The History of China - #218 - Ming 11: Soon May the Treasure Fleet Come

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Zheng He & Co. have left the station and are sailing out! They leave the safety of the Yangtze River and set their compasses southbound and down, first to Fujian, then to Vietnam, Java, Sri Lanka, and finally all the way to India, all in the name of trade and riches. But the return journey will turn out to be anything but a pleasure-cruise. Between pirate raiders adn deadly storms, they might need a miracle to pull this off... Time Period Covered: 1405-1407 CE Major Historical Figures: Grand Admiral Zheng He [1371-1433/5] Chen Zuyi, Pirate Lord Extraordinaire [d. 1407] Ma Huan, Chinese Muslim translator & chronicler [1380-1460] Major Sources Cited: Chan, Hok-lam. “The Chien-wen, Yung-lo, Hung-xi, Hsüan-te Reigns” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part I. Levathes, Louise. When China Ruled the Seas: The Treasure Fleet of the Dragon Throne, 1405-1433. Pregadio, Fabrizio (2004). The Encyclopedia of Taoism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous Reign of Terror. You can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So search for the French Revolution today. Hey all, before launching into day, I'd like to take this moment to plug one of our sister shows on the Agora podcast network, and that is Ben Jacobs' Wittenberg to Westphalia, The Wars of the Reformation.

Now, don't let the title itself confuse you. You might think, ah, this is just about the 30 years war period of European history. No, no, no. In fact, the scope and scale of this project has grown out of control as though someone poured plant feeder all over it, and it now includes pretty much the entire early modern period of European history. 75 episodes in, Ben is not even to Wittenberg yet, but I have repeatedly threatened him that he better at some point get to at least one of the words in his show before he concludes it. So you can already tell that it is a very in-depth show that just is absolutely in love with its topic,

and Ben does a wonderful job of getting into the nitty-gritty of day-to-day life in early medieval Europe. So please do give it a listen. It is well worth your time. Once again, that is Wittenberg to Westphalia by Ben Jacobs, part of the Agora Podcast Network. And now, on with the show. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 218, Soon Made the Treasure Ships Come When this day, at an auspicious hour, we set the compass needle, let the dark water dragons go down into the sea and leave us free from calamity.

Humbly, respectfully, piously, we offer up this flagon of wine. Offer it once and offer it again, pouring out this fine, fragrant wine. Your servants, pure of heart and pious, respectfully lift up the wine to make a secondary offering. Reverentially, we take three cups of excellent wine and fill the golden beaker to call up the winds. That our sails may meet favorable winds, that the sea lanes be peaceful and secure, that our coming and going be auspicious, that gold, pearls, wealth, and valuables fill our ships full of glory. With pious hearts we do offer up this excellent wine. We hope and wish that when the compass needle is

set in the bowl, it will always point true north and south and east and west. That from dawn to dusk the ship's captain will be protected. That crossing the seas, coming and going, we follow the correct route. That men and ships both be content and at peace. That the sea crossing is fine and uneventful, and that hidden shoals will not be met, and sails hang high forever without worry. Then, in the rising smoke of burnt offerings of paper money and valuables, depart our meager feast. Having respectfully invited you, we received you, bowed at the waist, offering incense.

We see you off on our knees, bowing to the ground, forehead touching the floor in pious pre-voyage prayer, 1405. With sacrifices gravely made, incense offered, and prayers on their lips, the 27,000 sailors, soldiers, traders, bureaucrats, and officials that made up the crews of the 317 hulking wooden treasure ships of the mighty Ming fleet departed their birthing shipyard at Longjiang, just beside the capital itself, Nanjing. Slowly, carefully, they made their way along the currents of the Yangtze River. Their first stop would be at Liujia, right at the mouth of the Great River as it opens into the delta that ultimately reaches the eastern sea. The port town was of a relatively recent vintage, having sprung up during the Yuan period as a sleepy little rice-growing village, but was now an important

harbor with masts as thick as a forest. Here, after offering additional prayers and sacrifices to the sea goddess Tianfei and her assistants, Admiral Zheng reorganized the fleet into what would be its oceanic configuration, and made ready to brave the sea itself. Liujia was a rather interesting waypoint for the Ming fleets over the whole of their missions, for, as Levithes notes, although the treasure ships moved easily out of Liujia into the East China Sea, on return it was often difficult for the pilots to locate the entrance to the harbor because the terrain had no prominent landmarks. End quote. And yeah, as someone who lives in more or less the same neck of the woods as where Leo Ja once was, I can indeed attest that the Yangtze Delta is about as flat as a pancake.

