false 1 8 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Jul 07 01:10:42 -0700 2008 Mon Jul 07 23:12:38 -0700 2008 Menzies takes a tremendous dump on the sensibilities of his readers, bombarding us with outrageous claims backed up with erroneous facts and arrogant speculation. A typical "fact" presented by Menzies is introduced with "By this point I was sure..." or "I realized that Zhou must have...." or even "From my days as a navigator, I knew that ...." Then Menzies will absurdly postulate about what the Treasure Fleet MUST have been doing in uncharted territory, with no trace of written or oral record, halfway across the globe nearly 600 years ago. He claims he knows the exact date that the the Fleet passed certain islands in the Caribbean due to their haphazard presence and occurrence on later European charts (the absence of the moon excuses when these oddly shaped islands are misrepresented or missed on the charts). Then he will wax appreciatively about how precise Chinese navigators and cartographers were, attributing stone structures (Menzies' alleged observation decks) all around the globe to Chinese astronomical prowess and their desire to properly construct latitude and longitude by measuring eclipses all across the globe. Of course, the Chinese never bothered to go back to these places to collect the results. Nor did they return to the dozens of colonies they set up everywhere from South America to Massachusetts to Gympie, Australia. Nor did they return to collect the fruits of the mines they set up all over the world. Menzies will say that this is because of the isolationist policy China soon after adopted. But if you really think about, and if you read later editions' postscripts and visit his website - you will soon realize that he is trying to collect all of the unaccountables and unexplainables of history and wrap them up in a flimsy and manipulative description of a massive journey and colonization campaign that most likely never even happened. This book is the nadir of pop history, and, sadly, it shows how dedicated propagandists have been stretching history to their own means for centuries - mix your audience's curiosity and ignorance with a fantastical proposition and then support it with smart and thorough sounding explanations based on baseless facts, and then sit back and let their imagination take hold.

It may be added that the HMS Rorqual, the submarine that Menzies briefly commanded, experienced its only collision under his steerage. So much for his great navigational deductions.]]>