Replica Chinese sailing junk sunk by freighter

by News Hawaii/Sail-World Cruising on 28 Apr 2009 A Chinese sailing junk which was on the last leg of a journey to prove how Chinese sailors could have visited America 600 years ago, has been sunk after a collision with a freighter off the coast of Taiwan. Sail-World had been following the progress of the Princess TaiPing, a faithfully recreated sailing junk of the Ming Dynasty period.(See http://www.sail-world.com/Cruising/Did-the-Chinese-Sail-to-America-before-Columbus?/52464!story )

The 54-foot sailing vessel built in Taiwan had crossed the Pacific to visit ports on the U.S. West Coast.

The 11 crew members clung to floating wreckage for up to five hours during a storm Saturday, about 20 to 30 miles off the coast of Taiwan, before they were picked up by Taiwanese Coast Guard helicopters.

Crew members told relatives by e-mail and phone that they had established radio contact with a freighter which was moving on a parallel course in the dark. The freighter suddenly veered into them, slicing the wooden Princess TaiPing in two and then continuing on without stopping, crew member Elizabeth Zeiger said by e-mail to relatives in California.

'We literally watched the entire ship get demolished,' Zeiger said in the e-mail. 'It seemed like we were going to get sucked under it, but after it finally passed we were still alive!'

Crew member John Hunter III, one of five Hawaii residents aboard the ship, 'called it a miracle that they had survived,' said his mother, Ann Hunter.

The black and red junk took six years to build and prepare for the grand Pacific voyage. It features no engine and no modern sealants in its construction.

In April, Capt. Nelson Liu and a crew of eight left from Hong Kong and Taiwan to sail across the Pacific in exactly the same vessel used by Chinese sailors more than 600 years ago. In fact, the Princess TaiPing that sailed into San Diego Harbor on Nov. 16, after stops in Vancouver, Canada; Seattle and San Francisco, was many times smaller than the historic Chinese junks that sailed the seas when China was at the zenith of its maritime power.

Given the historical fact that 10 anchors from similar Chinese ships have been found in the bottom of the ocean in various parts of the West Coast – and the theory becomes more than conjecture.

The TaiPing, launched in January 2008 after six years of research and development, sailed from Taiwan to Okinawa and Japan, crossed 5,100 miles of ocean to Northern California, then sailed down to San Diego returning via Hawaii, where some Hawaiian residents joined the trip.

Liu, 61, said the crossing from Japan to Eureka, Calif., took 69 days, with sea swells sometimes in excess of 15 feet and crew members sleeping in tiny crawl spaces covered by a row of hatches down the center of the boat.

'I and doing this to prove our ancestors could do such a voyage,' said Liu, a congenial, soft-spoken man in his 50s, during an interview before sailing back to China.

Everything he and his crew did was exactly as it might have been 600 years ago. They washed and did dishes with sea water – even brushed their teeth. And they ate what they caught along the way – mostly squid and mahi mahi. Tea was also prepared every day in the ancient way. And living quarters? Barely wide enough to house a duffle bag, but they managed.

Of course, there were concerns such as pirates and storms, but Liu is a man of experience who sailed around the world several times, although in modern, Western-type sailing vessels. In 1992, he crossed the Pacific 'in the wrong season. We hit a typhoon,' he explained. 'But, on the other hand, the boat was tested. It sailed wonderfully, but I was scared to death.'

The experience also tested Liu and convinced him that the voyage of a lifetime could be done, so he set out to raise funds to make a longtime dream come true.

'Our mission is to restore the craftsmanship and navigation techniques of ancient Chinese people, to honor the richness of Chinese maritime culture, and to applaud the glorious pieces in Chinese history,' Liu wrote in a promotional piece published by National Geographic magazine.

Eighty-seven years before Christopher Columbus made his famous voyage, China’s most famous navigator, Zheng He (Cheng Ho), was sailing throughout the South Pacific and Indian Ocean, recording seven epic voyages to the Persian Gulf and faraway Africa. Zheng’s flagship was 400 feet long, much larger than the Princess TaiPing, as well as Columbus’ Santa Maria. From the beginning of the 15th century, and for 28 years, he traveled some 60,000 miles, visiting more than 30 countries.

Liu set out to revive this tradition, which included building a replica of a Chinese junk from scratch and with the same materials used centuries ago, relying on records and documents from the Ming Dynasty to maintain accuracy. Not only was the appearance the same; so were the shipbuilding techniques, which meant no bolts, screws or anything synthetic.
While similar craft have been built using fiberglass and other synthetic materials, the Princess TaiPing was all wood.

Construction was finally completed last year and a trial run made from Hong Kong to Taiwan before setting sail across the Pacific in January of last year. After being docked at the San Diego Maritime Museum for two weeks, the ship embarked on its return voyage Saturday, November 29.

There were those, of course, who told him that it couldn’t be done. And those who simply called him 'nuts.'
What kept him going through all the negativity? 'Simply passion,' he said, as well as proving that in this era of globalization and conformity, 'our old traditions are not so bad.'

All the time, his message was this: Stay constant. Don’t be discouraged. And, most of all, don’t be afraid to try something new.

All that passion, and all the determination, have come to a tragic end. However, Liu has proved his point. The Princess TaiPing had only a few days to go, and certainly would have reached its home port were it not for the incident at sea.

Jessica Lee, director of the Taipei Cultural Office in Honolulu, said she was told an official investigation of the collision would be conducted in Taiwan.