No idyllic karst landscapes here. No, you need to go inland or south for those. Here, it's just a great, big, wide-open mudflat. Now you might be thinking, hey, if it's so flat, why don't they just build a lighthouse or something there? And you'd be right. And as it turns out, that's pretty much exactly what Zheng He would wind up doing eventually. Not on this trip, of course. They hadn't figured out the difficulties of trying to find their way back just yet. But it would be ahead of the Ming's fourth voyage in 1412

that Zheng would order the construction of a huge artificial mountain nearly a mile in circumference and absolutely towering over the surrounding landscape at a staggering 33 feet high. Did I mention that it's flat here? And what was that mountain's name? Well, Zheng He is known for a lot of things, but naming creativity apparently wasn't one of them. We've got treasure ships that make up a treasure fleet, and now this will be called Baoshan, meaning, that's right, Treasure Mountain. In any case, at the foot of this very large pile of dirt, he did the obvious thing. He erected a commemorative plaque that read, quote, By day smoke rises from the mountain, by night fire glows bright, end quote.

So, yeah, it was a giant lighthouse, which was pretty cool. That particular mountain-slash-mole hill has, of course, been long since swept away and paved over in the centuries to follow. But it's worth noting that Zheng He's legacy on the region is immortalized by the fact that one of Shanghai's northern suburban districts right along the Yangtze's banks is today named Baoshan. Now, to be clear, it's not the actual area of Liujia. That settlement was further west up the river. Around about the 18th century, the mouth of the Yangtze shifted dramatically enough that Liujia was no longer of much

importance to shipping, and Shanghai then eclipsed it as the preeminent port city of the Yangtze Delta. Funny how things change like that from time to time. Back to the voyage at hand, though. Once past Liujia and out of the Yangtze into the sea itself, the Great Fleet turned south. They sailed down the coast of China some 400 miles before arriving at their next significant port of call, Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian province. Okay, well, not the city of Fuzhou itself, exactly, but rather its neighboring shipboarding port at the mouth of the Min River, called Wutou, meaning Wu's Head, so named after the ancient 3rd century king who established the port during the Three Kingdoms period, which we talked about last episode.

Upon Zheng He's arrival, however, it would be Wu's head no longer. To mark his epochal passing, the Grand Admiral officially renamed the city as Taiping, meaning, of course, Great Peace. Hey, at least it doesn't have treasure in the name, right? Once ensconced in the Fujianese harbor, the Great Ming fleet settled in for a period of several months of waiting around. This was due to the seasonal monsoon winds of southern China and Asia, the very same that once upon a time had forced Kublai Khan's Yuan armies to quit their campaign against the Javanese kingdoms of the South Seas, lest they find themselves trapped on a hostile island for half a year with no point of egress.

So until the winds shifted southwestward as of late December or early January, the Ming Fleet was going to stay put in Fujian. In the meantime, Admiral Zheng set up shop in town and decided to use the commanding view granted him from the heights of the Pagoda of the Three Peak Temple to both survey his fleet and the sea beyond during those months, but also to give them orders at a distance via signal fires and his colored banners, an essential practice to maintain, as that would be how the fleet would communicate while at sea. When at last the winds shifted and began blowing steadily that cool, dry inland air from the northeast that signaled the onset of the monsoon dry season, the fleet set out from their harborage in the Min River and made their way down the coast once more. Now transiting through the Formosa-Taiwan Strait and veering west along the rocky shores of the south toward Southeast Asia,

