These days many eulogise Admiral Zheng enthusiastically. The unifying pride seems to be that a Chinese Muslim eunuch from the fifteenth century proved early evidence of China's superior naval architecture and planning. 

Through Admiral Zheng we are told China discovered much of the Asian world and perhaps much of the other world too. Perhaps this may have included the northern and maybe even southern American continents.

Seven times, from 1405 to 1433, the treasure fleets set off for the unknown. These seven great expeditions brought a vast web of trading links - from Taiwan to the Persian Gulf - under Chinese imperial control. This took place half a century before the first Europeans, rounding the tip of Africa in frail Portuguese caravels, 'discovered' the Indian Ocean.

Unfortunately it is more than a tad difficult to concur with everything of these eulogies.

False claim #1
Superior purpose: This was peaceful exploration aimed at furthering trade

The primary historical record of Admiral Zheng and his voyages contains several blind spots yet secondary sources seem reasonably consistent that it involved over 27,000 souls. Whether they participated in one mission or summed all seven missions or included or excluded shore support we are not told. But given Columbus sailed with fewer than one hundred men (less than 1%) it seems likely this larger number accompanying Admiral Zheng, whatever the number actually was in each voyage, aimed to project power on land.

Precisely how many of Admiral Zheng's contingent were soldiers? Again it is doubtful we will ever know. Yet we do know Admiral Zheng's passages had military outcomes. Returned to Peking were various artefacts of gold and jewels and other catches. Some prizes were rather odd and not very valuable, one was a giraffe, but each was emblematic of the kowtow. Peoples visited during the voyages - visited is perhaps misleading - were "brought into China's tributary system" (a quote from the present day) and this basically involved paying protection money to Peking at regular intervals. 

Putting Admiral Zheng's passages in the same sentence as protection rackets is not, of course, how fans would present his accomplishments. Yet it seems clear that errant debtors risked punishment. One ruler visited on the voyages was rather unceremoniously "dragged back to Beijing to apologise". Not very neighbourly.

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Reality: For this to hold true we must accept three oddities: (1) The mostly continental Chinese miraculously discovered how to build ships three times longer and three times wider than everybody else; (2) After successfully deploying mega-ship expertise for several decades they ditched the technology; (3) Finally, Ming administrators expunged the knowledge from both the archaeological record and human memory.

This amnesia happened within China and in the countries Admiral Zheng visited. This latter accomplishment - complete disassembly of know-how for building massive vessels - can only have succeeded on the Chinese side by the genocide of ship-building communities. How the memory of the mega-ships was also removed from coastal communities in Arabia and Africa seems impossible to comprehend but perhaps there is a convenient theory somewhere.

In reality of course none of this happened. This is for one simple reason: Admiral Zheng's ships never existed in such proportions. 

To drive this point home my table (see above) shows dimensions of vessels from the archaeological record before and after Admiral Zheng. Big ships were a few dozen metres and certainly less than fifty metres. Only the steel girder and rivets and improvements in bow technologies during the twentieth century allowed vessel length to approach one hundred metres. Yet the pro-Zheng view suggests that in the fifteenth century one isolated spot of the world possessed ship-building technology that without the benefits of steel girders and the rivet and other modern advances constructed naval craft roughly equal in proportion to early aircraft carriers - about five hundred years ahead of everyone else. 

There is a further and somewhat perplexing question: why would Admiral Zheng even need such large vessels? The Santa Maria, Columbus's largest ship which sailed the Atlantic in 1492 about half-a-century later was recorded as 36 metres by 10 metres. Yet Columbus on these humble pigmy's navigated the unknown Atlantic and prised open a new continent. 

Additionally if we accept the alleged proportions of Admiral Zheng's ships - just to repeat we are told 120 metres long by 46 metres wide - we must accept they were exceedingly cumbersome. The approximate relationship of width/length in ocean-going craft is around 1:6 or maybe 1:7 or thereabouts. This is a defining reality of marine physics and as the table shows this proportionality appears in all craft from all ages. Yet seemingly the vessels of Zheng were so clever that they could dispense with normal marine physics. They got to create vessels closer to a ratio of 1:3 - ie, the vessel was one-third wide as it was long. Fat and stubby rather understates it. If such a ship had been built it would have entered the Guinness Book of Records as the world's biggest bath tub. 

