China
Admiral Liu Huaqing and the Modern Chinese Navy
Admiral Liu Huaqing is the principal architect of the rapid expansion of the Chinese navy’s presence in the western Pacific. He believed that by 2040 the nation should have an active blue-water force in the region, with several aircraft carriers at its disposal. Liu Huaqing’s view of his navy’s future role came about in the early 1980s, after the sudden…
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The Chinese sampan
Ming soldiers use a sampan to repel Japanese wako (pirates). The wako were the curse of the Far East for much of the 14th and 15th centuries, raiding Korea and China. When we turn to the first all-wooden boats in China we encounter a word that was to become very…
Zheng He
According to ancient Chinese sources, Zheng He commanded seven expeditions. The 1405 expedition consisted of 27,800 men and a fleet of 62 treasure ships supported by approximately 190 smaller ships. The fleet included:·                    Treasure ships, used by the commander of the fleet and his deputies (nine-masted, about 126.73 metres (416…
Chinese Invention – Ship’s Rudder
Han Dynasty: circa 202 BC – 220 AD Chinese naval developments occurred far earlier than similar western technology. The first recorded use of rudder technology in the West was in 1180. Chinese pottery models of sophisticated slung axial rudders (enabling the rudder to be lifted in shallow waters) dating from…
Mongol Fleets in Southern China
China’s enemies also came overland during this period. However, as the Mongols pressed southward across the Yangzi (Yangtze) River and encountered Chinese resistance along the coastal waterways, they, too, ordered their Chinese prisoners to construct a fleet. The last Song (Sung) emperor drowned at sea after suffering final defeat at…
WARFARE AT SEA – CHINA
SOUTH-EAST ASIAN EXPLORATION Ming Chinas brief flirtation with overseas expansion provides unequivocal evidence of the remarkable competence of Chinese shipwrights, navigators and sailors. Chinese mariners had long traded in the same waters without official sanction, but seafarers ranked low in the Confucian social hierarchy and received little attention from court…