and in particular, the ancient kingdom of Tampa in southern Vietnam. Navigation was primarily accomplished via the ship's water compasses, and timing was synchronized in a very interesting and rather brilliant way. The ship pilots would each light a specified length or number of incense sticks when signaled, which served to keep the vast fleet of ships in very close sync with one another, even if not able to directly communicate due to, for instance, stormy conditions. In nice conditions, the fleet could make very good speeds for the time, traveling at up to 8 knots, meaning that they could theoretically cover more than 200 miles per day,

although again this did vary quite a bit based on conditions. In actuality, it would have averaged significantly less per day. Navigation by night was conducted, the same as anywhere, via the stars above whenever weather allowed. From Levithes, quote, Pilots determined latitude by measuring the altitude of Polaris, or the Southern Cross, above the horizon with a simple measuring board called a Qianxingban, which was used for the first time during the Treasure Fleet voyages. The board consisted of 12 pieces of square wood. Pilots aligned the Qianxingban with the horizon and then used the length of their arm to calculate the position of the stars, in much the same way Western navigators employed a cross-staff with string and board, end quote. I mean, it's not exactly GPS, but it's more than sufficient to keep the Ming fleet headed in generally the right direction. This is not to

imply that the treasure fleet was flying blind by any means, or didn't have a roadmap for where they were going. The South Seas were well charted, even at that time, and even for the relative naval neophytes of the Ming Dynasty, accurate enough maps and charts were available to get them from one place to the next. To that end, Zheng He carried with him an absolutely huge sailing chart, some 21 feet in length, so big that it was only ever unrolled in sections when needed. It would later be named as the Wu Beizhi Chart, but that name actually references a far later international treaty from the 16th century, so it certainly wasn't called that at the time. As far as I can tell, at the time of the actual voyages, Zheng He's giant map of the ocean was just... the map.

It is quite an interesting map, too. It is not even close to being to scale, nor even particularly geographically accurate. It's instead just sort of a rough sketch of the routes of the various known places across the seas, accompanied by detailing sailing directions, such as compass bearings and typical amount of time it took to get from place to place. Quote, But the chart carefully depicted important landmarks and geographic features, such as mountains, river mouths, bridges, beaches, shoals, rocks exposed at low tide, and the depth of channels. Simple pictorial symbols also indicated the location of outlooks,

pagodas, military bases, storage areas, forests, and areas of flatland that were easy to traverse. End quote. In other words, it looks actually not unlike the kind of map you might draw to guide people to your apartment on the back of a napkin. Except, it's a really big napkin. Given their top speed, slowed down by circumstances such as bad weather, stops to replenish food and water every week or so, and the myriad other inevitabilities of long-distance travel, it probably took the fleet several weeks, perhaps a month or more, of transit around the southern coastline of China through the Gulf of Tonkin and then plunging further south before they would

have arrived at the Champa Kingdom of southern Vietnam. They arrived and made landfall there, probably near the modern city of Quy Nhung, a commercial nexus about midway up the coast between Ho Chi Minh City and Da Nang. At the time, it should be noted, though we'll often refer to it as a kingdom, in reality, Tampa was more of a loose confederation of tight-knit communities existing largely separately along southern Vietnam's myriad river valleys, and largely isolated from one another. We could think of it, both topographically and civilizationally, a bit like the ancient Greek city-states and their loose alliances and leagues,

and we wouldn't be too far off the mark. This made governing these city-states as a singular governmental entity quite difficult, nigh on to impossible. And as we've seen time and time and time and time again, it tends to make any effort to militarily conquer or effectively unify such a region all the more so. Once again, kids, don't try to invade Vietnam. It's not good for the healthy. Invasion and conquest were, however, not all that Zheng He and his glorious treasure fleet were here to do, not in the slightest. Much to the contrary, their interest was primarily commercial, specifically for those goods in which the ever-bickering southern kingdoms abounded, rare, precious woods. Ebony, blackwood, nanmu, black bamboo, aloe wood,

and many other varietals beside, all could fetch a king's ransom at market up in the empire proper, for those in the know. The aloe wood in particular was considered especially valuable. Used to make incense sticks, Zheng He himself apparently believed that it only grew on a single mountaintop in the entire world and was thus worth its weight in silver, a price the Ming fleet was well prepared to pay. Not only in silver itself, but also in the finest Ming-style blue and white porcelains and silks that the empire could provide. The Chams were only too happy to exchange their lumber products, along with rhinoceros horn and elephant ivory, for the Ming's quote-unquote gifts, as ever, under the transparent fig leaf of it being an imperial tribute.

