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Henry V, one of England's greatest kings, boasted an army of 5000 men which he took to France in a fleet of four fishing boats. At his marriage feast 600 guests were treated to a meal of salted cod, which they ate off rounds of stale bread in place of plates. At the same time the new and progressive Emperor of far off China, Zhu Di, had an inaugural feast, with 26000 guests being treated to a ten course feast on finest porcelain. His guests were talked home in a fleet of 100 ships and guarded by 30,000 men. Zhu Di then commissioner a grand expedition, four admirals took four fleets to the "ends of the earth" exploring, trading and establishing colonies. These fleets circumnavigated the globe one hundred years before Magellan, reached America seventy years before Columbus and Australia three hundred and fifty years before Cook. Why is this not common knowledge? Well after two years at sea the fleets returned to a changed political China, the new self imposed isolation shut China off from the world that it had just found and all exploration was not only discouraged, it was erased from history, the fleets rotted and the records lost.

After fifteen years of research, Gavin Menzies, a man with a long navel pedigree has retraced the forgotten voyages of the Chinese fleet. By examining what charts and records do survive he pieces together the places visited by these fleets. The most compelling evidence comes in more physical form. These fleets traded their way around the world and may explain why certain types of Asian fowl are found in many parts of America, birds that have never naturally occurred in Europe, birds that cannot fly. Wreckage of medieval Asian ships have been found off of Australia, and many of these ships position mark the last places information was gathered by the fleets, making them ships that sank without their findings being returned to the main expedition.

The evidence is varied, carved stones in Africa in a script which is arguably from the India sailors on the ships, these fleets were crewed by a wide range of Chinese dependencies. Anchors found in Los Angeles, ancient Chinese dialects being traced in the language of the North Pacific, all point to visitations and even colonies set up by the expedition.

Menzies takes you on an marvellous detective trail, which leads you all over the world. Some of the evidence could be argued to be a bit speculative, but there is so much of it presented that he still offers a very convincing story. The joy of the book is that it is so varied, where as most books of this kind are exploring a specific and detail story, the voyages of Zhu Di take you to every continent and produce an eclectic body of evidence.

Learn more about this author, Dave Franklin.
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