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I think we can take it that if the US DoD tell us that they have put x items on a ship and name the ship and the ship proceeds to sea with her AIS transmitting, that secrecy was never intended for...

Way back in the early days of this place I wrote and illustrated an article on using a yuloh to propel a wooden canal boat in a Chinese town.

Paul - don’t go there. Leave it to the IMO and the ILO. Please nicely?

Yes, good effort.

I bet if we were in the same room you would get on rather well.

Anyone want to comment on the photos above?

The large lorcha in the top picture was photographed at anchor outside Shanghai in the late 1930s, it probably represents the upper size limit bearing in mind that a junk rig mast is a single...

I think it is incredibly difficult to know why things happened in the past in China. The language is a barrier, the culture is another. One theory that appeals to me is the idea put forward by Jared...

Dear Generalissimo Prizoghin,

Please supply a better class of shill; this one is too silly for the target audience.

HRD - do you remember the entrance to the old Minzu Fandian*,with the beautiful white marble bas reliefs of fifties trucks, propeller driven airliners, factory chimneys belching smoke, and so on? I...

Thanks, HRD.

Indeed I do!

I used to have some of the yi fen notes, with the picture of the 1950s truck on them.
...

Just so.

I do not share in the fascination with the seven voyages of Zheng He.

Unlike the European voyages of exploration, the Ming voyages accomplished nothing that lasted.

I may have my history wrong...

I don’t think so; Tom is referring to the make up of the fighting unit.

No… I suppose that makes sense, but a knife with removable blade(s) would be better.

Very interesting post, Tom.

My Army medical officer Cadet son has just got back from a training weekend spent on a beach which belongs to the Royal Marines because all the Army training facilities...

A good youtube from Perun on the present state of the Russian military industrial complex:

https://youtu.be/V9xQf8LQgCU

We have our own independent

https://www.theriverside.co.uk/cinema/

in a town of 10,500.

We rather like it.

Since 1905…

In one of the most lopsided referendum results in history, the plebiscite was held on 13 August and resulted in an overwhelming 368,208 votes (99.95%) in favor of confirming the...

Thank you.

The Chinese term “wumao” (HRD please correct!) is said to have been created to describe one group of such people, who were said to earn 50 fen (wu = five, mao = ten fen) for each post...

We are desperately short of photographs of lorchas. They were everywhere, and then they weren’t.

https://i.postimg.cc/85bT0vv7/15-FD29-A6-87-D2-45-A5-8673-1401-ACC925-A6.jpg

...

I see it differently.

I think the absolute priority is very, very simple and very hard at the same time.

Persuade China to continue to resist every attempt by Russia to drag China into...

I have not, but I will point out that one of the things that happened once European and Chinese seafarers had got into regular contact was the development of the lorcha . A lorcha was a European...

What the Kenyan Ambassador said, in February 2022.

^agreed^

Dalian Maritime University… no need to say more.

That place was turning out yuppies, and not seamen, thirty years ago.

The limits on the size of a wooden hull are absolute whether Chinese or European shipbuilding methods are used. Physics is the same everywhere. Seppings’ use of diagonal metal bracing helped a bit,...

A question for the nonbelievers:

Has this been Photoshopped?

https://i.postimg.cc/W1vbzDz5/83160-BBC-CCE9-446-D-8-FE6-046-FD817273-E.jpg

Works for me when held sideways!

My friends in China’s shipbuilding industry tell me that a certain amount of grade inflation has taken place in the accounts of the ships used in Zheng He’s voyages.

Four factories in four cities in Iran have … accidentally … caught fire and exploded.

Karaj, air force base
Isfahan, munitions factory
Karaj, air force base
Tabriz, military industrial plant....

Yes, and it probably will. Scotland is 78% pro EU, Norn Iron is majority pro EU, England and Wales voted to leave. The GFA is essential but the DUP want to ditch it; if they keep this up for long...

https://shankar20.medium.com/racism-is-not-the-reason-why-americas-police-force-is-dying-from-the-inside-73b91851a022

Some ships more than others: the “Grace Harwar” was a notorious killer, but the “Cutty Sark” only killed two, iirc. They were washed off the jibboom off the Horn in Captain Woodget’s time. He noted...

The Good Friday Agreement was put together on the basis of both sides staying in the EU. Then the English and the Welsh went mad.

I know a stainless steel fabricator I must introduce you to…

I think I should voice the politically incorrect view that quite a lot of the people who fought in both World Wars rather enjoyed themselves. I had two uncles in WW1 and a father in WW2 who had...

HRD’s link doesn’t work for me, but I have read “The Snow Lion and the Dragon”, on his recommendation, and I found it excellent. Indeed I agree with all he writes, here.

Well having quoted one troll I may as well quote the other one.

Russian propaganda likes to claim that their state is “at war with NATO”. As several cartoonists have pointed out, this cannot be...

I will make an exception to my rule of not quoting trolls, because I want to bash this excrescence down firmly.

Anyone here who has ever visited Germany or Japan or even has a friend in either...

Yes, indeed. Actually one can get quite close because there is a cruise ship which uses her sail plan, although it’s not as pretty.

https://www.starclippers.com/en/

There is a good account of...

Five masts, ship rigged with royals, steel hull and spars, full width deck house with wheelhouse on top, Jarvis brace winches - just about perfect:
...

That’s what I think, too.

That is magnificent - have now found the youtube thing concerned and subscribed.

The Challenger II was conceived as a “defence” tank, so to speak. That’s why it’s a bit bigger and heavier and slightly slower than the other NATO tanks. It was intended to lurk in cover, move from...

HRD is not a bot or a troll. He is what he says he is; he just adopted a somewhat aggressive tone when he arrived here.

Some Gods come with bonus submission of women, wife beating and child trafficking. What’s not to like?

Some Gods come with bonus submission of women, wife beating and child trafficking. What’s not to like?

This is Somalia, George. Somalis don’t hold weddings in caves.

Nick, the proximate cause of the explosion was the idiotic decision to store the ammonium nitrate ashore in the port, and that was caused by bureaucratic infighting. The point that I am making, and...

A date… (the UKDJ is usually accurate about this sort of thing):

Delivery of tanks and support equipment, with training complete, by the end of March.
...

Somalia has been preyed on by these murdering gangsters using the cloak of religion for far too long. Well done, the USA.