Trade successfully accomplished, the Ming fleet departed with full pomp and circumstance from the Champa harbor and then continued on down the coast. They next sailed south to Majapahits on the Isle of Java, as well as three smaller quasi-city-states on the northern coast of Sumatra named Semudera, Dali, and Aceh. Conspicuously, however, Zheng He studiously avoided the largest and most important city-state trade center on the Sumatran island, Palembang, on the northeast reaches. It seems likely that this was no accident. Surely the great admiral had heard much of the recent travails of this great center of trade and commerce, that it had been set upon and overtaken by a certain pirate lord from China itself called Chen Zui, who himself hailed from Guangzhou. He now ruled the port as little less

than pirate king, terrorizing the narrow strait between Sumatra and the Malaysian peninsula with his fleet of corsairs, and demanding tribute from any ships that dared pass, or else exacting his toll in straight-up plunder and destruction when they failed to comply, or else the mood for chaos just struck. Levithes posits, therefore, that this initial visit to the outlying settlements of Sumatra may have been one of information gathering and reconnoitering of the situation within Palembang, and of Chen Zui's relative strength, so that if, when, they next met, the Grand Admiral would know exactly what he might be going up against. It must have been obvious from the outset of this voyage, likely even before they'd first launched from Nanjing, that pirates plied these waters,

and would, if left unchecked, render any Ming mission objectives moot by dint of their vice grip on the trade routes. Something would have to be done. And yet, for the time being at least, Zheng determined that the time was not yet right to launch an offensive against Palanbang's wretched hive of scum and villainy. The goal of Zheng He's fleet at Sumatra and Java was actually, at least in part, to try to unmake a socioeconomic knot that Ming China itself had been instrumental in tangling together. During the reign of the Yongle Emperor's father, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming had punitively cut off trade with the Javanese kingdom following an incident wherein Chinese envoys to Sumatra had

been taken captive and subsequently killed. Both of the southern sea states had greatly suffered from this choking off of mainland trade, and between that and the two states warring amongst themselves, they'd quickly been rendered weak enough for an enterprising pirate lord like Chen Zui to sail right in and make himself at home. The island regions, it was immediately apparent, were absolutely ripe for the plucking of a Ming empire that now sought to engage in the commerce of the wider world. In defiance of the Hongwu Emperor's strict legislation that no Chinese should engage in overseas trade, or even so much as, like, look abroad, nevertheless, thousands of Chinese families had done exactly that. After all, as the time-tested aphorism goes, heaven is vast and the emperor is distant. Quote, The town of Gresik on the northwest coast of, was governed by a man from Guangdong province, and a thousand Chinese families lived there.

Surabaja, in the northeast, also had many Chinese. Under Zhu Di, who encouraged trade, these communities now flourished. Even so, the Chinese living in these communities tended to keep very much to themselves, well apart from the other communities and people amongst which they lived, the Muslims, the native Malays, and otherwise aboriginal people, whom Zheng He himself described as devil-worshippers who ate snakes and insects. Because cultural sensitivity was definitely the Ming's forte. The sailors of Zheng He's fleet recorded many displays of bizarre and barbaric local traditions and customs, such as a form of ritualized combat in which two warriors would approach one another slowly with sharpened bamboo spears, encouraged on by their wives or female slaves, who would tell them to advance or to retreat.

Although apparently not explicitly supposed to be to the death per se, frequently death did result, meaning that the victor would pay an agreed-upon blood fee to the deceased's family, and then take the wife or slave of the fallen as his own. They also observed the Hindu traditional funeral practice of cremation of the dead, as well as the practice that has horrified so many outside observers across time, that of sati, in which the wife of the deceased would throw herself on the blazing pyre to join her husband in fiery death rather than face the dishonor of outliving him. Jung wrote, "...dancing and wailing on a platform above the burning funeral pyre,

wearing grasses and flowers all over their heads, their bodies clad in kerchiefs with designs of the five colors. They then cast themselves down into the flames and are consumed in the fire with the corpse of their lord in accordance with the right of sacrificing the living with the dead. End quote. Yeah, eat your heart out, Midsommar. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary.

