Treasure ships, logistics, and trade-route security

The fleet was a mixed military system rather than a collection of only giant treasure ships. Smaller vessels carried horses, water, and other supplies for more than twenty thousand soldiers. At that scale, the force would have looked like an enormous army to many rulers it encountered. It fought, established garrisons, suppressed piracy, and pressured local rulers in order to secure existing trade routes. Those actions clash with the modern Chinese naval image of the voyages as a purely peaceful presence.