THE JADE PENNY – THE CHINESE ADMIRAL

Description

Most people in the West believe that ‘Western societies’ were responsible for the major discoveries in history and other ‘different’ cultures had little input into what we know of the world today. How naïve can we be? Our history goes back hundreds of years and sailors like Drake, Franklin, Frobisher and Cabot are known to many of us, but have you ever heard of Zheng He? Chinese history goes back thousands of years.

Can you imagine a ship as large as a small aircraft carrier 150 metres (440 feet) long carrying up to 1000 men built more than 70 years before Christopher Columbus began his search for the Orient which landed him in America?

Here is a story that will give you some understanding of one of the Great Civilizations in human history. But how can the loss of a British ship, the H.M.S. Raleigh lost in 1922 off the coast of Labrador lead Michael Small and his friends to perhaps one of the greatest rewrites of history of the15th century?

Then you too will discover about a remarkable Chinese Admiral, Zheng He and his seven voyages at the turn of the 14th century made the efforts of those brave sailors from France, Britain, and Spain seem minuscule.