicas of Zheng He’s ships. Xin was concerned that any such replica be of a realistic size so as to be economical, seaworthy and safe.
1The conference, held 25–26 September 2001, was organised by the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology, the Wu Jing 吳京 Cultural Foundation, and National Taiwan Ocean University.
2Xin Yuan’ou’s paper has since been published in Chuanshi yanjiu 船史研究 17 (2002), pp. 1-
20. Xin is professor of the history of science at Shanghai Jiaotong University, and has served as
Director of the Chinese Academy of the History of Science and Technology, and President of the Chinese Marine History Researchers’ Association.
3Zhang Tingyu 張廷玉et al. (ed.), Ming shi (Beijing 1974), j. 304, pp. 7766-7768. The stan-dard zhang measurement used by the Ministry of Works in the Ming period was equivalent to
10 ft 2 in (3.11 m) in modern measurements. Xin Yuan’ou uses a different conversion rate:
12.5 ft and 3.81 m to one zhang. By his calculations the ships would have been 550 ft long and
225 ft wide (167.64 m by 68.58 m). It is usually assumed that these measurements refer to overall length and width of the ships. Because traditional Western discussions of ships use feet as the primary unit of measurement, I provide length measurements in feet first, followed by the equivalent in metres.
4An American football field is 360 ft (110 m) long and 160 ft (49 m) wide.
5Liang Qichao 梁啟超 remarked on the similarity in size between this ship and Zheng He’s ships in his article “Zuguo da hanghaijia Zheng He zhuan” 祖國大航海家鄭和傳 (A Biography of China’s Great Navigator, Zheng He), Xin min 新民, No. 69 (18 May 1905). The article was later reprinted in his collected works, Yinbing shi heji飲冰室合集 (Shanghai 1936, rpt. 1941), vol. 3, j. 9, pp. 1-12. See Sally K. Church, “The Colossal Ships of Zheng He,” in Claudine Salmon and Roderich Ptak (eds.), Zheng He: Images and Perceptions. Bilder und Wahrneh-mungen (Wiesbaden 2005), pp. 155-176, esp. pp. 155-156.
Z HENG H E: T HE P LAUSIBILITY OF 450-FT T REASURE S HIPS3
Xin’s main reasons for concluding that the ships could not have been this size are listed briefly here; they will be discussed in more detail later. First, he as-serted that there is a natural limit to the size of a wooden ocean-going ship of about 7,000 tons displacement. Ships of the dimensions given in the Ming shi would have been 15,000–20,000 tons according to his calculations, and thus would have far exceeded this limit. Second, he noted that even with the benefit of modern technology it would be difficult to manufacture a wooden ship of 10,000 tons, let alone one that was 1½–2 times that size. It w
as only when ships began to be built of iron in the 1860s that they could exceed 10,000 tons. Third, Xin argued that the watertight compartments characteristic of traditional Chinese ships tended to make the vessels transversely strong but longitudinally weak. Ideally the tensile strength of a single tree trunk would provide the strength needed for the keel, or its Chinese equivalent, the longgu龍骨 (literally “dragon bone”). However, for a ship 450 ft long, several trunks would need to be joined together to make this longitudinal strengthening member. A ship of these dimensions would also need masts that were 30 zhang (100 metres) tall. For these, several timbers would have to be joined together vertically. Moreover, because a single tree trunk would not be large enough in diameter to support such a tall mast, mul-tiple timbers would need to be combined at the base as well. According to Xin, there is no evidence that China had the type of joining materials necessary to ac-complish these tasks. In fact the archaeologist Richard Gould says of the treasure ships that since there is no evidence of “special construction techniques such as iron strapping for supporting the wooden hulls” of these ships, “there is some-thing inherently improbable about the claims made for them in the Ming texts.”6 The high rigging that would have been necessary would also weaken the ship. Fi-nally, Xin noted, in order to make the technological breakthroughs necessary to overcome these obstacles, China would have needed more time. It took four cen-turies for Western ships to make the relatively small increase in size from 1500 to 5000 tons displacement, and this was with the stimulus provided b
y warfare and competition among the various European powers. For Chinese ships to have reached three or four times this size in just two years (from Emperor Yongle’s accession in 1403 to the launch of the first expedition in 1405), at a time when there was no such stimulus provided by intense naval activity, would have been highly unlikely.7
These arguments are persuasive, especially as they come from a professor of shipbuilding engineering. They raise serious questions about the dimensions re-
6Richard A. Gould, Archaeology and the Social History of Ships (Cambridge 2000), p. 198.
