A replica of an armed merchant vessel from the Ming Dynasty will make its maiden voyage next month to re-enact an historic event, the Tainan City Government announced at a press conference yesterday.
The first replica “Tayouan boat,” commissioned by the city’s Cultural Affairs Department, will embark on Saturday from Anping Harbor and sail to the estuary of Luermen Creek (鹿耳門溪), where Cheng Chen-kung (鄭成功), better-known as Koxinga, a Chinese military leader who drove Dutch colonists out of Taiwan in 1662, landed there with his troops a year earlier.
Koxinga’s fleet was composed mainly of this type of vessel.
Tainan Mayor Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財) said the ship would circumnavigate Taiwan next year to celebrate the Republic of China’s centennial before sailing to the Japanese city of Hirado, where Koxinga was born, and Quanzhou in Fujian Province, China, where he trained his troops, as well as the outlying islands of Kinmen and Penghu.
The full-size replica is constructed based on a picture painted in the Qing Dynasty and owned by the Matsura Historical Museum in Japan. It took three years to build and was launched on May 1.
The vessel is 29.5m long and has a beam of 7.26m. It weighs about 300 tonnes with a displacement of 150 tonnes.
The “Tayouan boat” has played no more than a bit part in history since Koxinga’s rule in Taiwan ended more than 300 years ago, but the replica will represent a new page in the country’s maritime history, Hsu said.
Spain, which also had a presence in Taiwan during the 17th century, has expressed an interest in the ship traveling to that country, Hsu said, although he added that such a long and arduous journey is not being considered at present.
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