Age of Sail relocated here.
The whole without nails construction concept is fascinating. There are these monasteries in HK (The Chi Lin monastery) that uses the same no nails construction, and they are gorgeous. And a ship/boat that uses no nails (and doesn’t sink!) might be even more impressive.
Ah hah! I guess the shape of a ship would add to the whole idea of womb and womanhood too - compared to a rocket, which is also a container, but generally have more male/unisex names because they’re phallic in shape, maybe? (Hm, actually I have no idea. Must look up rocket names now.)
The whole Han Chinese ship building tech is derived from architecture. Han Chinese houses and towers were mostly made of wood without nails. Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese adopted this technique and most of their traditional buildings were also built without nails.
So was this dovetail joints, or what?
I know! Good thing they had those computer control radar sensors in the crows nests. That helped the sailors guild the fighter jets in during a night landing.
Then they’d have to rouse both the starboard and leeward watches so they’d have enough sailors to hoist the aircraft below by block and tackle.
Ah, 18th century American ingenuity. 
yes, mostly dovetail joints and load sharing.
load sharing for going up or taking weight
for beams
joints or horizontal boards.
famous Moroccan traveler ibn Battuta went to China in 1336, and he recorded large ships with 12 sails.
I was mistaken, Princess Taiping was a replica of Koxinga’s warships. It is the kind of warship Koxinga’s father, translator turned pirate turned naval officer, Nicholas Iquan Gaspard (Chinese name Zheng Zhi-lung, nicknamed Yi-quan) used to defeat the Dutch in Kimmen in 1633, and several times after.
His son, the more famous Koxinga (Chinese name Zheng Cheng-gong, Japanese name Fukumatsu, his mother was Japanese, called Koxinga because he was allowed to bear the emperor’s last name), drove out the Dutch from Formosa (Taiwan) in 1662 with the same type of warship.
Though the Dutch returned to Keelong (northern Taiwan) 2 years later, and this time left on their own accord, mainly because Manchu’s China and Japan stopped foreign trade.
Both Iquan and Koxinga equiped their ships with canons purchased from the English. The English had a vested interest to disrupt Spanish and Dutch control over east Asia.
i wanted to post pictures of Austronesian sail boats, but I thought I share stories of these real life age of sails Asian pirates first. It’s long and probably boring to most. But I always felt Asian Pirates during the age of sail were forgotten, when they were really the more powerful pirates.
Iquan was very international… The Fujian born Iquan was kicked out of his house for disgracing his family at a young age. He went to Macau and lived under his uncle. There he learned to speak Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch and became a translator and baptized as a Catholic. He then started working for Li Dan, aka Andrea Dittis, the biggest merchant/pirate in Asia of the time, and moved to Manila because Li Dan had his head quarter set in Manila.
In 1622 Dutch took over Pescadores after failing to take Macau with their English Allies. Ming government tried to drive them out, after a whole year of fighting, Ming enlisted the help from the pirates, and Li Dan sent Iquan as an translator. Iquan helped Ming China to ask the Dutch nicely to get out of Pescadores, and move to Taiwan where it is not a Chinese territory.
After that Li Dan’s forces were kicked out of the Philippines by the Spanish. And relocated his base to Hirado, in Nagasaki Japan. Iquan met his wife Matsu Tagawa there. When Li Dan passed away, Iquan gradually took over all Li Dan’s forces and becme a Chinese leader in Nagasaki. At which point he cooperated with the Dutch and engaged in piracy to disrupt trade between Ming and Spain.
Ming government was furious, and ordered the entire Southern Fleet to crack down on Iquan. Instead the entire Southern Fleet ended up surrendering to Iquan, at which point the Ming government decided to just appoint Iquan to be the head of the Southern Fleet.
Iquan then moved back to China, and began putting an end to Dutch piracy against Ming and Spain. Defeated the Dutch in 1633. He commanded an navy over 200,000 men and 3,000 ships when Ming China collapsed under the Manchu invasion.
When the Manchus sacked Nanjing, Iquan knows a winner when he sees one, and decided to surrender to Qing to keep his fortunes in China. His half Japanese son, Koxinga by this time was 22, argued that their family can survive on the sea, they do not need to surrender to the barbarians and should maintain their loyalty to the Ming government.
Iquan went ahead with the surrender in 1645. But instead of appointing him to the governor of Guangzhou like promised, Qing government placed him under house arrest in Beijing.
A years later, when Qing found out Koxinga retook several coastal cities for Ming, realizing they can not defeat Koxinga’s navy, the Manchus cavalry stormed over land and sacked Iquan’s ancestral hometown Anping and raped Koxinga’s Japanese mother. Koxinga rushed his army to retake his hometown only to find his Japanese mother’s body. Tagawa committed suicide Japanese style. From that point on, there was no possibility of surrender for Koxinga.
Koxinga was defeated at Nanjing by Qing. Realizing he needed another base of operation, his fleet left for Taiwan in 1661 and defeated the Dutch over sea and land. Upon hearing this news, Qing government beheaded Iquan and the entire family in Beijing, ending the life of the most successful Asian Pirate. He never became the governor of Guangzhou.
