14 replies to this topic

[Publius]

Robert Temple in his book Genius of China asserts that “It could be probably be safely said that the Chinese were the greatest sailors in history” (186). This would surprise most people because their accomplishments are only transmitted through Zheng He’s Ming dynasty treasure fleets, and we all (Kenneth especially) know how sensationalized those accounts can be. Unfortunately, Menzies’ theory is such a far-fetched fairytale that it belittles China’s true naval merits. To combat the myth, I would like to catalog some of China’s true maritime achievements, including inventions, epic adventures, trade routes, famous sailors, patrons of the sea, etc…

I know very little about the subject, so any help would be appreciated by all.

I also found of a lot of good information on
CaoCao74's Chronology of Asian Maritime History.

Edited by Publius, 16 September 2006 - 05:50 PM.

[Publius]

Eric, Non-Han Nan Ban, has a nice thread that provides a nice synopsis of Chinese Maritime history with references.

An example:

“Tang dynasty [618-907 CE]: Arab merchant Shulama praised the seaworthiness of large Chinese-built ships, but noted that the draft was too deep to enter the Euphrates, necessitating small boats to land passengers and cargo. Ships crossing the Indian ocean were about 20 zhang long and could carry 6-700 passengers.
Liu Pean, 'Viewing Chinese ancient navigation and shipbuilding through Zheng He's ocean expeditions', p.178
Abbasid pottery imitations of Tang white ware, made in Mesopotamia, have been found at Mantai and Anuradhapura in Sri Lanka alongside the Chinese originals.
John Carswell, Blue & White, p.59.
Fustat (old Cairo) was a major destination for Chinese ceramic exports for 500 years, starting in the Tang dynasty.
John Carswell, Blue & White, p.65-67. citing Tsugio Mikami, 'China and Egypt: Fustat', Transactions of the Oriental Ceramic Society 1980-81, vol 45, London, 1982, p.67-89.”

China's Maritime History Until the Ming Period, Collaboration of assorted facts from many sources

[Non-Han Nan Ban]

Thanks for the publicity Publius! It's a great timeline.

Eric

[Publius]

Over the next few posts, I would like to share a few of the Chinese maritime inventions/innovations that I have read in Louise Levathes' "When China Ruled the Seas", Daniel J. Boorstin's "The Discoveres", and Robert Temple's "The Genius of China", which was based on Joseph Needham's studies. And as always, please feel free to correct any inaccuracies or to add any of your expertise.

Later on, I would also like to discuss:
the rudder
the compass
masts and sailing
watertight compartments in ships
astronomy and cartography
and possibly others if time alots

The Rudder

Without the rudder, a sailing vessel is severely limited in maneuverability. Western ships used steering ores and the Vikings invented a steerboard, which is a rudder on the right side quarter of their single beamed knorrs and gave birth to the term “starboard.” Temple asserts that “Europeans adopted the rudder from the Chinese ( . . . ) This meant that long voyages of discovery by Europeans were impossible. The famous voyages of Christopher Columbus, Vasco De Gama, and others of their time were only made possible by the adoption of Chinese nautical technology” (185).

An archeological find (I don’t know from where) of a 1st Century site yields the first evidence of a rudder. They found a pottery model of a Chinese ship with a slung axial rudder, which is a rudder that “can be raised and lowered by rope tackle or chains; when entering shallows, it is often desirable to pull the rudder up so that it will no be snapped off” (185).

Here is an image of the pottery model:


As time went on, the Chinese rudder also grew. During the Song Dynasty, Zhou Qufei in his Ling Wai Dai Da reported that “The ships which sail the southern sea and south of it are like houses. When their sails are spread they are like great clouds in the sky. Their rudders are several tens of feet long.” Even taking hyperbole into account, these rudder dimensions are impressive.

I also found some useful information on this site about Chinese junks

“Also, from sometime in the 13th-15th centuries many junks incorporated "fenestrated rudders" (rudder with holes in them), an innovation adopted in the West in 1901 to decrease the vulnerability of torpedo boats rudders when manoeuvering at high speed. [citation needed] Likewise the Chinese discovery was probably adopted to lessen the force needed to direct the steering of the rudder.
The rudder is reported to be the strongest part of the junk. In the Kung Khai Wu (Exploitation of the Works of Nature), Sung Ying-Hsing(1634)wrote "The rudder-post is made of elm, or else of lang-mu or of chu-mu". The Ming author also applauds the strength of the lang-mu wood as "if one could use a single silk thread to hoist a thousand chun or sustain the weight of a mountain landslide.”