His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts.

Moving on from Java and Sumatra for now, the Treasure Fleet next made their way to the Kingdom of Ceylon, which is modern Sri Lanka. Its ruler, though he did allow the massive fleet entrance to his harbor, did little to welcome the Ming fleets as his guests. And, apparently taking the hint pretty quickly, Zheng He did not linger longer than to restock and fill his tankards of water before again departing. It's written that the king, quote, proved arrogant and disrespectful and wanted to harm Zheng He, end quote. Despite his hasty departure, though, Admiral Zheng was careful to note the country's deeply religious nature, and perhaps even more interestingly, its vast wealth of precious

gemstones and pearls. Yes, well that certainly is worth writing down and keeping in mind, now isn't it? The furthest port of call for this initial voyage of the Ming treasure fleet was, of course, Calicut, or as the Chinese phoneticized it, Kuli, the great kingdom of the western ocean. Now here's an important point of order, because I had to stop and make extra special sure for myself that I wasn't going to epically mess this up. So those of you very well versed in Indian geography, go ahead and pop over to the kitchen for the next 30 seconds or so and grab a snack or something. For the rest of you, here it goes. Calicut is not, I repeat, not to be confused with Kolkata,

aka Calcutta. They are on completely different sides of India. It's not even remotely close. Calcutta is in eastern India, rather confusingly called West Bengal, which is right next to Bangladesh and, ah, yeah, okay, that explains that. Yeah. Anyways, the Calicut we're sailing to today, right now, is today called Khorikhod, and it's in the state of Kerala, on the southwestern coast of India's upside-down triangle. Are you seeing it yet? Great. And yes, again, I'm sorry to any Indian listeners who might be listening to the kindergarten-esque description I'm giving. If it's any consolation, China looks like it's a giant chicken and Korea is the beak. Okay, feeling better? Good, moving on. So, just to sum up, Calicut is very much not the same as Calcutta, pretty much as different as Portland, Oregon from Portland, Maine.

Upon the Treasure Fleet's arrival around about December 1406, it was well understood by the Chinese that Calicut, ruled by its monarch called the Samothiri or Zamorin, had declared itself a free port that is open for business with any and all comers no matter who they might be. It was also well understood that the city-state was locked in a long-standing struggle for regional supremacy with its southern neighbors and rivals, the city-states of Cochin and Quilong, respectively, both of which also had ongoing business agreements with the Ming. As such, it would pay to be courteous and cautious on all counts. Quite notably, though the Chinese of Zheng He's voyages were, as ever, quick and liberal with the term barbarian for most of the strange and foreign peoples that they encountered across the southern seas, they very conspicuously took care to never apply it to their Calicut hosts,

or the Samuthiri. Instead, they treated him, his agents, and the people of the city as a whole as their equals, and, quote, had utmost respect for this highly structured society with an efficient civil service, a well-trained army and navy, and a harsh system of justice. Like the Chinese emperors, the Zamorins were patrons of literature and the arts, end quote. The Chinese Muslim translator Ma Huan, who was part of Zheng He's crew, would write of the Calicuts, quote, The people are very honest and trustworthy. Their appearance is smart, fine, and distinguished. End quote. I mean, look at them. It's incredible. They're almost like real people.

The fleet's stay at Calicut lasted probably around four months, until April of 1407 or so. Again, these dates are pretty hazy because we don't have a whole lot of records or details to go off of. During that time, the Chinese took the time to learn of the particular trade and barter customs of their host culture, an enterprise, they quickly found out, that had a set of rules and rituals all its own. Step one was for one of the Chinese officers and an Indian broker to set up a date upon which they would discuss and set down what they wanted to buy, the prices for the goods, and the exchange medium. They would then go and inspect the cargo directly, piece by piece. Once an agreement had been reached, all parties involved would collectively join hands, and the Indian broker would declare,

