Precedents
Keying may not have been quite the first Chinese sailing ship to round the Cape of Good Hope, since the Venetian monk and cartographer Fra Mauro describes in his 1457 Fra Mauro map the travels of a huge "ship or junk from India" 2,000 miles (3,000 km) into the Atlantic Ocean around 1420 (Original Italian "una nave over çoncho de India", lit. "A ship or junk of India"). It is unclear though which part of Asia this expression would refer to, as "India" was a general descriptor for Asia at that time. If it was a Chinese junk, then depending on what credence one places on the theories about the voyages of the ships of Admiral Zheng He's squadrons, then that may be one explanation. Piero Falchetta in his 2006 Fra Mauro World Map describes the passage as "The important note which in all probability refers to the voyages of Zheng Ho". Given the penetration of Arab mariners down the east coast of Africa, this might also be a voyaging vessel from the Indian Ocean trading 'circuit'.
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“The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)