15 Chinese ship construction

Chinese ship construction

1. Ship Design

(i) Cedric Bell’s discovery of hull cement from a giant junk at Moeraki, New Zealand, with similar cement found at a Miami ship channel (ex Bimini) leads us to believe the hulls were stiffened by pouring in concrete.  The triple hull mahogany near the keel (double thickness above that) leads us to think the hull thickness was to support the weight of concrete.

(ii) Cedric Bell’s Magnetic Anomaly Survey of New Zealand, South Island discloses 7 giants of 150 metres by 50 metres.  Nanjing dry dock no.6 has been flooded from 1431 until today.  It is 500m x 80m.  A 42 ft wooden rudder was found at the bottom of this dry dock.  Why build a dry dock of such size unless it was needed?  (There were another 6 at Nanjing of the same size).

Combining (i) and (ii) suggests a 150m x 50m ship with a flat bottom stiffened by concrete i.e. a modern super tanker design.

2. Masts

The Moeraki boulders have been found right above 3 Junks of 150m x 50m discovered by Cedric Bell’s MAS survey.  The biggest is of an 8 metre diameter weighing 18 tons.  There are 23 others of different sizes.  This is the only place in N.Z. these spherical boulders have been found.  They could be natural – but it would be an incredible coincidence.

Paul Lewis has suggested they may be counterweights to raise the sails.  GM considers this is plausible.  Treasure ship hull hatches are inordinately large – more than 50m long and 10m wide: bad damage control unless they served a purpose.

They could cover “scenic railways” i.e. inclined ramps along which the balls slid down to hoist the sails and were hauled up again when the sails were lowered.  This would account for the strange positioning of masts described by Ibn Battuta and others, not along the keel line but stepped off it – to avoid the hatches and balls.

The Moeraki hull cement has been analysed.  Results will be placed on the website.

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