Edited by Publius, 16 September 2006 - 05:41 PM.

[Mei Houwang]

“Also, from sometime in the 13th-15th centuries many junks incorporated "fenestrated rudders" (rudder with holes in them), an innovation adopted in the West in 1901 to decrease the vulnerability of torpedo boats rudders when manoeuvering at high speed. [citation needed]Likewise the Chinese discovery was probably adopted to lessen the force needed to direct the steering of the rudder.
The rudder is reported to be the strongest part of the junk. In the Kung Khai Wu (Exploitation of the Works of Nature), Sung Ying-Hsing(1634)wrote "The rudder-post is made of elm, or else of lang-mu or of chu-mu". The Ming author also applauds the strength of the lang-mu wood as "if one could use a single silk thread to hoist a thousand chun or sustain the weight of a mountain landslide.”

That's directly copied from one of Needleham's books.

[Publius]

That's directly copied from one of Needleham's books.

Alot of the information I found on the internet was directly copied from Needham (at least I quoted the website). Makes me wonder if there are any Chinese innovation historians out there

Does anyone else have any OTHER suggestions, besides Needham, for good Chinese navigational/maritime history reading?

[Publius]

The Compass

The earliest form of the Chinese compass was not used for navigation at sea and didn’t have a needle, but it was rather a magnetic piece of lodestone for land navigation. The text “The Devil Valley Master” mentions a compass in the 4th Century BC. It said, “When the people of Cheng go out to collect jade, they carry a south-pointer with them so as not to lose their way.” It is worth noting that it is a “south-pointer,” which would explain why the Chinese drew the south at the top of their maps.



Also, the compass is mentioned in the “Book of Master Han Fei” from the 3rd Century BC. It said:

“Subjects encroach upon the ruler and infringe his prerogatives like creeping dunes and piled-up shores. This makes the prince forget his position and confuse west and east until he really does not know where he stands. So the ancient kings set up a south-pointer, in order to distinguish between the directions of dawn and sunset.”

Robert Temple then has evidences of the compass on a 2nd, Century Han Dynasty stone relief. Magnetized needles were first used as a pointer on a dial for geomantic purposes According to C.A.S. Williams in his “Outlines of Chinese Symbolism & Art Motives, “This compass is also called the reticulated plate and consists of a baked clay disk, six or more inches in diameter, with a magnetic compass about one inch in the centre. The disk is covered in yellow lacquer and is inscribed with sixteen or more concentric circles, subdivided by radial divisions, with appropriate lettering. It synthesizes all the accepted Chinese theories as to the cosmic harmonies between the quasi-living energies of nature (see Yin and Yang and Five Elements), time-relation as indicated by the sun and moon and the directions in space from any point on the earth” (82). By using the astrological compass, Feng Shui masters could decide how to arrange buildings, roads, and even cities. This method is still followed when building sky-scrapers in cities like Hong Kong (though there was some commotion over a building that didn’t employ Feng Shui principles). Chao Ta may have been the first to use the astrological compass during the Three Kingdoms Period.



The compass was finally associated with maritime navigation at around 1086, though Daniel Boorstin claims that it occurred in China during the 10th Century (220). In his 1086 book Dream Pool Essays, the medieval Chinese scientist Shen Kua wrote:

“Magicians rub the point of a needle with the lodestone; then it is able to point to the south . . . . It may be balanced on the fingernail, or on the rim of a cup, where it can be made to turn more easily, but these supports being hard and smooth, it is liable to fall off. It is best to suspend it by a single cocoon fibre of new silk attached to the centre of the needle by a piece of was the size of a mustard-seed—then, hanging in a windless place, it will always point to the south. Among such needles there are some which, after being rubbed, point to the north. I have needles of both kinds by me.”

It’s interesting that “Magicians” are the ones who magnetize the needle.