The Manchu government wasn’t done yet. After executing Iquan, Qing government ordered Zheng family’s ancestral tombs dug up, sawed each body in half, chained the bodies and put in to jail cells to be treated as criminals.
Dutch illustration of Koxinga’s landing.
The Dutch governor Frederick Coyett held on to Fort Zeelandia for a year, until February of 1662 when it was clear Bactavia has forsaken him and surrendered. A month after taking over Taiwan, news of his father’s death reached Koxinga. At first he cursed the messenger for spreading rumors, but by night he break down and wept and swore revenge. Koxinga dead just 4 months after that tho. The death of his family and horrible health conditions in Taiwan took his life. He was only 36.
Wow. Hell of a history lesson there, Hansioux.
the whole Spanish, Dutch, English, Portuguese power struggle in the far east from 16th to 17th century was very interesting. Europeans brought their troubles in Europe to Asia. So combine what’s going on in Asia with what was going on in Europe, like the Dutch independence from Spain, the Anglo-Spanish Wars, the Anglo-Dutch Wars, the Catholic/Protestants 30 years war, the Portuguese Restoration War, and gives a clearer picture of why things happened a certain way.
Second Anglo-Dutch war (1666) resulted English taking over New Netherland (New York), but ended in significant Dutch naval victory.
The Chinese, Japanese and Austronesians, oblivious of what’s going on in Europe, were caught in the middle. It was filled with spies, betrayals, international espionage, fast shifting alliance, great wealth and spectacular failures.
It’s unfortunate that it is not well known, because the stories are spread among so many nations today. it was epic almost on the world war level .
It’s a shame, because it is fascinating stuff but it’s only dealt with in passing in western classrooms (or was a few decades ago, I’m not really up to speed with current curriculums.)
I’ve been to the Boston area quite a few times, my company has an office there and I usually fly over two or three times a year. But so far I’ve never managed to get down to see Constitution. I really need to fix that!
Re ships being female, it’s not universal. Russian ships are traditionally male.
Sadly it is starting to die out. From 2002 Lloyds of London began referring to ships as ‘it’ rather than she. In these modern equal times I suppose this makes some sense, but I find it sad.
On a bit of a tangent, I’ve just come back from three days on the cruise ship MV Arcadia. Those things are just amazing, it’s litterally a hotel, mall and entertainment complex the size of an office block and it moves around the world. This was my third time on one (it’s a regular industry conference I go to) and I’m still amazed every time I see them.
Well I went to the Riverfront to see the ships Nina and Pinta at 10:00 a.m. this morning and unfortunately they were gone. The local birdcage liner had the dates wrong in their article. 
:mad:
They do have a gallery however: http://www.pjstar.com/photos/x41626485/Nina-and-Pinta-come-to-Peoria
I remember hearing PO interviewed on Talk of the Nation back in 1995, I think. While he admitted to not keeping up with much things Hollywood, he thought that Charleston Heston would make a good Capt Jack…
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galeón_Andalucía
Galeon Andalicia has sailed into the port of Keelong for safe haven from the recent Typhoon. It is a replica of 17th century Spanish galeon.
It was invited by Yilan county to visit the port of Yilan in Taiwan, because during the Spanish occupation back in 16th century, Yilan was named Santa Catalina by the Spansih. But the typhoon forced the Galleon into Keelong, which was the center of Spanish rule in Taiwan, named Santisma Trinidad.
Oh, and a nice one too. It looks like it has most of the period rigging.
this ship only has 12 cannons, i wonder what a 140 cannon friggate looks like…
my complaint about this ship is that it sailed around Africa to get to Asia. During the period, spanish ships has no right to sail that way due to the Treaty of Tordesillas. They had to sail to Asian from the Americas using the Manila Acapulco route.
140 cannons??!! That’s a double-plus first rate. NOT a frigate, which was more along the lines of 30 cannons.
The rating systems varied, and drastically overemphasized cannons, but see here for the British system. Note, e.g., that the American frigates (due to the construction advantages from the old-growth forests they had available) were ordered not to be engaged by the British Admiralty unless there was a three-to-one advantage. That in spite of the fact that they usually had fewer guns than British frigates. (There were other design advantages.)
A galleon of that size (and remember, cannons aren’t the only weapons she had) would have been a pretty formidable opponent at that time.
Glad to see this thread bumped. I recently rewatched Master and Commander. And frakked the Gregory Peck “Captain Horatio Hornblower” too.
Both such great movies!!!
Galleon Andalucia passing through the Suez.
spotted in the Suez canal
the replica was made for the Shanghai world expo or something, it will be in Taiwan then sail to the Philippines in October.
On its way through the Indian ocean it has passed through Singapore. though i wonder besides Magellan if any ship of the period traveled through the indian ocean that way. It would be awesome if after Taiwan and Manila it would sail to Acapulco, completing a journey such ship would have made back in the day.
Does it have have an engine as well?
ETA: Crap, grabbed wrong image. This is the one that made me wonder: