Junk (ship)
Chinese junks were originally only fluvial and had square sails, but by the Song dynasty (c. 960 to 1279), they adopted ocean-going technologies acquired from Southeast Asian k'un-lun po trade ships.
The word originally referred to the Javanese djong, very large trading ships that the Portuguese first encountered in Southeast Asia.
After the disappearance of the jong in the 17th century, the meaning of "junk" (and other similar words in European languages) came to refer exclusively to the Chinese ship.
[1] The development of the sea-going Chinese chuán (the "junk" in modern usage) in the Song dynasty (c. 960 to 1279) is believed to have been influenced by regular contacts with sea-going Southeast Asian ships (the k'un-lun po of Chinese records) in trading ports in southern China from the 1st millennium CE onward, particularly in terms of the rigging, multiple sails, and the multiple hull sheaths.
However, the chuán also incorporates distinctly Chinese innovations from their indigenous river and coastal vessels (namely watertight compartments and the central rudders).
[1] "Hybrid" ships (referred to as the "South China Sea tradition") integrating technologies from both the chuán and the djong also started to appear by the 15th century.
It is the reason for the unique characteristics of early Chinese junks, like the absence of keels, very low decks, and solid transverse bulkheads rather than ribs or internal frames.
Ships built in this manner were written of in Zhu Yu's book Pingzhou Table Talks, published by 1119 during the Song dynasty.
[9] Again, this type of construction for Chinese ship hulls was attested to by the Moroccan Muslim Berber traveler Ibn Battuta (1304–1377 CE), who described it in great detail (refer to Technology of the Song dynasty).
[18] Benjamin Franklin wrote in a 1787 letter on the project of mail packets between the United States and France: As these vessels are not to be laden with goods, their holds may without inconvenience be divided into separate apartments, after the Chinese manner, and each of these apartments caulked tight so as to keep out water.Similar wet wells were also apparent in Roman small craft of the 5th century CE.
Western sailors, coming upon a similar water bowl design (no evidence as to how has yet emerged) very rapidly adapted it in a series of significant changes such that within roughly a century the water bowl had given way to the dry pivot, a rotating compass card a century later, a lubberline a generation later and gimbals seventy or eighty years after that.
[21] Junks employed stern-mounted rudders centuries before their adoption in the West for the simple reason that Western hull forms, with their pointed sterns, obviated a centreline steering system until technical developments in Scandinavia created the first, iron mounted, pintle and gudgeon 'barn door' western examples in the early 12th century CE.
[22] Thus the junk rudder's origin, form and construction was completely different in that it was the development of a centrally mounted stern steering oar, examples of which can also be seen in Middle Kingdom (c. 2050–1800 BCE) Egyptian river vessels.
It was an innovation which permitted the steering of large ships and due to its design allowed height adjustment according to the depth of the water and to avoid serious damage should the junk ground.
[24]: 21 Large Austronesian trading ships docking in Chinese seaports with as many as four sails were recorded by scholars as early as the 3rd century CE.
[24]: 24 Around 770 CE, there was great activity in canal and river boat construction, attributed to Liu Yen, who created 10 shipwright yards and provided competitive rewards.
Chin scholar in 1190 described the ships in the form of a poem: "Through the streets carts and horses are rumbling and thronging-We are back in a year of the Hsüan-Ho reign-period.
Going east from the Water-gate one comes to the Canal of the Sui, The streets and the fields are alike incomparable (But Lao Tzu formerly warned against prosperity And today we know it has all become waste-land).
At daybreak, when the gong sounds aboard the ship, the animals can drink their fill, and crew and passengers alike forget all dangers.
A gale may spring up, the ship may be blown hither and thither, it may meet with shoals or be driven upon hidden rocks, then it may be broken to the very roofs (of its deckhouses).
[50] Zhao Zhigang claimed that he has solved the debate of the size difference, and stated that Zheng He's largest ship was about 70 m (230 ft) in length.
[52][53] It was not until the mid to late 19th century that the length of the largest western wooden ship began to exceed 100 meters, even this was done using modern industrial tools and iron parts.
They go with all these goods to Malacca, where they also carry much iron, saltpetre and many other things, and for the return voyage they ship there Sumatra and Malabar pepper, of which they use a great deal in China, and drugs of Cambay, much anfiam, which we call opium, and wormwood, Levant gall nuts, saffron, coral wrought and unwrought, stuffs from Cambay, Palecate, and Bengal, vermilion, quicksilver, scarlet cloth, and many other things...
The Zheng He expeditions had drained imperial funds and there was increasing threat of invasion from the north, leading the Xuande Emperor to order the immediate cessation of all overseas exploration.
[58] In 1661, a naval fleet of 400 junks and 25,000 men led by the Ming loyalist Koxinga (pinyin: Zhèng Chénggōng; Wade–Giles: Chêng4 Chʻêng2-kung1), arrived in Taiwan to oust the Dutch from Zeelandia.
The four-month journey aboard the Free China was captured on film and their arrival into San Francisco made international front-page news.
The crew included Reno Chen, Paul Chow, Loo-chi Hu, Benny Hsu, Calvin Mehlert and were led by skipper Marco Chung.
[61] In 1959 a group of Catalan men, led by Jose Maria Tey, sailed from Hong Kong to Barcelona on a junk named Rubia.
After their successful journey this junk was anchored as a tourist attraction at one end of Barcelona harbor, close to where La Rambla meets the sea.
[62] In 1981, Christoph Swoboda had a 65 feet (LoA) Bedar built by the boatyard of Che Ali bin Ngah on Duyong island in the estuary of the Terengganu river on the east coast of Malaysia.