One of the best descriptions details not only the compass but shipping regulations in general. It is from Canton in Chu Yu’s “P’ingchow Table Talk and dates from 1117: He wrote:

“According to the government regulations concerning sea-going ships, the larger ones can carry several hundred men, and the smaller ones may have more than a hundred on board. . . . The ship’s pilots are acquainted with the configurations of the coasts; at night they steer by the stars, and in the day-time by the sun. In dark weather they look at the south-pointing needle. They also use a line a hundred feet long with a hook on the end, which they let down to take samples of mud from the sea-bottom; by its appearance and smell they can determine their whereabouts.”

It’s significant that they used the compass, but it seems that they used it as a last resort, preferring visual methods instead. They probably viewed the “magic” of the needles suspiciously, especially if a “Magician” had to magnetize it first.

Later, this mariner’s compass became a water compass and seems to be the primary method of navigation, which was a small stone bowl filled with water. The needle was attached to a piece of straw or cork and floated in the water and was unaffected (relatively…) by the listing ship. During the infamous Zheng He expedition, they used the water compass and measured time by burning graded incense sticks to navigate (Levathes 93).

Now, the unknown didn’t hinder exploration. Mariners now knew where they were going without recognizing familiar coasts, sea floors, or even smells. Because explorers utilized this invention, I, or European descent, can write to you from the Americas. Thanks Chris for bumping into my continent, and to everybody else who knew what he did

Edited by Publius, 06 November 2006 - 03:57 PM.

[Publius]

Watertight Compartments

Watertight compartments are creating by dividing a ship’s cargo hold by bulkheads, which are essentially partitions. By separating the cargo hold into compartments, one of them could flood without flooding the others, thereby keeping the ship afloat. To us, this seems incredibly sensible, but even Benjamin Franklin thought this was a novel idea.

Watertight hulls encompass these watertight compartments. Early thirteenth century ocean going ships were made of “Pine from Fujian and Zhejiang provinces in southern China [ . . .] except in the rudder, which was made from a particularly hard wood from Guandong called wulan [teak wood, I think]. The ship was caulked with silk rags dipped in a mixture of tung oil and lime, and the sails were made of fine bamboo matting” (Levanthes 44).


This Song Dynasty shipwreck pic is from the Watery Kingdom Website, which explores China's mariners from antiquity to the Ming Dynasty. Nova has more information on the Quanzhou shipwreck excavated in 1973.

Robert Temple notes that the Chinese have been employing watertight compartments in ships by at least the 2nd Century AD.

Eleven centuries later, Marco Polo was amazed at the Chinese sensibility for using watertight compartments. Levanthes writes that Polo saw “four-masted ocean-going junks with no fewer than sixty individual cabins for merchants. Depending on their size, the ships carried 150 to 300 crewmen, and they had watertight bulkhead compartments” (49).

Daniel Boorstin wrote a nice paragraph about the watertight compartments in 15th Century Chinese ships.

“Westerners [Nicolo de’Conti] noted the remarkable construction that prevented water in one part of the hull from flooding the whole ship. Bulkheads, a series of upright partitions dividing the ship’s hold into compartments to prevent spread of leakage or fire, though then novel to Europe were an old story to China. They were probably suggested by the septa, the transverse membranes of the bamboo. Already in ancient pre-Han China, this design gave the strength and resiliency that made possible the multistoried ships which dazzled visitors from abroad with their high overhanging stern gallery, from which was suspended a gargantuan rudder with a blade of 450 square feet.” (190)

Though CCTV had an article that said the beams of a canoe inspired watertight compartments.

Edited by Publius, 17 September 2006 - 04:20 PM.

[Publius]

Masts and Sailing

The use of bamboo also allowed the Chinese to built battens, from which bamboo fiber matting stretched between them. These bamboo battens are rigid, durable, and, most importantly, they have an adjustable surface area to maximize variable wind conditions. The bamboo battens keep the sails taut, and when the winds changed, sailors could haul the folding battens up or down with deck windlasses and halyards. Also, ships could maximize light winds by exposing all or most of their sails, and they could use less sails to harness stronger winds. Similarly to the watertight compartments, these batten sails also allow for some structural flaws. When one or some (up to 50% according to Temple) of the matting has holes, the other sails remain functional. Also because of watertight compartments, Chinese ships were capable of holding larger masts and converting more wind into propulsion without snapping the mast. Levathes describes some early 13th Century, ocean going junks as having a “stern-post rudder, a hundred-foot mainmast, and an eighty-foot foremast” (44).