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If Admiral Zheng dispatched several dozen ships with several tens of thousands of troops during the fifteenth century that is impressive. Leave aside that the 'record' shows they sailed on vessels of questionable naval architecture and also leave aside that when manoeuvering in combat they would have been rather like a tortoise surrounded by hares. We might also ignore that they would also have suffered from absence of explosive armaments within the vessels. No serious cannons or muskets were carried which rather supports the thinking that a great many soldiers must have been along for the ride.

Unfortunately the idea of Chinese mastery before everyone else bears little scrutiny. Already in Europe the era of large scale naval combat had arrived. Indeed close to a century before Zheng He travelled marine guns were deployed at the Battle of Sluys (1340) between Britain and France. Up to a hundred ships assembled in naval lines. We may also conclude that they had invented the rudder in order to facilitate this line of attack - which is another peculiar claim made by fans of Zheng He, that he alone invented a device for steering which the rest of the marine world somehow overlooked.

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False claim #4
Superior recording: Supporters of Zheng He present his history as undeniable fact. There are plenty of numbers and so forth

There is an almost complete absence of archaeological or primary source evidence for Admiral Zheng. None of his mega ships survive, either the ones that would have shipwrecked en route or the ones that rotted at home afterwards. Documents showing shipbuilding plans are unknown. So too are written diaries. 

Add all this absence of primary evidence and it is not unreasonable to characterize the matter as apocryphal. Essentially in the case of Admiral Zheng we are dealing with what may be called "clippings history". This is re-circulated myths and truths that nobody has an original sources for but which have been repeated so often nobody can remember if they are true or not. A thousand lies make a single truth, as the Chinese idiom hopes. In these circumstances the truth becomes not one view of reality but simply the path of least resistance. 

This lack of data creates some amusing claims. Some even claim "almost every detail of Zheng He's missions was diligently erased from the Chinese records by the anti-eunuch faction that followed this period." Handy. Yet other sources tell us with great precision that the voyages involved "...27,870 men on 317 ships, including sailors, clerks, interpreters, soldiers, artisans, medical men and meteorologists." So which is it? Destroyed record or reliable and intact record? By the way, that figure (27,870 men divided by 317 ships) just happens to share out at precisely 88 souls per vessel. Now there's a suspicious coincidence. Readers familiar with Chinese tradition will know that the number 88 is considered lucky.  

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First, Admiral Zheng He. It is probably true that he was born in the late fourteenth century. Whether it was 1371 and whether it was in Yunnan province we will probably never know. He probably was a Muslim. This probably meant he was exposed to Arabic sea-faring traditions and folktales. It is also likely that he witnessed Mongolian control over China during the Yuan dynasty (roughly 1280-1370) diminish as the Ming acquired control (1360s onwards). This optimism probably inspired his own ambitions. Perhaps his father was killed in battle, who knows, and probably the younger Zheng was captured by Ming troops who castrated him. We may be certain that the latter wound, inflicted without anaesthetic, must have stung. Beyond that, however, we will probably not know much more about Zheng He. We will certainly not know how he conceived the missions or the benefits they might create. It is a great shame that we do not possess diaries or other written materials which he probably kept like all great mariners. If they had survived it is doubtful the embarrassing half-truths we see today would be peddled. 

Second, the ships. This is more clear-cut. The claimed dimensions for the larger vessels are implausible. They were simply not that long and they were simply not that wide. What size were they? Conveniently an answer emerges from a Chinese junk purchased by the British in the mid-nineteenth century. This was several centuries after Admiral Zheng but showed what Chinese naval architecture had achieved by that time. The "Keying" junk was 45 metres long by 11 metres wide. Even that was rather bathtub like. The width/length ratio was 1:4 and quite some way behind more streamlined western and some Arabic vessels. This is not to criticise Chinese junks per se. Keying was clearly capable of blue water sailing, as ocean crossings may be called, and it sailed to both Britain and America under a British crew. 

