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I didn’t like high-school, being pretty much of a non-conformist, so, when I was 15 1/2, I quit, and got a job as a crewman aboard the Te Vega, a 165-foot schooner sailing from Costa Mesa, California, to Tahiti. When we arrived in Hawaii, the owner fired all of the Americans aboard and hired native Tahitians. This was before Hawaii was a state, and in order to get a job, you had to have a “Z-ticket” and be over 18 years of age. Hard pressed, I managed to get a job as a bottom-scraper in a boatyard, scraping barnacles off the bottoms of rich guys yachts. You’d lie on your back under the boats on a really uncomfortable surface of rocks, sea-shells and barnacles, and scrape away, with the crap falling in your eyes. One day the owner of the boat I was working on, who happened to be an extremely corpulent dentist, showed up and shouted at me “Hurry up, you shit-bird, I want to use my boat!” After he left, I thought about the power that he had, with an extensive education, over the likes of me, who was a totally uneducated klutz, and vowed that I would go back to school and get an education that would enable me to deal more effectively with life. (I kind of overdid it, getting an MD and PhD.) The moral: no matter how useless one’s job might seem to be, it still might provide you with the motivation to do something better. Education is empowering: you learn how the system works and how to take better advantage of it.

Australia and Australians are far too laid-back to have any such draconian law. Any measure you do use in Australia that you want legally recognised does, however, need to be traceable to an underlying metric unit[1][1][1][1] giving rise to a traceability pyramid:Overall there is anything but a requirement for metric units in things like the size of TV screens (still essentially stuck with a diagonal measurement in inches) and there is mass confusion between States on the size of a glass of beer[2][2][2][2] and what you call it. Ordering a Schooner, Middy, Pot, or Handle may get you the glass of beer you want, a size you did not want, or a weird look (and not just because you are an American).Footnotes[1] How Australia's Measurement System Works[1] How Australia's Measurement System Works[1] How Australia's Measurement System Works[1] How Australia's Measurement System Works[2] Beer in Australia[2] Beer in Australia[2] Beer in Australia[2] Beer in Australia

Short AnswerIt is very unlikely that the size of ship (shown below in comparison with Columbus’ ship) was made as an ocean-going vessel.A vessel of this size would have a displacement of > 15000 tons.This compares with Nelson’s flagship, HMS Victory, built around 1770 at about 3500 tons, (go and see it in Portsmouth).HMS Warrior 1860 (see at same place) 9300 tons. This was designed by Isaac Watts who chose an iron hull because wood would not have been strong enough for a ship of this size.Western wooden ships as big as Zheng He’s could not be built in the 19th Century owing to structural limitations on design. It unclear why the same limitations would not apply to Ming shipbuilders.The archaeological and documentary evidence for 450 foot ships is poor.Long Answer with ReferencesPictures like the one above get bandied about on the Web. It is purported to show Zheng He’s treasure ship in comparison with Columbus’ Santa Maria in order to show the (literally!) enormous superiority of Ming nautical engineering over European vessels of he period.Pictures such as this are a popular in some circles for psycho-social reasons that readers can work out for themselves.However, we should consider the adage “extraordinary claims require support from extraordinary evidence”.Above is HMS Warrior 1860- the first iron hulled ironclad designed by Isaac Watts. At 420 feet she is smaller by some margin than the Treasure Ship above, yet, even using iron bracing was judged too big to be wooden -hulled, (albeit she is carrying a lot of weight in terms engines and armour).Suggesting the Ming shipwrights could build an oceangoing vessel of gargantuan proportions when Europeans could not do so in the nineteenth century using metal technology is surely an extraordinary claim.So:What is the evidence for these huge vessels?How reliable is it?Is it sufficient to sustain the extraordinary claim?Is there any counter evidence?Evidence for the shipsWe can consider two types of evidence:Documentary- accounts written about the shipArchaeological- bits