Social Studies: Treasure Ship

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Model of a Treasure Ship compare with the Santa Maria used by Christopher Columbus.

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The Treasure ships were a fleet of wooden wind powered ship. They were under the control of Chinese Admiral Zheng He. With the ships he made seven voyages some as far a the southen tip of Africa.

Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta both described multi-masted ships carrying 500 to 1000 passengers in their translated accounts. Niccolò Da Conti, a contemporary of Zheng He, was also an eyewitness of ships in Southeast Asia, claiming to have seen 5 masted junks weighing about 2000 tons Zheng He's fleet included 300 ships, including 62 treasure ships, with some which were said to have been 137 m (450 ft) long and 55 m (180 ft) wide.

One of the few other references to Zheng He's fleet, besides written sources, was an actual rudder post found at the site of a Ming shipyard near Nanking during 1962. It was 36.2 feet (11.0 m) long and 1.25 feet (0.38 m) in diameter, and a rudder attachment length of 19.7 feet (6.0 m)

Some scholars argue that it is highly unlikely that Zheng He's ship was 450 feet (140 m) in length, some estimating that it was 390-408 feet long and 160-166 feet wide instead while others put them as 200-250 feet in length.

If the the measurement of 400 ft is correct then the ship would be 100 feet longer than a football field.

Sources:
Wikipedia
The Greatest Stories Never Told by Rick Beyer

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17th century Chinese woodblock print

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