Project Green Jet - a vision of the future of sailing

The biggest wooden boats in history

Just how big the largest of Zheng He’s sailing ships were, is a matter of debate. Until a recent archeological find, these large warships had only ever been described, and were not captured in paintings. There has been much postulation on the size of the biggest ships, with some believing there were mega-treasure ships as long as 600 feet, while others pointing out a wooden boat of such size was a physical impossibility. Had such boats existed in 1421, they would have been more than twice the size of anything that existed in Europe at the time, and bigger than any known wooden boat in history, to this present day .

Then came a chance finding in 1962, within sight of the Ming naval shipyards in Nanking. Peasants unearthed a rudder-post some 36.2 feet long and 1.25 feet in diameter believed to be from one of the giant ships. Using these measurements, naval architects estimate that the rudder attached to the post was nearly half its length in height and breadth, or 452 square feet of wood. The ship to which such a rudder belonged, following the rules of thumb for Chinese ship construction, would be at least 400 feet long. One rudder does not a treasure ship make, but when archeologists excavating the same Ming naval shipyards in 2004 found another two rudder-posts the same size, we get a tantalizing hint of what could have existed at the time - a navy of gigantic ships that outweighed, out-gunned and out-classed anything afloat in 1420 and was arguably as dominant as the U.S Fleet is today.

As we often find when researching a story for Gizmag these days, “there’s so much more to find out about this”. Clearly we have seen some magnificent sailing ships throughout history that are not yet fully documented, much less understood.

The rise and fall and rise of sailpower

Human exploitation of the wind has known many forms, and sailpower has been one humanity’s key enabling technologies from about 5500 years ago, until it became temporarily irrelevant 100 years ago – the importance of reliable delivery for the world’s growing trade meant that the more reliable power of diesel engines now carries nearly all of the world’s trade. Now, because the world has suddenly realized that it is choking on its own excrement, the impeccable environmental credentials of sailpower has it very much back in vogue. Sailpower is free and leaves no noxious residues, as opposed to most diesel-powered ships which consume an obscene amount of resources and excesses.

Shipping’s willingness to dump its prodigious waste into what has always seemed an endless supply of wilderness contributes a disproportionately large percentage of the world’s toxic emmisions. The time is fast approaching when the global public will cry out against the environmental atrocities of the shipping industry. In exactly the same way that the rest of industry has had to begin adapting its consumption habits and act responsibly within its urban and industrial environment, seafarers will also need to act far more responsibly than they have until now.

The environmental atrocities of the maritime industry

...continued