Considering you were comparing ships to Nanhai #1 which was a merchant ship, not a warship, why do you think I'm restricting my comparisons to warships? Merchant ships were hardly larger than warships, if anything, the opposite was often the case because bigger ships are better at war to prevent boarding. Average warships in the 17th and 18th century century were often in the high hundreds of tons whereas merchant ships were often less than 100 ton. The largest ships, such as the HMS Sovereign of the Seas or the HMS Victory were also all warships.
The example you used talked about "transport" ships, which are not warships. We have no actual examples of the actual size of Ming warships. We do know that
1. When we no longer have to rely strictly on Chinese records, the Ming warships were smaller than their European counterparts. Both in conflicts with the Portuguese and the Dutch, the Ming warships were smaller. That places an upper limit on the size of the Ming warships. In both the Battles of Tunmen and Battle of Liaoluo Bay, the Chinese ships were smaller.
2. In the Qing dynasty, which we have better records for, the Chinese warships are consistently smaller than Western warships.
3. We lack detail as to the construction of the Chinese warships. We do not know:
- The names of the Chinese ships, either for Zheng He or other Ming ships.
- We do not know how many cannons they carried on the Zheng He Treasure ships or type, or on the other Ming warships as far as we know.
As far as large ships go, the Peter von Danzig, a 15th century 800 ton ship, was originally a commercial ship before it was converted into a warship, and that was largely than any purpose built warship of the time except the Grace Dieu. While in the 17th and 18th century, some of the largest European warships did exceed the size of the largest commercial ships, that was was the exception rather than the rule. The Great Eastern, at 32,160 ton displacement, was larger than any warship of the time. And as stated, today's commercial ships are far larger than any warship.
The reality is, when you do the math comparing number of men and ships for naval encounters of the Ming dynasty, the average size of ships is small. For example, in the Battle of Penghu, the Qing naval forces had 600 ships and 60,000 men and the Ming loyalist 200 ships and 20,000 men, which works out to mere 100 men per Qing and Ming ships, which is rather small.
Battle Of Penghu
Haven't we already provided primary sources showing Ming ships with 2,000-5,000 liao (800-2,000 tons) displacement? Why are you continuously using the non-primary sources in Ming Shi and a novel?
Again, the fact that the Chinese built ships as large aa 5,000 liao (1,250 tons burthen) does not mean that that the Chinese were building warships that large. The Qing built ships as large as 800 tons (Keying, 45m long, 20 cannons
Keying (ship) - Wikipedia ) and 1000 tons (Tek Sing, 50 m long
Tek Sing Shipwreck), yet the Ji Tongan ships were the largest Qing battleships:
Tongan ships were large traditional sailing vessels that emerged in the middle of the Qing Dynasty. Named after the place they were constructed, Tong-an, Fujian, they were first widely used in the private sector and by pirates before finally becoming the naval mainstay of the Qing court. Before the arrival of steamships in China, Tong-an ships were the most representative sailing vessels. [Source: National Palace Museum, Taipei
npm.gov.tw \=/ ] ......
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The biggest and most heavily armed of the Tongan ship family were also class 1 and class 2 warships. According to the National Palace Museum, Taipei: “ The No. 1-type Tongan ship was 22 meters long ..........The Ji-type Tongan ship was 26 meters long with a mainmast measuring 29 meters high. As shown in the diagram, the biggest difference between Tongan ships and old naval ships was the three masts .......The Ji-type Tongan ship possessed eight primary cannon outlets, which were used for two 1,440-kg red cannons, two 1,200-kg red cannons, and four 900-kg red cannons. In addition, one 480-kg and sixteen 84-kg short-ranged artilleries were added for a total of 25 firing outlets ......
CHINESE SHIPS, SEA DEFENSES AND MARITIME TRADE IN THE QING DYNASTY | Facts and Details
As one can see, the Qing warships were much smaller than the commercial Qing sailing ships, with the larger Qing Ji Tongan ship only 26 m long compared to the 45 m length of the Keying, which shows that the fact the Chinese had ships that were 5,000 liao does not show they had "battleships" of 5000 liao (1,250 tons burthen). It is entirely reasonable to assume that the Ming dynasty battleships were similar in size to the Qing dynasty ships.
And note, the Ming Shi was an officially Chinese source, and and as Sally Church said in her "Zheng He: Plausibility of 450 ft treasure ship" article , it was the not the only Chinese source that claimed such dimensions for Zheng He ship. That is why the 450 foot figure is still consistently mentioned, because the figure was note confined to fantasy novels. It does raise questions about the reliability of the rest of what Chinese sources say, although we have a number of non-Chinese sources that support the idea of 1000 tons burthen Chinese ships, at least commercial ones.
The Battle of Noryang mentioned Cheng Youliang having over 100 Louchuan which could fit 2,000-3,000 people in five decks, not small ships. Have you even read up the battle?
And what source is this from? Cheng Youliang lived more than a century before the battle of Noryang in the Imjin war. Perhaps you meant Chen Lin?
Chen Youliang (1320 – August 23, 1363) was the founder of the insurgent state of
Da Han (大漢; literally: "Great Han") in the late
Yuan Dynasty period of
Chinese history.
Chen Youliang - Wikipedia
And the Louchuan were "Tower Ships" used on river warfare, and would have been totally unsuitable to be used on the open sea, such as in the Battle of Noryang. And unlike for European ships, were have actual physical evidence supporting the claims for the sizes of the European warships, we don't have such evidence for the Chinese ships, including the Louchuan/Tower Ships.
What we do know is that both before the Battle of Noryang, with the Portuguese in the Battle of Tunmen, and afterwards with the Dutch, the Chinese ships were smaller, although Zheng Zhilong was building ships incorporating European elements when the Dutch destroyed them in a surprise attack during the Battle of
Liaoluo Bay before the Chinese had a chance to properly deploy these new ships.
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148 ships with 16,000 men implies 108 men per ship. That would be 270 tons if we use 2.5 tons per man. Hackneyedscribe already provided you the chart for all the ships of the Anthony Roll, and they are on average around that weight too.
The 2.5 tons per men does not apply to late medieval and later European ships. You can clearly see this in the Anthony Rolls. The Mary Rose was 700 tons burthen and had 200 sailors, for 3.5 tons per man. The Harry Grace a Dieu had 1000 tons and 301 sailors, for 3.3 tons per sailor. Since Song Li used a 2.5 ton per sailor number for grain ships, the 2.5 tons were man Chinese figure was for sailors, and did not include soldiers.
Unless you provide source where warships are smaller than the average transport ship, then you shouldn't use Nanhai or excavated ships at all, because they are not even warships.
We've found three Chinese ships with dimensions, and the mean is at least over 200 tons, which matches the typical ship size during the Song given in the primary sources and rivals the size of average ships from the Anthony Roll.
And I can cite the wrecks of 3 Europe ships, the Mars, the Mary Rose, and the Vasa, with a mean well over 1000 tons. We have found wrecks of ships in the Anthony Roll, the Mary Rose, 700 tons, which is far greater than the largest pre-modern Chinese ship ever found.
As I repeatedly pointed out, ships of the line ratings only dates to well into the 17th century, not earlier; these ships were much bigger than pre-17th century ships, and would be better compared to Qing ships or ships of the Zheng regime rather than Ming ships.
We only have claims these pre 17th century ships were bigger. If we are not going to restrict ourselves to warships, the 12th century Muslim traveler Ibn Jubayr talked about traveling on Genoese ships carrying 2500 Christian pilgrims, as well as Muslim travelers.