Djong
[16]: 60 European writings from 1345 through 1609 use a variety of related terms, including jonque (French), ioncque, ionct, giunchi, zonchi (Italian), iuncque, joanga, juanga (Spanish), junco (Portuguese), and ionco, djonk, jonk (Dutch).
[23][24] The "djong" spelling is of colonial Dutch origin, rendering the j sound as "dj",[3]: 71 though both traditional British and current Indonesian orthography romanizes it as jong.
When Portuguese sailors reached the waters of Southeast Asia in the early 1500s they found this area dominated by Javanese junk ships, operating on the vital spice route, between Moluccas, Java, and Malacca.
In 1293 AD Raden Wijaya presented a map and census record to the Yuan Mongol invader, suggesting that mapmaking has been a formal part of governmental affairs in Java.
[28]: 249 [31]: lxxix [32][6]: 163–164, 166–168 [33] When Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Malacca, the Portuguese recovered a chart from a Javanese maritime pilot, which already included part of the Americas.
I send this piece to Your Highness, which Francisco Rodrigues traced from the other, in which Your Highness can truly see where the Chinese and Gores come from, and the course your ships must take to the Clove Islands, and where the gold mines lie, and the islands of Java and Banda, of nutmeg and mace, and the land of the King of Siam, and also the end of the land of the navigation of the Chinese, the direction it takes, and how they do not navigate farther.— Letter of Albuquerque to King Manuel I of Portugal, 1 April 1512.A Portuguese account described how the Javanese people already had advanced seafaring skills and had communicated with Madagascar in 1645:[34][35][16]: 57 [36]: 51 The Javanese are all men very experienced in the art of navigation, to the point that they claim to be the most ancient of all, although many others give this honor to the Chinese, and affirm that this art was handed on from them to the Javanese.
But it is certain that they formerly navigated to the Cape of Good Hope and were in communication with the east coast of the island of São Lourenço (San Laurenzo — Madagascar), where there are many brown and Javanese-like natives who say they are descended from them.— Diogo do Couto, Decada Quarta da AsiaResearch in 2016 showed that the Malagasy people have genetic links to various Maritime Southeast Asian ethnic groups, particularly from southern Borneo.
[7]: 148 and 169 Barbosa also reported various goods carried by these ships, which include rice, meat of cows, sheep, pigs, and deer, dried and salted, many chickens, garlic, and onions.
Barbosa mention places and route in which these ships visited, which include Maluku Islands, Timor, Banda, Sumatra, Malacca, China, Tenasserim, Pegu (Bago), Bengal, Pulicat, Coromandel, Malabar, Cambay (Khambat), and Aden.
[67][15]: 82 In 1322 friar Odoric of Pordenone recorded that during his voyage from India to China he boarded a vessel of the zuncum type which carried at least 700 people, either sailors or merchants.
[79] Prior to the Battle of Bubat in 1357, the Sunda king and the royal family arrived in Majapahit after sailing across the Java Sea in a fleet of 200 large ships and 2000 smaller vessels.
[80] The royal family boarded a nine-decked hybrid Sino-Southeast Asian junk (Old Javanese: Jong sasanga wangunan ring Tatarnagari tiniru).
This hybrid junk incorporated Chinese techniques, such as using iron nails alongside wooden dowels, construction of watertight bulkheads, and the addition of a central rudder.
[82][83] Wang Dayuan's 1349 composition Daoyi Zhilüe Guangzheng Xia ("Description of the Barbarian of the Isles") described the so-called "horse boats" at a place called Gan-mai-li in Southeast Asia.
Data from Marco Polo records made it possible to calculate that the largest ships may have had a burden tonnage of 500–800 tons, about the same as Chinese vessels used to trade in the 19th century.
[86] Marco Polo also noted that they may have 2 or 3 of these tenders, and may have about 10 small boats for helping the main vessel, such as for laying out anchors, catching fish, and bringing supplies aboard.
[88] Florentine merchant Giovanni da Empoli (1483–1517), one of the first Italian agents to join a Portuguese armada to India in 1503–1504,[89] said that in the land of Java, a junk is no different in its strength than a castle, because it had three and four boards, one above the other, which cannot be harmed with artillery.
[90] Passing by Pacem (Samudera Pasai Sultanate) the Portuguese came across two junks, one was from Coromandel, which was captured immediately, and the other was from Java which weighed about 600 tons, near Polvoreira (likely Pulau Berhala, 160 miles from Malacca, between Belawan, Medan and Lumut, Perak).
The Portuguese sent out small boats to approach it, and ordered it to halt but it promptly opened fire on the fleet, its crew hurling down spears, arrows, stones, gunpowder pots, and flammable materials.
The junk was so tall that Flor de la Mar's rear castle could barely reach its bridge,[note 6] and the Portuguese did not dare to board it.
[note 10][22]: 23, 177 Although defeated, Pati Unus sailed home and beached his armored war junk as a monument of a fight against men he called the bravest in the world, his exploit winning him a few years later the throne of Demak.
It took three years to build, as your Lordship may have heard tell in Malacca concerning this Pati Unus, who made this armada to become king of Malacca.— Fernão Pires de Andrade[100]Fernão Lopes de Castanheda noted that Pati Unus' junk is built with 7 layers of planking, called lapis in Javanese and Malay, between each layer was put a coating consisting of a mixture of bitumen, lime, and oil.
[17]: 266 Muhammad Averoes calculated the size by determining its displacement first, and obtained that the Pati Unus' junk has a displacement tonnage of 5556 tons and deadweight of 2000 tons, with an LOA of 88.56 m and LOD of 80.51 m.[5]: 59–62 Impressed by the Javanese's skill in shipbuilding, Albuquerque hired 60 Javanese carpenters and shipbuilders from the Malacca shipyard and sent them to India, with the hope that these craftsmen will be able to repair Portuguese ships in India.
At least 1 jong was sailed to Portugal, to be deployed as a coast guard ship at Sacavem under the instruction of King John III,[103][note 14] and as a warship in the Gibraltar Strait Fleet, the Esquadra do Estreito.
[104] Tomé Pires in 1515 wrote that the authorities of Canton (Guangzhou) made a law that obliged foreign ships to anchor at an island off-shore.
[31]: 122–123 In 1574, queen Kalinyamat of Jepara Sultanate attacked the Portuguese Malacca with 300 vessels under the command of Kyai Demang, which included 80 jongs weighing up to 400 tons burthen and 220 kelulus, although with very little artillery and firearms.
As the supplies were dwindling and the air corrupted by disease,[105][21]: 212 Tristão Vaz da Veiga decided to arm a small fleet of a galley and four half-galleys and about 100 soldiers and head out to the River of Malaios,[clarification needed] in the middle of the night.
The shipmates are divided over multiple small rooms and chambers; the stern hangs like a farmer's outhouse miraculously sticking out very far over the water; you can also find a cabin for the captain there or the supercargo who is responsible for the handling of business.
[111]: 201 Since the mid-16th century the maritime forces of the archipelago began to use new types of agile naval vessels that could be equipped with larger cannons: In various attacks on Portuguese Malacca after the defeat of Pati Unus, they no longer used jong but used lancaran, ghurab, and ghali.
[113] Production of djongs ended in the 1700s, perhaps because of the decision of Amangkurat I of Mataram Sultanate to destroy ships in coastal cities and close ports to prevent them from rebelling, in 1655.