of ship and shipbuilding material etcDocumentary EvidenceThe earliest documentary evidence for very large treasure ships dates from about 1620. So two hundred years after the Ming fleets sailed. Its not sounding great is it! This is the Ming Shilu 實錄 or “Veritable Records. Some scholars view these dimensions to have been obtained from a story book by by Luo Maodeng 羅懋登 published in about 1597. Some people say the ships are mentioned by Marco Polo, but this must have been in a séance as Marco Polo shuffled off this mortal coil in about 1324!Gavin Menzies[Ref 1] allegations regarding Nicolò di Conti (c. 1385–1469), the only figure in 1421 who links the Ming voyages with European events, are according to Ref 2 the stuff of historical fiction, the product of an obstinate misrepresentation of sources.Older works contain information that is simply all over the place: much is fragmentary and the units of measurement are unclear or else what is actually being measured ill defined. There is data for crew of one ship, beam of another, but no figures for, say, the displacement of Zheng He’s treasure ship are extant.Two inscriptions dating from the Zheng He era give some details of the treasure fleet. They are the Changle 長樂 inscription found at the port by that name on the coast of Fujian province, which was a regular stopping place for the outgoing voyages, and the Jinghai temple 靜海寺 inscription in Nanjing, where Zheng He supposedly went to pray for safe journeys. This states there were 100 ships but not their size [Ref 3]. Another gives displacement of 600–800 tons- a long way from a 15,000 ton Leviathan!Estimates of the size of Zheng’s ships based on documentation are given by as that some of Zheng He’s ships ranged in size from approximately 150 to 200 feet- so at most 1/8 the size of the ship illustrated above. Still big, but feasible. It may be noted that Grace Dieu, built for Henry V (he of Agincourt fame) in 1416 was over 200 feet long as can be seen from her wreck which can be seen at low tide on the river Hamble- as seen on Channel 4 TV series Time Team where she was examined in 2005 "Time Team" Grace Dieu, Hampshire (TV Episode 2005) - IMDbArchaeological EvidenceThere are many shipwrecks dated from Song, Yang and Ming periods. None is more than just over 100 feet long. Ref 4.Much is made of the discovery of evidence for a giant rudder in Nanking in 1957. A Chinese historian, Zhou Shide argues by various scaling approaches indicates it was for a ship 480 feet long. However, current scholarship has shown these calculations to be mistaken and based on faulty assumptions. A more likely size based on better calculations give a ship length of about 150 feet. See Ref 5.Arguments Against a 450 foot Treasure ShipIt took centuries for European countries to increase the size of their ocean-going ships from say 90 feet to 300 feet. If the Ming treasure ships were 450 feet long, the Ming made more progress than this in, at most a couple of decades.For example, in the century (approximately 1760–1860) between the line-of-battle ships HMS Victory and HMS Victoria, the British, despite the breakthroughs of the industrial revolution were only enable to increase the ship length from 186 feet to 260 feet- so a 450 foot treasure ship looks to a tall (long?) order. Ref 6.It should be recalled that the scientific approach to ship design was introduced in 1860–1880 in the UK. Prior to that, rules of thumb and educated guesswork was the order of the day. Subjects such as ship stability and ship strength were not well understood. Combined with the dire consequences of a design error, it unsurprising that designs tended to evolve gradually.In particular, long vessels can be subject to enormous strain as a result of wave motion leading to hogging and sagging when head on to waves. The general concept of this loading was understood by about 1750, and led to the introduction of diagonal framing in wooden vessels by Seppings [Ref 7 &8]. Hogging was more of a problem than sagging in wooden ships. The hogging could cause catastrophic failure, but even without this the straining of the wooded structure would cause water entry and rotting of the wood possibly leading to a short lifespan for the ship.These stresses can still be a problem today!A ship is also subject to torsion-waves can twist the ship about its long axis. Some models of Zheng He’s ships show them having very large beam (width) - this would exacerbate the torsion problemsSee above a