quote, In such and such a moon, on such and such a day, we have all joined hands and sealed our agreement with a hand clasp. Whether the price is dear or cheap, we will never repudiate or change it, end quote. It was very much a similar process when the Chinese sought out purchase of India's own precious trade goods, items like its gemstones, pearls, colorful corals, and those spicy peppers worth their weight in gold. Translator Ma Huan was quite impressed and surprised by the Indians' own methodology of calculation. The Chinese, of course, made use of their millennia-old abacuses to maintain their books. But the Calicuts used no such mechanism. Rather, they simply counted with blinding speed on their fingers and toes, and at a pace that rivaled the Chinese

bookkeeper's own rates of calculation. Ma made particular note, with obvious puzzlement and dazzlement, of the accuracy and speed with which the Indian's seemingly primitive method was employed without error or loss of speed. He wrote, quote, They did not make the slightest mistake, which is extraordinary. End quote. Even so, the rounds of wheeling and dealing took much time to reach any successful conclusion. Deals concluded quickly would take around a month or so to transact, while more difficult arrangements could stretch to two or even three months before both sides had come out to an agreement. And of course, through it all,

the Zommerians' agents assiduously assessed and collected the taxes due on every such transaction. While these trade agreements were hammered out over the early months of 1407, there was also plenty of time to take in the culture, sights, sounds, people, and stories of this strange and distant land an ocean away. It is here in Calicut, in fact, that the Chinese heard, perhaps for the first time, one of the tales of Moses of the Bible. Specifically, the fateful tale of his brother Aaron and the construction of the infamous golden calf. Unsurprisingly, there were some specifics that got rather lost in translation. For instance, Zheng He's crew apparently seemed to think that the story was one native to India, which is a pretty easy assumption to make given the centrality of the cow idol in the story and the native Hindu's own veneration of cows.

The tale, as related by the main crew, goes like this. There is a traditional story that in olden times there was a holy man named Moshe, Moses, who established a religious cult. The people knew that he was a true man of heaven, and all men revered and followed him. Later, the holy man went away with others to another place and ordered his younger brother named Samoli, the Samaritan, to govern and teach the people. But his younger brother began to have depraved ideas. He made a casting of a gold calf and said, This is the Holy Lord. Everyone who worships it will have his expectations fulfilled.

He taught the people to listen to his bidding and to adore the golden ox, saying, It always excretes gold. The people got their gold, and their hearts rejoiced, and they forgot the way of heaven. All took the ox as their true lord. Later, Moxie, the holy man, returned. He saw that the multitude, misled by his younger brother, Samuli, were corrupting the holy way. Thereupon, he destroyed the ox and wished to punish his younger brother, and his younger brother mounted a large elephant and vanished.

I mean, it's missing some of the key details of the story, like where Moses went and what he was doing, but it's got a lot of the broad strokes. I give it a solid B-. As of about April or so, the monsoon winds shifted to the southwest, and with the trading process concluded, the Ming treasure fleet prepared to depart and make their way back homeward bound. They did not, however, travel alone. In addition to their holds now bursting with coveted foreign goods, they had also picked up quite a few special guests. Diplomatic envoys not only from Calicut, but Quilon, the Sumatran states of Samudera, Dali, and Malacca, each carried with them specially prepared messages from their respective kings, as well as tribute gifts for the Yongle Emperor to engender goodwill and further trade between their own realms and Great Ming.

These ambassadors probably anticipated a relatively uneventful journey back to Nanjing, carried along in all the splendor and elegant style that the treasure fleet could promise. What they got, however, was anything but a restful pleasure cruise. Because in order to get back to China, the treasure fleet was going to have to go through the Strait of Malacca once again, whereupon sat the waiting pirate fleet of Chen Zui. The official histories of the Ming say that Chen initially sent word to the inbound Chinese fleet, telling them in no

uncertain terms that hey, please believe me, he would never do anything to offend a fleet of Zheng's size. He therefore offered his surrender, but Zheng He's own network of informants advised him against accepting the Pirate Lord's offer because it's a trap. Still, for the moment, Zheng He played it cool and made as if to accept Chen's offer and meet up with him in person. The two fleets, therefore, sailed out to meet each other. Now, here's another little aside about the differing tactics of the Treasure Fleet and Chinese naval military tactics in general, versus those of pirates. Naval warships, like so many other ancient fleets across the world,

