Book description
On 8 March 1421, the largest fleet the world had ever seen set sail
from China. The ships, some nearly five hundred feet long, were under
the command of Emperor Zhu Di's loyal eunuch admirals. Their mission
was 'to proceed all the way to the end of the earth to collect tribute
from the barbarians beyond the seas' and unite the world in Confucian
harmony.
Their journey would last for over two years and take them around the
globe but by the time they returned home, China was beginning its
long, self-imposed isolation from the world it had so recently
embraced. And so the great ships were left to rot and the records of
their journey were destroyed. And with them, the knowledge that the
Chinese had circumnavigated the globe a century before Magellan,
reached America seventy years before Columbus, and Australia three
hundred and fifty years before Cook...
The result of fifteen years research, 1421 is Gavin Menzies'
enthralling account of the voyage of the Chinese fleet, the remarkable
discoveries he made and the persuasive evidence to support them:
ancient maps, precise navigational knowledge, astronomy and the
surviving accounts of Chinese explorers and the later European
navigators as well as the traces the fleet left behind - from sunken
junks to the votive offerings left by the Chinese sailors wherever
they landed, giving thanks to Shao Lin, goddess of the sea.
Already hailed as a classic, this is the story of an extraordinary
journey of discovery that not only radically alters our understanding
of world exploration but also rewrites history itself.
Gavin Menzies (Royal Navy Submarine Commanding Officer, retired)
was born in 1937 in China, where he spent the first two years of his
life. He joined the Royal Navy in 1953 and served in submarines from
1959 to 1970. As a junior officer he sailed the world in the wake of
Columbus, Dias, Cabral and Vasco da Gama. When in command of HMS
Rorqual (1968-1970), he sailed the routes pioneered by Magellan and
Captain Cook. Since leaving the Royal Navy, he has returned to China
and the Far East many times, and in the course of researching 1421 he
has visited 120 countries, over 900 museums and libraries and every
major sea port of the late Middle Ages.
Gavin Menzies is married with two daughters and lives in North London.
