Waymouth was tasked with the ambitious mission of discovering a shorter northern passage to Ming China — one that would offer ...

The passage above is a modern-English rendering of an excerpt from a letter written in 1602 by Queen Elizabeth of England to the Wanli Emperor of China's Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), who reigned from ...

Yet, long before all that, there was the legendary Chinese seafarer Zheng He, whose seven voyages between 1405 and 1433 were unmatched in scale and ambition until Vasco da Gama's historic expedition ...