model of torsion for a container ship from What Is The Purpose Of 'Torsion Box' In Ships?Many of my American readers will be familiar with the heavy frigates that won some well known duels with smaller British opponents in the War of 1812. These ships, designed by Humphreys were at 175 feet long, at the limit of what could be achieved for a single deck ship without Sepping’s support structure, even using sturdy construction and live oak- the strongest wood available.Of course, Ming shipwrights may have found and solved these structural problems by special insight and methods never thought of since- but this is sufficiently unlikely to require sound evidence to be credible.There are a number of other limits to building large wooden ships. One is simply the size of trees! Robert Albion [Ref 9], notes that despite the fierce competition among the various European powers to produce bigger, better, and more efficient ships, there was a surprisingly slow increase in size.Gould Ref 10 states the absence of “special construction techniques such as iron strapping for supporting the wooden hulls” of these ships, “there is something inherently improbable about the claims made for them in the Ming texts”.This view is not exclusively that of Western authors; see Ref 11.A vessel of the size could, of course, have been built as a floating palace to operate on rivers and, indeed Turnbull [Ref 12] discusses enormous river barge warships designed by Wang Chung in the 3rd century. Turnbull, however, describes Zheng He’s treasure ships on more modest terms [Ref 13].ConclusionsThere is no strong evidence for 450 foot long 15,000 ton ocean going treasure ships based on documentary or archaeological data.The principles of naval construction make the construction of such a large ship of wood based on 15th century knowledge unlikely.In the run up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Chinese were discussing building a life size reconstruction of a medium sized (not the giant ones) Zheng treasure ships. I had a bet with myself it would not be sailing up the Thames for the 2012 London Olympics. I won my bet!For a full discussion I recommend the work of Cambridge University's Sally Church Ref 14 and a summary at Ref 15. Other academic references are at 16–18.PostscriptThe Guinness Book of World Records has an entry for the largest wooden ship. It isn’t Zheng He’s. The largest known wooden ship listed was the American schooner Wyoming at 450 feet long. Wyoming (schooner) - Wikipedia built in 1909.She needed constant pumping owing to leaks at was eventually lost with all hands when she foundered.I rest my case!FootnotesMenzies G (2002) 1421 TheS Year that China Discovered the WorldHow Not to (Re)Write World History: Gavin Menzies and the Chinese Discovery of America | History CooperativeJ J Duyvendak (1939) The true dates of the Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century pp. 342-343 and 349-355.Xi Longfei and D.W. Chalmers (2004) The Rise and Decline of Chinese Shipbuilding in the Middle Ages, International Journal of Maritime Engineering Part A2.Sleeswyk A W (1996) The Liao and the Displacement of Ships in the Ming Navy. The Society for Nautical Research.Brown D K (1990) Before the Ironclad Seaforth p17.Seppings R (1817) On the great strength given to ships of war by the application of diagonal braces Phil Trans vol 154.1Brown D K (1990) Before the Ironclad Seaforth p19–22Albion R (1926) , Forests and Sea Power The Timber Problem of the Royal Navy 1652-1862 p 5Gould R A (2000),Archaeology and the Social History of Ships Cambridge p. 198.Xin Yuan’ou, “Guanyu Zheng He baochuan chidu de jishu fenxi,” pp. 5, 7-8, 13 sourced from Ref 7Turnbull S (2002) – Fighting Ships of the Far East (1): China and Southeast Asia, 202 BC-AD 1419. Oxford: Osprey Publishing p45Ibid p69Church S K (2005) Zheng He: An Investigation into the Plausibility of 450 ft Treasure Ships Monumenta Serica 53 1-43Zheng He's replica ship sailing into the future on wave of past gloryWake, Christopher (1997). The Great Ocean-going Ships of Southern China in the Age of Chinese Maritime Voyaging to India, Twelfth to Fifteenth Centuries. International Journal of Maritime History. 9 (2): 51–81, 62–63. This looks at difficulties in working out what units meant.Barker R (1989) The Size of the “Treasure Ships” and other Chinese vessels. Mariners Mirror 75 pp273–275Wegener Sleeswyk A.(1996) The liao and displacement of ships in the Ming Navy Mariner’s Mirror 82 pp 3–13