were centered around a combination of cannonade broadsides and flame attacks, but also the millennia-old tried-and-true tactic of just ramming the reinforced prow of your ship into the side of the enemies and splitting it right in half. Their battle strategy was centered around devastation and destruction, as militaries all over the world are wont to do. The pirates, on the other hand, had a markedly different strategy, since, after all, they were looking to profit, not merely demolish. As such, their own tactics in a pitched naval battle centered around pulling alongside enemy ships and then commencing mass boarding actions,

then engaging in close-quarter shipboard combat until they were either repelled by the defenders or, fingers crossed, were able to seize control of the vessel and its contents. Nothing out of the ordinary here, pretty standard boilerplate pirate stuff even today. They're first and foremost in the business of robbery, and it's really hard to rob stuff from the bottom of the ocean. So that's what Chun's crew were certainly preparing to try if they were allowed to close in on the Ming ships,

to bypass their formidable cannons and ramming weapons entirely, and then seize the massive vessels and their ridiculously valuable cargo before the Chinese officials even knew what was what. Even one such successful capture of a fully loaded treasure ship would have pretty much set up the entire crew for life, if they were able to pull it off. They would never get the chance. As the two fleets approached one another under the ostensibly and mutually false pretense of truce, Zheng He's ships surprised the pirates by opening up on the much smaller Corsair fleet with a withering hail of incendiary weaponry.

In just minutes, it's reported that ten of the pirate ships were aflame and would quickly sink, while a further seven vessels were taken captive. Levithes writes, quote, No details of the battle were written down, but Ming naval tactics stressed the importance of gaining the upwind position in combat to better facilitate hurling of the Ming fleet was staggering for the era. Records from about a century later describe more than 200 different types of explosive and fire weapons that were employed for different combat situations. Things like the feitian pangpong, or the sky-flying tubes, acted a bit like giant burning shotgun blasts. They were aimed at a ship enemy's sails, at what must have been pretty close range, and then fired, spewing forth a cloud of flaming gunpowder and burning paper

to set the sails ablaze. The hui-ao-tong, or gunpowder buckets, and huo-zhan, firebricks, were two varietals of compressed gunpowder and paper grenades who were also soaked in poisonous chemicals and materials that would choke, blind, and incapacitate anyone caught in their fulminating cloud once set off. Other, more lethal grenades would explode with a burst of metal buckyballs or shrapnel. More traditional, but no less effective, cadres of skilled archers manned the decks during battle, able to unleash withering volleys of flaming arrows at enemy vessels with professional accuracy, setting alight sails and exposed wood hulls alike. Rather astoundingly, in spite of the fact that the Ming treasure fleet

brought this astounding arsenal of weaponry to bear against Chen Zui's fleet, or perhaps because it wasn't nearly as much of a surprise weapon as might once have been the case and Chen both knew the countermeasures and maybe even had his own stockpile of such weapons himself, in any case, the Ming naval war against the pirate fleet of Malacca dragged on for several months before the admiral's forces were finally able to trap and capture the pirate lord and his chief lieutenants. They were thereafter taken in chains back to Nanjing, put briefly on trial, and then summarily executed. The South Seas were safe to

sail once again, at long last. Well, not quite. Because though the human threat of Chen Zui's band of sea wolves had been dealt with, one thing that even a force as mighty as Admiral Zheng's fleet needs must acquiesce to the superior and terrible strength of was the fury of Mother Nature herself. As you'll remember, the fleet had brought along with them professional diviners and astrologers in order to monitor the heavens and look for any possible sign of meteorological trouble headed their way, hopefully in time to get the ships safely clear. The collective knowledge of the centuries of these proto-weathermen and forecasters had been dutifully and cleverly

wrapped in easily memorizable proverbs. One such saying, for instance, went, A dawn look to the southeast. If it is dark, there will be rain before noon. A dusk look to the northeast. If it is dark, there will be rain before noon. At dusk, look to the northeast. If it is dark, there will be rain at night. If there are clouds in the sky, like flowing silk, you can expect a fine day. But if in the morning clouds rise from the sea, soon there will be wind and rain. End quote. Of course, such predictions were useful, and probably generally pretty accurate.

