The naval history of China dates back thousands of years, with archives existing since the late Spring and Autumn Period (722 BC - 481 BC) about the ancient navy of China and the various ship types used in war, with records of the legendary Xu Fu searching for mythical Fusang, the setting up of the maritime Silk Road since the 2nd century BC from Hepu Commandery, and the first drafting of ancient Chinese naval maps.

Ancient Chinese Naval Inventions

Hull and Rudder Design - Ancient Chinese innovations were instrumental in influencing Western naval technology. During the 1st century AD in Ancient China, the creation and use of the stern mounted rudder appeared on Chinese ships even though steering oars were still being used. The steering oar was still useful, especially for inland rapid travel. The median, vertical and axial stern mounted rudder was used in the Mediterranean as well, maybe even before being used in China, but its system was different from that of the Chinese system, especially during the time of the Han Dynasty.

The Han Dynasty (202 - 220 AD) was the first Chinese dynasty to discover the use of the stern mounted steering rudder along with the creation of a new ship known as the junk. The Chinese junk ship was a very imaginative and well-built ship that was crossing oceans, especially to conduct trade with nearby sea faring societies located within the Indian Ocean region. The first Chinese man to set sail into the Indian Ocean region and reaching India and Sri Lanka was Buddhist monk, Fa Xian during the 5th century AD.

The Chinese junk ship possessed many technical advances in hull design and sail plan along with the creation and use of the rudder which would influence how Europeans would design their own ships in the future. The junk ship at the time may have been the fasted ship ever built in the ancient world.

The mounted steering rudder permitted the steering of ships which were huge, high freeboard ones and its good designs allowed modification to the depth of the water that was later used in the theories of Westernized ship building. Freeboard in a nautical term used to describe the distance from the boat or ship's upper deck level to the distance of the waterline measured at the lowest point where water can come into the boat or ship. In China, the rudders were attached to the hull by way of wooden sockets while ordinarily the larger ones were suspended from above by a rope tackle system so that they could be lowered or raised into the water. The Chinese junks also included the fenestrated rudders which had holes in order for better control. This was another innovation adopted into early 20th century Western naval technology systems which helped to make torpedo boats maneuverable.

Compass - Before the invention of the compass, ships were frequently lost in the big oceans and the consequences would be dire. In pre-Qin time the Chinese have already obtained the knowledge of geomagnetism. People called the magnet as the Kind Stone which meant "a caring mother is so loved by her children". If a piece of stone that has a magnetic force, it is a kind stone.

The first compass appeared during the Warring States Period, it was made of a piece of loadstone. Shaped like a spoon with a circular base, the magnet was placed on a flat and smooth surface. Of course the magnet piece can move very freely in a circular motion. However, this kind of compass has its disadvantages, loadstones that meet the requirements for making the apparatus are difficult to find and due to the intense heat during molding, the magnetic force in the loadstone will be reduced, thus the accuracy of the apparatus is questionable.

Later, the Chinese began to implement artificial magnetization techniques. They put the burned piece of steel in a position that is parallel to the earth's meridian, the molecules in the heated steel are very active, and so they will eventually position their direction according to the earth magnetic field. Then the steel is put in cool water, which makes the molecules fixed very quickly. The artificial magnetization technique is a great breakthrough in making compass. Another method is to magnetize the steel needle by friction with a piece of strong magnet. As science and technology developed in ancient China, the technique in manufacturing compass has improved. The compass became an essential tool for sea voyages during the Yuan Dynasty.

Naval Battles in Chinese Antiquity

Although numerous naval battles took place before the 12th century, such as the large-scale Three Kingdoms Battle of Chibi in the year 208, it was during the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) that the Chinese established a permanent, standing navy in 1132 AD. At its height by the late 12th century there were 20 squadrons of some 52,000 marines, with the admiral's headquarters based at Dinghai, while the main base remained closer to modern Shanghai in those days. The establishment of the permanent navy during the Song period came out of the need to defend against the Jurchens, who had overrun the northern half of China, and to escort merchant fleets entering the South East Pacific and Indian Ocean on long trade missions abroad to the Hindu, Islamic, and East African spheres of the world. However, considering China was a country which was longtime menaced by land-based nomadic tribes such as the Xiongnu, Göktürks, Mongols and so on, the navy was always seen as an adjunct rather than an important military force. By the 15-16th centuries China's canal system and internal economy were sufficiently developed to nullify the need for the Pacific fleet, which was scuttled when conservative Confucianists gained power in the court and began the policy of inward perfection. With the Opium Wars, which shook up the generals of the Qing Dynasty, the navy was once again attached greater importance.