Picture of Song junk from 13th Century painting on Wiki. http://en.wikipedia....ki/Chinese_junk


Square rig junk

In the 2nd Century AD, the Chinese adopted the fore-and-aft rig instead of the traditional square rig. Because of this innovation, the mast is no longer fixed to the deck but pivots, which allows for tacking and tacking allowed a ship to sail INTO the wind and breaks the reliance on prevailing winds. When these horizontal battens are fastened to a vertical mast, the matting resembles a frog’s webbed feet or a bat’s wing. Europeans were restricted to sailing with prevailing winds because their fixed, centered, square masts were unable to sail against the wind. In his book “Strange Things of the South,” Wan Chen describes large ships reputedly capable of holding 700 people and 260 tons of cargo:

“The four sails do not face directly forwards, but are set obliquely, and so arranged they can all be fixed in the same direction (parallel to each other), to receive the wind and to spill it. Those sails which are behind the most windward one receiving the pressure of the wind, throw it from one to the other, so that they all profit from its force. If it is violent, [the sailors] diminish or augment the surface of the sails according to the conditions. This oblique rig, which permits the sails to receive from one another the breath of the wind, obviates the anxiety attendant upon having high masts. Thus these ships sail without avoiding strong winds and dashing waves, by the aid of which they can make great speed.” (Temple 187 – 188)



Chinese junk in Hong Kong

As hinted above by Wan Chen, the Chinese further maximized the wind’s power by staggering their pivoting masts. Instead of having all of their mast centered in a row along the longitudinal axis, which caused the rear sails to catch most of the wind and consequently calming the front sails, they alternated their masts along the center, right side, and left side. This caused the wind to be distributed among all of the sails.

Such wind power caused a ship to drift diagonally away from the ships longitudinal axis, but the Chinese corrected this problem by implementing the leeboard, which was a board lowered into the water opposite of the wind. Wiki mentions that a boat utilizing a leeboard either needs to have two retractable leeboards, one on each side, or a method of removing the leeboard and attaching it to both sides while under way. This adjustability allowed the ship to sail straight. Li Ch’uan mentioned the leeboard in 759 AD in his “Manual of the White and Gloomy Planed,” where he said, leeboards “held the ships, so that even when wind and wave arise in fury, they are neither driven sideways, nor overturn” (Temple 189).


This site by Brian Platt describes the construction, implementation, and maintenance of the batten sails.

[Publius]

I was going to have a section about Chinese cartography, but I don't think that the Chinese used maps enough for maritime navigational purposes to include it here. So I made a separate thread if yor're still interested.

Does anyone else know if and to what extent the Chinese used maps for maritime navigation?

if so, do you have images of these maps?

Thanks much

also, here are the sources for the above (I'll post the links when I have more time):

References:

Boorstin, Daniel J. “The Discoverers: A History Of Man’s Search To Know His World And Himself.” Vintage Books, New York. 1983.

Hebert, John. “Depicting China: 800 Years of Early Chinese Maps.” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 62 no12 312-14 D 2003.

Levanthes, Louise. “When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405 – 1433.” Oxford University Press, New York. 1994.

Temple, Robert. “The Genius of China: 3000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention.” Prion, Singapore. 1998.

Williams, C.A.S. “Outlines of Chinese Symbolism & Art Motives.” Dover Publications, New York. 1976.

[funnyjokar1]

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Edited by funnyjokar1, 15 January 2007 - 12:02 AM.

[Tibet Libre]

Robert Temple in his book Genius of China asserts that “It could be probably be safely said that the Chinese were the greatest sailors in history” (186).

Mr. Temple has a chip on his shoulder so huge that it makes a barn door look like a stamp. How he came to that absurd statement is completely beyond me. Not that the Chinese maritime achievements were at times impressive, but they were few and far between. I can think off the top of my head of a dozen other people, real sea-faring peoples, with much greater accolades on the seas of our planets. But then again it is Temple and I should not bother with this propagandist.

