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Chapter 22 By far the most controversial but most essential issue
regarding the ships that were used on Zheng He’s 鄭和
Investigating Zheng He’s 15th-century maritime expeditions is their size. According to
the biography of Zheng He in the ‘Official Ming History’
Ships: What is Known (Ming shi 明史), compiled in 1739, these ‘Treasure Ships’ 1

(baochuan 寶船) were 44 zhang 丈 long and 18 zhang wide. If
and Knowable? we take the standard equivalent of the zhang in the Ming
2
period, which is 3.11m, the dimensions work out to
approximately 137m by 56m, or 449ft by 184ft. Most
maritime historians and shipbuilding engineers, both
Sally K. Church Western and Chinese, say that a wooden ship of this period
could not possibly have been this big. To help visualise this
size, an American football field is 110m long and 49m wide;
one of Zheng He’s ships would have been both longer and
wider than this. The USS Minnesota, a steel battleship built in
1905 and decommissioned in 1924 after fighting in the First
World War, was only slightly longer (139m) than the length
that the Ming shi gives for Zheng He’s ships, but considerably
narrower (24m), obeying the principle espoused by some
naval architects that a longer ship should be proportionally
narrower. Thus another problem with the dimensions given
3
in the Ming shi is that such a ship is proportionally wide in
the beam, with a length to width ratio of 2.45, as opposed to
the Minnesota’s 5.79. Because it was made of steel, the
Minnesota would have been much stronger on the high seas
than a wooden sailing ship of that size, particularly before
diagonal braces were invented by Robert Seppings in the
4
early 19th century. However, the Ming shi is a highly
respected work of Chinese history, and it is difficult to ignore
the dimensions recorded in it entirely. Consequently, there is
a great deal of controversy over the entire matter among
historians. In my view, Zheng He’s ships could not have been
450ft long; their length was more likely to have been about
250ft. This chapter provides the essence of my argument,
5
which I have set out at greater length in another paper, and
ties it into the Ming context set out so exquisitely by the
British Museum exhibition Ming: 50 years that changed China.
6
Louise Levathes’ book When China Ruled the Seas includes
an illustration by Jan Atkins of a colossal Zheng He ship
dwarfing Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria by
comparison (Pl. 22.1). Although Zheng He’s ship seems
7
incredulously large in this illustration compared to the Santa

Plate 22.1 Christopher Columbus’s Santa Maria compared to
Zheng He’s ship (after Levathes 1994)

0 100 200 300 400 feet

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