7Xin Yuan’ou, “Guanyu Zheng He baochuan chidu de jishu fenxi,” pp. 5, 7-8, 13. Xin was not the first to question the size of the ships given in the Ming shi. As early as 1947 Guan Jincheng 管勁丞 published an article challenging these dimensions, proposing a much more modest size of 20 zhang long by 2.4 zhang wide (204 ft by 25.5 ft). See his “Zheng He xia Xiyang de chuan” 鄭和下西洋的船, Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌 43 (1947) 1, pp. 47-51, reprinted in Zheng He yanjiu ziliao huibian鄭和研究資料匯編 (1985), pp. 268-272. There is by no means univer-sal agreement among scholars on these points.
S ALLY K. C HURCH
4
corded in the Ming shi, and the actual size of Zheng He’s ships. In what follows I shall attempt to elucidate what can be known about the size of these ships from several different angles. First I shall consider the sources: if we cannot rely on the Ming shi, what Chinese sources are reliable for information about the ships, and what do they tell us? Second, what information can we glean from compari-sons with Chinese ships of other periods and with non-Chinese ships? Third, what does the archaeological record tell us about the ships?
With regard to the sources, we know that these dimensions did not originate in the Ming shi. A number of works that predate the Ming shi contain these dimen-sions. The Ming shi was a rather late publication, begun soon after the Manchu conquest in 1644 and not completed until 1739. The earlier sources that mention the dimensions are Kezuo zhuiyu客座贅語 by Gu Qiyuan 顧起元 (published in 1618); Tan Qian’s 談遷 manuscript of Guo Que國榷 (dating from between 1621 and 1656); Zheng He’s family genealogy, Zheng He jiapu 鄭和家譜, which was kept exclusively in his family until 1936; and three relatively late versions of Ma Huan’s 馬歡Yingyai shenglan 瀛崖勝覽. The earliest extant edition of Ma Huan’s work is the Jilu huibian紀錄匯編 edition published by Shen Jiefu 沈節甫(jinshi 1559) in approximately 1617. It is thought to be the closest to the first edi-tion produced 1451.8 This edition doe
s not contain any reference to the size of the ships. The three later editions that do contain the dimensions are: the Chaoshuo ji 鈔說集 edition (dated after 1617), the Sanbao zhengyi ji三寶征彝集 manuscript (also dated after 1617), and the Qi shi Dansheng tang祁氏淡生堂 manuscript of 1620.9 The dimensions also appear in Luo Maodeng’s 羅懋登 novel about Zheng He’s exploits, Sanbao taijian Xiyang ji 三寶太監西洋記, published in 1597, and Xin Yuan’ou follows Tang Zhiba 唐志拔 in arguing that this work, as the earliest one to contain the dimensions, is their most likely source.10 It does not seem nec-essary to insist that this is the direct source used by the Ming shi, however, as the editors of the official history may have taken the dimensions from one of the other works mentioned above that may have served as an intermediary between the novel and the Ming shi.
There are some difficulties with the hypothesis that the dimensions came from the novel. First, we do not seem to have any other evidence linking the novel with the Ming shi, beyond its being the earliest known source to mention these figures. Second, it seems odd that the editors of the Ming shi would use a novel
8J.V.G. Mills (tr., ed.), Ying-yai sheng-lan. The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores [1433], Hakluyt Society Extra Series 42 (Cambridge 1970), pp. 37-38.
9Of these I have only had the opportunity to see the novel and Kezuo zhuiyu.
10Tang Zhiba 唐志拔, “Zheng He baochuan chidu zhi wo jian” 鄭和寶船尺度之我見, Zheng He yanjiu鄭和研究 47 (2001) 2, pp. 26-32, esp. p. 27, reprinted in Chuanshi yanjiu 17 (2002), pp.
21-27. I have consulted a modern edition of the novel (Beijing 1995).

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