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for driving textile machinery; winders or windlasses with cranks for cranes, wells, and mine shafts; salt mills; pearl-diving apparatus; scoop wheels; pallet chain pumps driven by animals; chain pumps powered by horizontal water wheels; chain pumps operated solely by the current; rotary grinding mills operated by horizontal windmills; double-edged runner mills operated by horizontal water wheels; roller mills; cotton gins; and mills for grinding rice or corn. (See examples on pages in later chapters.)
    Doubtless these descriptions of how to make a wide variety of useful farm machinery would have had value to farmers in other countries. Once the Chinese sailors were ashore, they could have supplemented their wages by selling these books, just as sailors in my time would sell cigarette rations to the locals or give their rum tots to pretty girls.
    Another pocket encyclopedia, the Wu-ching Tsung-yao, a collection of the most important military techniques, gave detailed accounts of the construction and functions of a vast array of military machines. Here is Professor Joseph Needham’s translation of the text next to an eleventh-century description of how to make a flamethrower:
    On the right is the naphtha flame thrower ( fang meng huo yu ). The tank is made of brass and supported on four legs. From its upper surface arise four vertical tubes attached to a horizontal cylinder above. They are all connected with the tank. The head and tail of the cylinder are large, (the middle) of narrow diameter. In the tail is a small opening the size of a millet grain. The head end has two round openings.
    The description continues for another six lines before instructions are given for loading the machine:
    Before use the tank is filled with rather more than three catties of the oil with a spoon through a filter ( sha lo ). At the same time gunpowder ( huo yao ) is placed in the ignition chamber at the head. When the fire is to be started one applies a heated branding-iron (to the ignition chamber) and the piston rod is forced fully into the cylinder. 2
    Subsequent instructions describe how to cope with misfiring or breakdown.
    There are equally detailed descriptions of other military hardware in this remarkable book. The most formidable weapon described is a water-wheeled battleship dating from the Song dynasty ( A.D. 960–1279). It details a twenty-two-wheeled ship commanded by rebels and an even bigger one owned by the government. “Against the paddle wheel fighting ship of Yang Yao, the government force used live bombs thrown from trebuchet catapults. For these they used pottery containers with very thin walls, within which were placed poisonous drugs, lime and fragments of scrap iron. When these were hurled onto the rebel ships during engagements, the lime filled the air like smoke or fog so that sailors could not open their eyes.” 3
    What is extraordinary is that this military information seems to have been unclassified—it could have been acquired by anyone. It must have been of considerable value to realms that lacked sophisticated gunpowder weapons in the 1430s, including Venice and Florence. Perhaps Chinese officers supplemented their incomes by selling these military pocket encyclopedias.
    We can be confident that Zheng He’s fleets had every weapon then known to the Chinese: sea-skimming rockets, machine guns, mines, mortars, bombards for use against shore batteries, cannons, flame-throwers, grenades, and much more. His fleets were powerfully armed and well supplied by water tankers and grain and horse ships, which enabled them to stay at sea for months on end. In addition, the ships were repositories of great wealth—both material and intellectual.
    Of equal importance were the calendars carried by the fleets. Given the order to inform distant lands of the commencement of the new reign of Xuan De, an era when “everything should begin anew,” a calendar was essential to Zheng He’s