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The China Ship
- nerdponx 8y agoCool article. This was one time when I actually wish the article was slightly longer. I came away with only the vaguest sense of what made the return trip more difficult. Who were the "enemies" in question?
- ihsw2 8y agoYour wish is granted! There are four chapters. https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish-galleon/chapter_02.html https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish-galleon/... https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish-galleon/chapter_03.html https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish-galleon/... https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish-galleon/chapter_04.html https://multimedia.scmp.com/culture/article/spanish-galleon/... As for the "enemies," they were little more than pirates, brigands, and otherwise despondent vagrants looking for a bit of self-help justice (helping themselves to the spoils of thievery and robbery.)
- allannienhuis 8y agoya, the navigation on the static footer of the page is really ineffective, as it difficult to see in an desktop browser. It should have been part of the page content or styled with much more contrast or something to make it more obvious.
- miluge 8y agoThanks a lot for the links! I was looking for them last time but never found it :(
- jackfoxy 8y agoHere some narrative on a privateer prowling the California coast at end of the China trade route period. http://factcards.califa.org/ran/elrefugio.html http://factcards.califa.org/ran/elrefugio.html
- Tuna-Fish 8y agoA notable known one is Sir Francis Drake. He crossed into the pacific in 1578, took two treasure ships (among other, less important vessels carrying more mundane cargo), and returned in 1580. As a privateer, he surrendered half of his proceeds to the Queen. This half was worth more than all the other revenues of the Crown of England for that year. England and Spain were not officially at war at the time.
- Ftuuky 8y agoThose articles are so cool, loved reading them. It reminds me of the long explanations in the book Cryptonomicon about Intramuros/Manilla and how the bigger ballast stones that came from Europe ended as huge stair steps.
- Gravityloss 8y agoWhen humans start journeying outside low earth orbit again, it can be like this. Long and dangerous trips.
- mistermann 8y agoIs there much out there to find, that requires physical human presence?
- bitanarch 8y agoNo. In theory you can mine everything with robots. However, every year you stay on Earth, you're kinda like throwing a 1d100 whether you get a WWIII and it turns into a nuclear wasteland or not. You can keep throwing it and hope it doesn't happen in your generation, or, you can get out of it and have a backup plan.
- CamTin 8y agoThis is an interesting framing, because presumably the first space-living people will actually have a much greater than a 1d100 chance of dying in some horrible space-related way. We then basically have a collective action problem: in order for the species to have a better chance of survival, individuals have to do things that actually lower their chances of survival. I think the first first experiments won't have any problem finding volunteers because we've been so acculturated to think of space travel as being "cool," but presumably after the first few extraterrestrial colonies dramatically cease to exist after explosive decompression accidents or are simultaneously poisoned by bizarrely-mutated e.coli variants in their water supplies, people will be much less eager to move off the nice, familiar, safe-seeming Earth.
- Ftuuky 8y agoHopefully with less scurvy and pirates.
- CapitalistCartr 8y ago
- hevi_jos 8y agoReading about this always makes me remember how much we stand at the shoulders of giants. Thinking about things like on each of those voyages half the crew will die of Scurvy and other illnesses, for hundreds of years. Now it is going to the moon or Venus, or Mars what requires a significant risk to do, because of danger like radiation or absence of civilization out there. Some day in the future, traveling to Mars will be routine and people would barely think on those that made it possible. How much people think about the incredible thing it is we could travel to the other side of the planet on a single day?
- baxtr 8y agoSouth China Morning Post is a great source for information about East Asia. I recommend their daily newsletter to anyone interested.
- alextheparrot 8y agoCould you give more context about their biases? I’m not familiar with the news source, but would like to be informed about that area of the world (While not just reading heavily one-sided articles).
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI feel they are biased in China's favor but not so much so as to make the information unreliable. If you understand that many of the articles are written from the Chinese perspective, then you should be able to filter out the mild propaganda. It seems there are a number of international writers, as well.
- pishpash 8y agoI don't find them biased in China's favor, but you are right that they write from a mostly dispassionate and -- as Hong Kong is inextricably tied to China -- cautiously realistic perspective about China. It tends not to have the shallow caricatures, shrill alarmism, and conspiratorial/racist undertones of the American yellow press.
