Voyages
| Order | Time | Regions along the way |
|---|---|---|
| 1st Voyage | 1405–1407 | Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Aru (id:Aru), Samudera, Lambri, Ceylon, Kollam, Cochin, Calicut |
| 2nd Voyage | 1407–1409 | Champa, Java, Siam, Cochin, Ceylon |
| 3rd Voyage | 1409–1411 | Champa, Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Quilon, Cochin, Calicut, Siam, Lambri, Kayal, Coimbatore, Puttanpur |
| 4th Voyage | 1413–1415 | Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Cochin, Calicut, Kayal, Pahang, Kelantan, Aru, Lambri, Hormuz, Maldives, Mogadishu, Barawa, Malindi, Aden, Muscat, Dhofar |
| 5th Voyage | 1416–1419 | Champa, Pahang, Java, Malacca, Samudera, Lambri, Ceylon, Sharwayn, Cochin, Calicut, Hormuz, Maldives, Mogadishu, Barawa, Malindi, Aden |
| 6th Voyage | 1421–1422 | Hormuz, East Africa, countries of the Arabian Peninsula |
| 7th Voyage | 1430–1433 | Champa, Java, Palembang, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Calicut, Fengtu... (18 states in total) |
Zheng He led seven expeditions to the "Western" or Indian Ocean. Zheng He brought back to China many trophies and envoys from more than thirty kingdoms – including King Vira Alakeshwara of Ceylon, who came to China as a captive to apologize to the Emperor for offenses against his mission.
There has been speculation that at least some of Zheng's ships may have traveled beyond the Cape of Good Hope. In particular, the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro in his 1459 map described the travels of a huge "junk from India" 2,000 miles into the Atlantic Ocean in 1420. What Fra Mauro meant by 'India' is uncertain and some scholars believe he meant an Arab ship. Others, most famously Gavin Menzies, propose Zheng He may have discovered America 70 years before Christopher Columbus.
Zheng himself wrote of his travels:
We have traversed more than 100,000 li of immense water spaces and have beheld in the ocean huge waves like mountains rising in the sky, and we have set eyes on barbarian regions far away hidden in a blue transparency of light vapors, while our sails, loftily unfurled like clouds day and night, continued their course as a star, traversing those savage waves as if we were treading a public thoroughfare…
Read more about this topic: Zheng He
Famous quotes containing the word voyages:
“Space—the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
—Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991)