Third, purpose. The Zheng missions were essentially similar to European imperialism of the later industrial era: trade. Europeans found sources of trade and then exploited them, forcefully often, with similar intentions to Admiral Zheng: profit. The scale of Admiral Zheng's missions, with so many men and so many ships, should we take the secondary sources as gospel, can only mean that he set out with similar and determined economic purposes to the Europeans. If the voyages were purely for discovery two or three would have sufficed.  

Fourth, stagnation. A great curiosity is that the Zheng voyages conducted so successfully and so frequently abruptly ended. The record seems clear that Admiral Zheng's last voyage happened in the 1430s. On this "fact" most sources seem to agree. The next military-maritime contact between China and outsiders was a good century later. Then, greedy evil westerners arrived with plans for China that seem remarkably similar to what Ming China was contemplated for Africa and the Middle East. The boot had rather dramatically transferred to the other foot. Some on the pro-Zheng side imply voyages stopped because Ming mandarins were intrinsically peaceful. There was no further reason to travel. Really? This is hard to square with conducting so many voyages with so many soldiers. One or two, maybe even three passages, would have satiated even the most greedy appetites for exploration. But seven? Additionally, shaky as it is the record of kowtow trophies implies winnings for China extended over several decades. Surely kowtow winnings are rather odd if the central purpose was peaceful observation?

It seems unlikely we will definitively know why voyages stopped and the primary record in this regard is basically empty. Nevertheless, this following guess seems feasible. As the voyages continued and kowtow tributes returned to Peking (including presumably the leader sent to "apologise") it occurred to Ming rulers that the Zheng project was repeating what happened with Mongolians in the fourteenth century. Only this time the sea rather than land was the lubricant. Discovery of wealth in the Mongolian plains, it will be recalled, turned out to be a double-edged sword when Genghis Khan used superior horsemanship and tactical savvy to conquer much of China. Ming elites would only be human if they considered what Admiral Zheng was meddling with in the west reminded them of earlier contretemps in the north. Why agitate more hornets nests? 

So why exaggerate? There remains a central, final, question in the whole Admiral Zheng intrigue: why exaggerate? The rather dubious habit of inflating Admiral Zheng is alive across a broad spectrum. The 'Friends of Admiral Zheng', as one of several examples, advise us that the Santa Maria was 27m long. In fact it was probably 36m long. What is 25% between friends? Perhaps not much if it can amplify the ship-building accomplishments of fifteenth century China. 

Other claims for the proportions of Admiral Zheng's ships breach the surreal. Another pro-Zheng source advises the largest ship was 180 metres long, which is complete nonsense. What planet are such claimants inhabiting? It seems to be a devastatingly sad one given both the historical record and logic are AWOL. 

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The Economist magazine ran a leader on Admiral Zheng during the summer of 2005. Here is an excerpt: "The sea-going eunuchs fell from favour (Zheng's missions were staggeringly costly) and by 1500 it was a capital offence to go to sea in a two-masted ship without permission. China had embarked on a long period of isolation like that imposed on Japan by the Tokugawa shogunate in the 17th century. With the mothballing of Zheng's ships, just as Europeans were beginning their own voyages of discovery, came the beginning of the end of China's centuries of superiority." More... 

The following letter was published in response.   

"Not even a postcard"
SIR, your speculation on the early 15th-century voyages of Chinese admiral Zheng He misses the real story ("The admiral of what might have been", July 16th). The reason why this sea-going eunuch fell from favour was because he brought nothing back from his adventures to cover the staggering costs of his missions. No Chinese emperor, or European king for that matter, would pay indefinitely for voyages of discovery without expecting some return. Columbus may have opened the way for somebody else to find Peruvian silver, but he had promised only Indian spices and at least brought something back. The Chinese, to the contrary, had to wait for a century after Zheng He to sell their tea to the Dutch in Batavia. The Chinese expeditions were nothing more than luxury tourist cruises. Trade or perish: that is the history of mankind in a nutshell.
BO HERMAN
Rotterdam