But, and I know we're all well aware of this, were the uncertainty unavoidable even in our modern weather models. There was always going to be errors and unforeseen events. After all, even the very wise cannot see all ends. At some point during the fleet's return voyage, its date and location went either unrecorded or, rather more likely, were subsequently destroyed. The fleet astrologers misinterpreted the signs, and the fleet found itself in the heart of a truly terrible oceanic storm. Levithes posits that it may have been on one of the last legs of the journey, with the fleet having rounded the bend of the southern Chinese coast and swung northward back up the Formosa Strait.

In that region, then and now, devastating typhoons can whip through with very little advanced warning, especially to anyone without something like weather satellites. The crew themselves believed that the worst had befallen them, that they had stumbled upon and disturbed the lair of one of the giant dragons that dwelt beneath the dark waves, and now unleashed its wrath upon them all. With little within their own mortal power that they could do to prevent the seemingly inevitable capsizing and foundering of the entire expedition, many of the crewmen did the only thing they could think of that might help. They beseeched the goddess Tianfei to protect them from the Great

Serpent's deadly rage. And what do you know, it worked. Zheng He's own inscription at the Changle Temple reads, the masthead. And as soon as that miraculous light appeared, the danger was appeased, so that even in the peril of capsizing, one felt reassured that there was no cause for fear. End quote. Magic lantern appearing? What in the world? Is that some kind of a metaphor or hallucination? No, it's actually quite literal and real. It's a meteorological phenomenon known as St. Elmo's Fire, in which an abundance of electrical charge in the atmosphere of a storm can cause discharges of blue or even violet ionized plasma to emit from rod-like objects, such as ship masts, typically with a distinctive electrical hissing or buzzing sound.

As you might imagine, the appearance of St. Elmo's fire is actually pretty dangerous, as it can warn of imminent lightning strikes, but to pre-modern sailors, it was typically taken as a good omen and sign of protection. The phenomenon was already well known in the West. The Greeks called it helene, meaning torch, the Welsh called them spirit candles, and in Portuguese it was called corpo santo, or the holy body, and even the likes of both Julius Caesar and Pliny the Elder referred to the phenomenon when they plied the Mediterranean. But to Zheng He and his crew, this was something not only new, but truly miraculous and protective. Tian Fei had indeed blessed him and his crew with her divine aegis,

and there was no doubt in his mind or heart about that. He therefore resolved to spare no effort in making sure that the sea goddess got every accolade and honor she could possibly be given upon his return to the main capital. Telling the Yongle Emperor of the obvious divine intervention, Zeng beseeched his monarch to bestow upon her official titles befitting her stature, and Yongle complied, officially granting her a newly created imperial rank and title as of 1409, the appropriately elaborate 护国必民妙龄, 赵英洪人, 溥仪天妃, meaning Protector of the State and Shelterer of the People, Wondrous Newman Spirit, Brilliant Resonance, and Magnanimously Beneent celestial consort of universal salvation. Mouthful though it was, even this shiny new title wasn't nearly enough for Zheng He.

Though the emperor shortly thereafter ordered that the fleet depart on a second journey to both return the foreign ambassadors to their homelands and also assist Calicut with the installation and Ming imperial blessing of its new zamarin, Admiral Zheng did not personally command this one. Instead, he remained behind as his fleet departed in late 1407. He made his way to Meizhou Island, Fujian, the supposed actual birthplace of the mortal woman and shamaness named Lin Mojiang, who was ascended to goddesshood after her death in 987 as the heavenly consort, Tianfei. There on her island, Zheng oversaw repairs and renovations to the Tianfei Temple. Following that, it's reported that he may have assisted in setting up a school for translators

in Nanjing itself as part of broader preparations for the voyages still yet to come that would seek to go even further afield into the vast blue ocean beyond. So that's where we'll leave off today. Next time, we continue the grand voyages of the Ming treasure fleet as they go to Persia, Arabia, and even Africa, and find a strange Chilean unicorn with spots and a really super long neck. Thanks for listening. To be continued... a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.