Maritime Museum
28 December 2007 | Stanley
Very hot on south side of Hong kong Island, some breeze, flat sea
The maritime museum, strangely for a place so shaped by water, is a private exercise, funded primarily by the big shipping, logistics and related companies of the city. it has two galleries, one exploring the 'ancient' history, basically covering sailing ships from early days to the arrival of steam. Cutty Sark gets a mention of course.
Most interesting to us was this reconstruction of the great treasure junks of the early fifteenth century. The great navigator Zheng Hu (a Muslim eunuch who was the right hand man of the second Ming Emperor, known as Yongle) was admiral of a great fleet that made seven voyages. They certainly visited the east coast of Africa as far as Malindi (Kenya), and had charts of the Cape of Good Hope, as well as going to southern Indonesia and Japan. Some historians have also argued that he circumnavigated, making the Chinese do so long before Columbus and Magellan.
The Museum has also mounted a special exhibition marking 10 years of the HKSAR (handover to China), which we will visit tomorrow at City Hall.