When the British fleet encountered the Chinese during the first Opium War, their officers noted the appearance of paddle-wheel boats among the Chinese fleet, which they took for a copy of the Western design. Paddle-wheel boats were actually developed by the Chinese independently in the 5th-6th centuries AD, only a century after their first surviving mention in Roman sources (see Paddle steamer), though that method of propulsion had been abandoned for many centuries and only recently reintroduced before the war. Numerous other innovations were present in Chinese vessels during the Middle Ages that had not yet been adopted by the Western and Islamic worlds, some of which were documented by Marco Polo but which did not enter into other navies until the 18th century, when the British successfully incorporated them into ship designs. For example, medieval Chinese hulls were split into bulkhead sections so that a hull rupture only flooded a fraction of the ship and did not necessarily sink it. This was described in the book of the Song Dynasty maritime author Zhu Yu, the Pingzhou Table Talks of 1119 AD. Along with the innovations described in Zhu's book, there were many other improvements to nautical technology in the medieval Song period. These included crossbeams bracing the ribs of ships to strengthen them, rudders that could be raised or lowered to allow ships to travel in a wider range of water depths, and the teeth of anchors arranged circularly instead of in one direction, making them more reliable. Junks also had their sails staggered by wooden poles so that the crew could raise and lower them with ropes from the deck, like window blinds, without having to climb around and tie or untie various ropes every time the ship needed to turn or adjust speed.

Arguably the largest naval battle in history was the Battle of Lake Poyang from August 30 to October 4 of the year 1363 AD, a battle which cemented the success of Zhu Yuan Zhang in founding the Ming Dynasty.

Admiral Zheng He's Treasure Fleet Sails the World

During the Ming Dynasty from 1405 to 1433, seven epic expeditions brought China's treasure ships across the China Seas and the Indian Ocean, from Taiwan to the spice islands of Indonesia and the Malabar coast of India, on to the rich ports of the Persian Gulf and down the African coast, China's El Dorado, and perhaps even to Australia, three hundred years before Captain Cook was credited with its discovery. With over 300 ships, some measuring as much as 400 feet long and 160 feet wide, with upwards of nine masts and twelve sails, and combined crews sometimes numbering over 28,000 men. The emperor Zhu Di's fantastic fleet was a virtual floating city, a naval expression of his Forbidden City in Beijing. The largest wooden boats ever built, these extraordinary ships were the most technically superior vessels in the world with innovations such as balanced rudders and bulwarked compartments that predated European ships by centuries.

A hundred years before Columbus and his fellow Europeans began making their way to the New World, China's rise as a naval power that literally could have ruled the world. Fleets of giant Chinese junks commanded by the eunuch Admiral Zheng He and filled with the empire's finest porcelains, lacquer ware, and silk ventured to the edge of the world's "four corners." It was a time of exploration and conquest, but it ended in a retrenchment so complete that less than a century later, it was a crime to go to sea in a multi-masted ship.

The great Ming armada weighed anchor in Nanjing, on the first of seven epic voyages as far west as Africa-almost a century before Christopher Columbus's arrival in the Americas and Vasco da Gama's in India. Even then the European expeditions would seem paltry by comparison: All the ships of Columbus and da Gama combined could have been stored on a single deck of a single vessel in the fleet that set sail under Zheng He.

Its commander was, without question, the most towering maritime figure in the 4,000-year annals of China, a visionary who imagined a new world and set out consciously to fashion it. He was also a profoundly unlikely candidate for admiral in anyone's navy, much less that of the Dragon Throne. The greatest seafarer in China's history was raised in the mountainous heart of Asia, several weeks' travel from the closest port. More improbable yet, Zheng born Ma He, the son of a rural official in the Mongol province of Yunnan, he had been taken captive as an invading Chinese army overthrew the Mongols in 1382. Ritually castrated, he was trained as an imperial eunuch and assigned to the court of Zhu Di, the bellicose Prince of Yan. Within 20 years the boy who had writhed under Ming knives had become one of the prince's chief aides, a key strategist in the rebellion that made Zhu Di the Yongle (Eternal Happiness) emperor in 1402. Renamed Zheng after his exploits at the battle of Zhenglunba, near Beijing, he was chosen to lead one of the most powerful naval forces ever assembled.

During this dynamic period in China's enigmatic history, China's rise as a naval power could have literally ruled the world if not for China's precipitous plunge into isolation when a new emperor ascended the Dragon Throne.

For thirty years foreign goods, medicines, geographic knowledge, and cultural insights flowed into China at an extraordinary rate, and China extended its sphere of political power and influence throughout the Indian Ocean. Half the world was in China's grasp, and the rest could easily have been, had the emperor so wished. But instead, the Chinese fleet shrank tremendously after its military and exploratory functions in the early 15th century were deemed too expensive and it became primarily a police force on routes like the Grand Canal. Ships like the juggernauts of Zheng He's treasure fleet, which dwarfed the largest Portuguese ships of the era by several times, were discontinued.

China turned inward, as succeeding emperors forbade overseas travel and stopped all building and repair of oceangoing junks. Disobedient merchants and seamen were killed, and within a hundred years the greatest navy the world had ever known willed itself into extinction. The period of China's greatest outward expansion was followed by the period of its greatest isolation.