[Tibet Libre]

PS: Good quality thread, Publius. I will come back and put a lot of dents into Temple's little chauvi account.

PPS: Better still. Drop me your email adress. I am going to relate to you authors who already did.

Edited by Tibet Libre, 26 October 2006 - 10:59 AM.

[Publius]

Tibet Libre brought up a good point. Most of the sources I’ve been using were Sinocentric and were written by Sinophiles, except with Daniel Boorstin. Besides that, the Chinese may not be the best seafarers, in fact, most of their ships were used on China’s great rivers, but the Chinese did invent many tools that made navigation easier. To bring a less biased view into the discussion, Tibet Libre sent me several articles:

Kreutz, Barbara M.. “Mediterranean Contributions to the Medieval Mariner’s Compass.”
From Technology and Culture, Vol. 14, No.3 (July, 1973) p. 367-383

Lane, Frederic, C. “The Economic Meaning of the Invention of the Compass.” The American Historical Review. Vol. LXVIII, No. 3 (April, 1963) p. 605-617

Mott, Lawrence. “The Development of the Rudder, 100-1600 A.D.: A Technological Tale.” From http://nautarch.tamu...racts/mott.html

Shu-hua, Li. “Origine de la Boussole II. Aimant et Boussole.” Isis, Vol. 45, No. 2. (July, 1954) p. 175-196.

[Publius]

The Compass Continued:

Frederick Lane writes that the compass altered European shipping trends and services between 1270 and 1300. The compass allowed merchant vessels to sail in the Mediterranean during the winter months, thus making it possible to have two trading voyages per ship a year. (614)

Frederic Lane attributes the invention of the compass to this period on the premise that “it is useful to distinguish four stages in invention: the posing of the problem; the assemblage of the elements of a solution; the union of these elements in a new way by an act of insight which constitutes the essential ‘break-through’; and the critical revision and perfection of the solution” (614). The necessary components in defining an invention may be different between historians, making it difficult for a common consensus to be reached. In this case, pinpointing where the compass came from and deciding who invented it depends upon the definition of “invention.”

The Chinese invented a compass that was nothing more than a magnetized needle attached to a chip floating in a bowl of water. Barbara Kreutz writes that “all the early references are to a sort of early ur-compass, a magnetized pointer in a bowl of water. In the very first such Chinese example (ca. 1040), the pointer is a fish with iron scales, but all subsequent early Chinese references are to ‘needles’ of iron” (368). Lane notes that this use of the compass represents only the first stage, that is posing the problem, but it was unsatisfactory for maritime use. The Chinese compass lacked certain functional elements: “the division of the horizon into thirty-two or more points and various ways of mounting the needle so that it could swing freely and yet come to rest, even on the deck of a ship at sea” (Lane 615).

Lane admits that references to a compass that points north or south, and that a compass with twenty-four points was used in crossing the South China Sea. But he hints that in China and in India there was no need fine-tune compass navigation because of the prominence of celestial navigation and with the convenient Monsoon winds (615).

To open up year-round navigation in the Mediterranean, the need for a compass that was ship compatible was essential. Kreutz writes that the first written account of a compass that made it possible to take the azimuth and establish accurate direction was written by Peter Peregrinus in 1269. Peregrinus wrote that the Duke of Anjou’s army employed a “dry pointer” on a device in which “you will be able to direct your steps to cities and islands and to any place whatever in the world” (371). An appended sketch “showed the round face of the instrument marked off into 360 degrees, and, sketched across its face, both a pivoted transparent rule with upright spikes at either end and a magnetized, traverse neele-like wire” (371). This compass is vastly different from Chinese compasses.

There is one Chinese reference to a dry-mounted needle built into a pivoted wooden tortoise dating between 1150 and 1250, but there is no indication that mariners used a pivoting needle compass until the 16th century (Kreutz 373).

Kreutz further describes the evolution of the compass’ convenience by describing a handheld compass built into a pyx box, ca. 1315 (374).

Can anyone prove that the Chinese compass was the precursor to the European compass? Can we prove that the Chinese invented the navigational compass, or deny that they didn’t? Probably no, but this is what history is about, sifting through probabilities in search of truth.