The Biggest Ship in History Was Built in China 600 Years Ago—Or Was It?

In 2002, the retired British sub­ma­rine lieu­tenant-com­man­der turned ama­teur his­to­ri­an Gavin Men­zies cre­at­ed a stir with a book about Chi­nese sea­far­ing in the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry. 1421: The Year Chi­na Dis­cov­ered the World (telling­ly titled 1421: The Year Chi­na Dis­cov­ered Amer­i­ca in the Unit­ed States) began as a glob­al his­to­ry of that year, only com­ing to focus on the claim of the title through the inter­ven­tions of pub­lish­ing-indus­try pro­fes­sion­als. They no doubt sensed a lucra­tive con­tro­ver­sy in the off­ing, and events proved them right. Not only did the book turn best­seller, it also man­aged the rare feat of draw­ing, among oth­er respons­es, a two-hour PBS doc­u­men­tary ded­i­cat­ed to debunk­ing it. Today, 1421 is most char­i­ta­bly remem­bered as a work of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion writ­ten around the idea that, even if Chi­na did­n’t actu­al­ly dis­cov­er the world, would­n’t it be neat if it had?

That ques­tion is hard­ly as friv­o­lous as it may sound. Much of Men­zies’ book has to do with the exploits of Zheng He, a Ming-dynasty admi­ral and diplo­mat whose fleet real­ly did make voy­ages to much of the world, or at least the parts sur­round­ing the Indi­an Ocean. Even if the claim that he beat Christo­pher Colum­bus to the Amer­i­c­as can’t be sup­port­ed, he real­ly did get around, and in seri­ous­ly impres­sive ships at that. In the Hoog video above, you can see Zheng He’s sto­ry told with retro 3D video-game graph­ics suit­able to con­vey the kind of adven­ture his life became. Yet it could hard­ly have begun more humbly: born into a Mus­lim fam­i­ly in the south­ern, Mon­gol-con­trolled Yun­nan province, he was cap­tured by the Ming mil­i­tary and cas­trat­ed in ado­les­cence. Harsh though that sounds, it made him able to accrue a kind of pow­er that could nev­er have been his oth­er­wise.

“The Ming empire was built on eunuchs,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor. “Unlike oth­er impe­r­i­al Chi­nese dynas­ties, the Ming ele­vat­ed cas­trat­ed men beyond what any had known.” Their inabil­i­ty to repro­duce and serve their own blood­line inspired the trust of the rulers: “What they lost in muti­la­tion, they gained in access to pow­er.” Under Zhu Di, known as the Yon­gle Emper­or, Zheng He became “the most pow­er­ful eunuch in the Ming Dynasty.” In order to project his pow­er over­seas, the emper­or decid­ed to con­struct “the great­est fleet the world has ever seen,” con­sist­ing of 300 trans­port ships, 180 war­ships, 240 sup­ply ships, 700 horse ships, and 36 mas­sive “trea­sure ships” that might have been the largest wood­en ves­sels ever to set sail. To lead this “mov­ing empire” with its staff of 27,000 — many of them eunuchs — he knew no one more reli­able than his old friend Zheng He.

This fleet’s expe­di­tions main­tained suf­fi­cient hege­mo­ny to ensure a peri­od of region­al sta­bil­i­ty some call the Pax Ming. At the same time, the civ­il ser­vice grew ever more resent­ful of the priv­i­leged eunuch class, and a light­ning strike on the For­bid­den City in 1421 was tak­en as a sign that the time had come to crit­i­cize their lead­er­ship. It would seem that Zhu Gaochi, the Yon­gle Emper­or’s son, took this crit­i­cism to heart. When he took pow­er as the Hongxi Emper­or after his father died while Zheng He was at sea, he put an end to the cost­ly naval expe­di­tions that could, in the­o­ry, one day have reached the New World. Ques­tions about why Chi­na’s age of mar­itime explo­ration had to end have more recent­ly been joined by oth­ers about whether such a vast fleet real­ly could have sailed, and for that mat­ter, whether the enor­mous trea­sure ships could even have been built in the first place. Chi­na may have done away with the eunuch sys­tem more than a cen­tu­ry ago, but there’s no doubt that its cur­rent lead­er­ship rec­og­nizes the impor­tance of sea pow­er — or that it has its eyes on the heav­ens.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Ancient Greek War­ships Worked: The Engi­neer­ing of the Trireme Explained in 3D Ani­ma­tion

The 500-Year-Old Chi­nese “Bagel” That Helped Win a War

How a 16th-Cen­tu­ry Explorer’s Sail­ing Ship Worked: An Ani­mat­ed Video Takes You on a Com­pre­hen­sive Tour

Watch the First Chi­nese Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film, Princess Iron Fan, Made Under the Strains of WWII (1941)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.