- joejerryronnie 8y agoI would say "optimistic" not necessarily "realistic" perspective. Although some American journalism may show alarmism when discussing China, they are not completely wrong here. The Chinese government is very aggressive when trying to establish an economic hegemony over a certain industry or geographic region. Their ability to formulate and execute broad agendas across government and industry (e.g. China 2050, Belt & Road, etc) is quite impressive but everyone knows China is not really playing fair (e.g. government subsidized "private" companies, questionable business ethics, obfuscation of company data, theft of trade secrets, currency manipulation, different sets of rules for non-Chinese companies/investors, etc.) It's a bit like gambling in Vegas. You may not know the exact methods, but you know the system is setup so that the house always has better odds than you. As Xi continues to lock down China and exert more and more control, it will be interesting to see if China's central economic strategies and dynamic startup industry will continue to flourish or if they will be crushed under the weight of totalitarianism.
- 21 8y agoThe book Sapiens states that in the 1500s the Chinese had a 15 thousands ocean ready ship fleet, but for various reasons there were not really into exploring. Is that really true? 15k ships sounds absurdly high for that era.
- sndean 8y agoI've seen some similar numbers; in the thousands at least. After seeing some believed numbers for single battles involving ~500 Roman ships in ~260-0 BC [0], thousands for the entire Chinese fleet centuries later doesn't seem too surprising. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Actium#Order_of_battle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Actium#Order_of_batt...
- alextheparrot 8y agoThe 15,000 number seemed quite high based on my understanding of China’s complete lack of capability in maritime warfare from about 1700s onward. Apparently, though, during the Míng dynasty China had a large fleet, which had a reported size of 3500 [0, unacademic] or 2700 and 3000 ships [1, academic]. They were exploring the Asian sub-continent in the so-called “Treasure fleets” [2], but those fleets did not go nearly as far as the European traders who would arrive in Canton and Macau from mainland Europe in the 1500s. [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/500-years-ago-china-destroyed-its-world-dominating-navy-because-its-political-elite-was-afraid-of-a7612276.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/500-years-... [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/43383349 https://www.jstor.org/stable/43383349 [2] https://www.thoughtco.com/why-did-the-treasure-fleet-stop-195223 https://www.thoughtco.com/why-did-the-treasure-fleet-stop-19...
- forkLding 8y agoChinese person here, I don't think those numbers are that accurate or those ships were being maintained or seaworthy. That period was chaotic on the seas and piracy was rampant with frequent attacks in-land, as well during that period the Chinese Haijin was in force, which means no private seafaring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haijin). If they had that many ships, it was likely inherited off Zheng He's expeditions and the 1400s Chinese period's brief uprise in naval interest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He#Expeditions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He#Expeditions), the Vietnamese conquest or the Mongolian Yuan dynasty who might have used them as an naval invasion force or even other previous dynasties who were far more interested in commerce but all these events were more than 50 years before the 1500s. However, note at that period, China had went from years of prosperity in the early 1500s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongzhi_Emperor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongzhi_Emperor) to chaos in the mid to late-1500s and land wars were more important with Chinese fighting Mongols and Japanese (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanli_Emperor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanli_Emperor).
- peterbraden 8y agoIn the Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson, part of the story takes place around the China galleons. Definitely worth a read if you find this sort of thing exciting.
- Latteland 8y agoYeah, that was a long but interesting read. He has a long discussion about the secret of what latitude to use to cross Eastward. I never understood that loop so well until I saw the pics and diagrams in this story. edit - fixed some of my endless typos
- distances 8y agoOn part 3 the passengers' paperwork was checked after a month of travel, about 500 kilometres away from the starting point of Manila. Sixteen were found to have lacking documents, and were left on an island. That's of course terrifying, but also quite puzzling: why weren't the papers checked at the point of departure?
- unchocked 8y agoPossibly the crown was weak relative to commercial wealth at the port, and bribery was common. At a remote outpost, it might be easier to defend the crown’s interests against bribery. Just speculating.
- njarboe 8y agoInteresting how this circle trade route in the Pacific was used by Europeans for over 200 years before Hawaii was found by Cook in 1778.
- lappet 8y agoI love the quality of their illustrations and info graphics. Anyone here have tips on how to make similar graphics?