This is a Portuguese ship in the late 1300s. And this is a Ming treasure ship. It has a deck the size of a village masts that tower above any European sailors.
And this ship was just one of a fleet made of hundreds built by the Ming dynasty to control its neighbors and crush its enemies. Their size and admiral are legend. The craftsman could construct boats of this size seems unbelievable, almost a lie.
This is the story of how one man kidnapped and mutilated as a child, conquered the seas in ships the size of buildings. This is the story of the biggest ship in history and how it all faded into myth. A 10-year-old boy lives in Yunan Province, land controlled by Mongols.
They are the enemies of the New Ming Empire. The boy's father is a minor official in the Mongol administration. When they come, the boy's father dies.
The child walks on a road. on it. He encounters a Ming general.
The general asks, "Where is the Mongol emperor? " The child thinks and then tells a lie. He jumped into a pond.
The general looks. The boy looks back. Clever, the man thinks.
They capture him and bring him to Judi, the fourth son of the founding emperor of the Ming dynasty. But first, the boy must be transformed. Before he can be brought close to power, he must be remade.
The Ming Empire was built on Unix. Unlike other imperial Chinese dynasties, the Ming elevated castrated men beyond what any had known. They were seen as trustworthy.
They could hold no bloodline, bear no sons. taken from their homes, stripped of name and flesh alike. They had nothing but what was given to them by their emperor.
Their devotion supposedly absolute. But they could move up. What they lost to mutilation, they gained an access to power.
They became the most educated men in China. Most were clerks, tax collectors, and administrators. But some directly advised the emperor.
If they gained his trust, they could move even further. Sometimes becoming more powerful than emperors themselves. Judy is 21 years old when he meets the boy.
Despite their age difference, they become close. The boy grows, but his bones do not fuse like others. Unable to produce testosterone, his limbs grow long and stretch.
While most Ming men stand 5'8, Mahi stands near 7 ft tall, his waist rumored to be nearly as big as he was long. This becomes an asset. The early Ming period is unstable with competing factions and a weak border.
The emperor and his family need defenders they can trust. So Mahi fights, first a soldier, then an officer, then Judi's bodyguard. He's made a military commander in Jud's army to fight the Mongols.
But his master craves more. In the early days of the Ming Empire, Unix were actually kept away from power. Judy's father, the founding emperor, warned against them.
A man unable to sexually produce a family, could still hunger for power. He kept Unix few in number, kept them illiterate, and put them far away from the government. But his son was different.
One day his father told him a story. A man tended a fire. Every day he prodded the umbers with a stick, blew on it, constantly making sure he never lost it.
His family pleaded, "Please come inside. The fire can start again tomorrow. " But the man refused.
He couldn't risk losing the flames. He didn't eat with them. Slept outside.
He grew old and his children resentful. But the man's fire roared. His younger brother, however, was smarter.
He let the fire die. At the end of the day, he gathered embers, put it in a box. He met with his family.
His children loved him. Only sometimes he blew on the box. The next day, he returned to the ashes and took the embers out.
The man's fire roared. Many believe they must always be physically present to keep things running. With any desk, you can access your work, projects, and computers from anywhere, seamlessly and securely.
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Visit hoo. best/ anyes2 and start your free trial. One day, his father told him a story.
Wind blows the horse's tail into a thousand strands of threats. to which Judy replied, "The son reflects off the dragon's scales into 10,000 bits of gold. Where others saw obstacles, he saw paths.
Where his father saw danger, he saw opportunities. When his nephew becomes emperor, he does not stand by. He wages a brutal civil war.
Breaking from the tradition of his father, he relies on the help of Unix. Judy crushes his opponents. He crowns himself emperor Yong Lelay.
Lasting joy. He rewards the Unix who had fought for him. Purges the officials who had not.
Their numbers grow. Uniglled agencies, directorates, offices, and bureaus. They managed his plantations, controlled mines.
A unicled secret service is established to gather information on his enemies. He sends them across the world, missions to Tibet, Java, and Bengal. But there is one unic the emperor trusts more than most.
His most loyal servant. He gives the boy a new name. Jang Hu.
Grand director of palace servants. The most powerful unic in the Ming dynasty. Young Lelay sits on the dragon throne, restless.
Many do not recognize his rule. Neighboring states watch, uncertain. He must win them over.
So he gathers the greatest minds of the empire. They write the largest encyclopedia in history. He formalizes the training of civil servants, organizes confusion texts, turns his northern home, Baying, into the new capital, Beijing, and orders the construction of a new palace.
But this isn't enough. He needs more. Based on the Confucian idea of a hierarchical world order, Ming China saw itself as the middle kingdom, the center of the world.
To legitimize this position, foreign rulers bow, bring gifts, and acknowledge the Middle Kingdom superiority. In return, they receive trade, protection, and gifts. To bring his skeptical neighbors to heal, Young Lelay has to expand this system.
So, he devises a plan. He orders the construction of the greatest fleet the world has ever seen. It will carry Ming power across the seas, control the Indian Ocean, expand trade, and make men afraid.
Tribute was not just a ceremonial exchange. The ships were filled with cavalry and soldiers. States are scared into submission.
But the emperor could not come himself. To lead his fleet, he needed someone he could trust. So he turns to his old friend, Jan Hu.
Under his command, 93 unique military officers, 103 lieutenants. They are joined by foreign affairs personnel, treasury secretaries, astrologers, medical staff, pharmacologists, translators. The crew is 27,000 strong, soldiers, sailors, clerks, all outfitted with the best weapons of the age.
A moving empire divided into five types of ship. 300 transport ships, each carrying men and supplies. 180 warships designed for battle and hunting pirates.
240 supply ships, some carry grain, others fresh water. Enough for a month at sea. 700 horse ships big enough to carry thousands of horses for land-based transport to pack wares and carry cavalry units.
And then at the center of it all are the giants, 36 treasure ships, gargantuan vessels measuring 56 m wide and 136 m long. Nine 100 m tall masts. Their pointed deadshaped holes are designed to cut through giant waves.
Their hole is filled with exotic goods, animals, gold, porcelain, and finely crafted decorated silks. Its four massive decks overhang the hole. The first and lowest deck are filled with rocks to provide ballast.
The second deck is used as living quarters and storage by the sailors. The third has open space, the kitchens, and the operation bridge. The fourth and final deck is the fighting platform equipped with 24 cast bronze cannons.
Their high prowls and stern combined with a keel on the bottom of the hole ensure extra stability in high seas. A balanced rudder can also be lowered and raised acting like a secondary keel technology that was not introduced in Europe until the late 18th century. Jung Ha sails beyond India, stopping along modern-day Malaysia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka.
Such great distances are only made possible by the strong winds of the northeast monsoon. He protects trading routes by defeating the pirate captain Chenzui who terrorized the straight of Malaa. He sails to Harm in modern-day Iran, further still to the eastern coast of Africa to Kenya.
With each visit, he demonstrates the power of the Middle Kingdom. Everywhere he goes, he's met with gifts, and the submission of rulers. He leads the old world's waves.
Military bases arrive on foreign shores. The Middle Kingdom's power expands. This is Paxming.
The closest Imperial China ever came to becoming a colonial power. But Judy's plan for Ming domination can't go on forever. His trust in Unix has created enemies.
The Confucian civil service resents them. The non-castrated bureaucracy saw the voyages as a purely unitd driven spectacle which reflected the blind spending of their emperor. And then 1421, lightning strikes the forbidden city.
The largest hall burns to Confucians. It's a sign from the heavens. Young Lelay listens.
He issues a decree giving his officials the opportunity to criticize him. The bureaucrats denounce his spending, particularly his voyages. He ends ship building, but only temporarily.
The criticism of the civil service was only as valuable as his need for them. When the bureaucracy weakened, Young Lelay turned back to his Unix and expensive projects. He imprisoned those against his voyages, reinstated Jangh.
The fleet sails again. But then Yung Lelay dies. His eldest son, Hong Xi, is crowned.
He does not rely on Unix to gain the throne. He relies on the civil service to retain it. He declares the voyages a waste of money.
All future expeditions are banned. The fleet is dismantled. China prepares for the 600th anniversary of Jung-ho's first voyage.
A replica treasure ship is proposed, but Professor Xin Juanu, a ship building expert, has concerns. He knows the replica is structurally unsound. All Chinese ships of the time had a long central spine, the Drgon Bone, a single timber running the ship's length.
But no tree in China was ever tall enough to support a treasure ship of this size. Multiple timbers had to be joined, but Chinese joinery techniques were too weak during the Ming Dynasty. The ship would have snapped.
The same for the masts. A mass made from multiple timbers would have been too weak to withstand the high winds of the northeast monsoon. For centuries, the fleet size was accepted as fact.
In historical records, the most comprehensive description of this huge fleet comes from a novel written by Lu Maong in 1597. He describes a fleet of giants, noting the ship's size and their numbers. They were so large that they had to have been constructed by an immortal god.
Like the height of the unit who led them, it's possible that the author exaggerated the fleet in order to make the story more impressive 200 years after the voyages. However, the Ming dynasty also kept a meticulous record of official imperial activity. There are orders sent to the shipyards at Nanjing for the construction of a fleet of 249 vessels.
It appears this is referring to the legendary fleet of Jung Hu. Although still large, this is far from a fleet of 1,000 ships. Strangely though, those same records record 63 treasure ships, twice the number described by Luo Maong.
The rest of the fleet was likely composed of smaller ships comparable in size to regular Chinese vessels at the time. Another point missing from the records is any mention of the wood required to build and maintain these ships. The records contain detailed accounts of many trees fell to build Yanglay's capital of Beijing, but no mention of 6 million trees needed to build his fleet.
This is the largest wooden sailing ship by volume ever built and confirmed to exist. Built 450 years after the great treasure ships, it does not even come close to their massive volume. The longest and only wooden ship to ever match the supposed length of the treasure ships was the Wyoming, but its great length caused it to sink, killing all aboard.
19th century ship building couldn't keep such a long ship afloat. In Europe, it wouldn't be possible until the mid 1800s with the introduction of steel holes. No evidence exists of such a leap in ancient China.
Jyn and other scholars argue that the ships were likely half of their legendary size. But in 1957, near Nanjing, at the location of the Grand Treasure shipyards of ancient China, a worker excavated a giant timber. It was 11 m long and must have supported a rudder of immense size.
Scholars and ship building experts gather in debate. Some estimate that the ship it belonged to may have been 160 m long. Hey yo, if you want to watch a video on the smallest emperor in history, check out this video which my considerably worse sounding twin brother narrates on the YouTube channel Fern.
