A junk () is a type of Chinese sailing ship characterized by a central rudder, an overhanging flat transom, watertight bulkheads, and a flat-bottomed design. They are also characteristically built using iron nails and clamps. The term applies to many types of small coastal or river ships, usually serving as cargo ships, pleasure boats, or houseboats, but also going up in size up to large ocean-going vessels. There can be significant regional variations in the type of rig and the layout of the vessel.
Chinese junks were originally only fluvial and had square sails, but by the Song dynasty (), they adopted ocean-going technologies acquired from Southeast Asian k'un-lun po trade ships. Tanja sails and fully battened junk rigs were introduced to Chinese junks by the 12th century CE.
Similar designs to the Chinese junk were also adopted by other East Asian countries, most notably Japan, where junks were used as merchant ships to trade goods with China and Southeast Asia.Crossley, Pamela Kyle, Daniel R. Headrick, Steven W. Hirsch, Lyman L. Johnson, and David Northrup. "Song Dynasty." The Earth and Its Peoples. By Richard W. Bulliet. 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. 279–80. Print.
Etymology and history of the term
The English word "junk" comes from Portuguese from Malay , which was in turn loaned from the Old Javanese word jong. The word originally referred to large trading ships that the Portuguese first encountered in Southeast Asia. It later also included the smaller flat-bottomed Chinese chuán, even though the two were markedly different vessels. 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.
The Chinese chuán and the Southeast Asian djong are frequently confused with each other and share some characteristics, including large cargo capacities, multiple (two to three) superimposed layers of hull planks, and multiple masts and sails. However the two are readily distinguishable from each other by two major differences. The first is that Southeast Asian (Austronesian) ships are built exclusively with lugs, dowels, and fiber lashings (lashed lug), in contrast to Chinese ships which are always built with iron nails and clamps. The second is that Chinese ships since the first century AD are all built with a central rudder. In contrast, Southeast Asian ships use double lateral rudders.
The development of the sea-going Chinese chuán (the "junk" in modern usage) in the Song dynasty () 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). "Hybrid" ships (referred to as the "South China Sea tradition") integrating technologies from both the chuán and the jong also started to appear by the 15th century.
Construction Sails
Iconographic remains show that Chinese ships before the 12th century used square sails. A ship carving from a stone Buddhist stele shows a ship with square sail from the Liu Sung dynasty or the Liang dynasty (c. 5th or 6th century). Dunhuang cave temple no. 45 (from the 8th or 9th century) features large sailboats and sampans with inflated square sails. A wide ship with a single sail is depicted in the Xi'an mirror (after the 9th or 12th century). Eastern lug sail, which used battens and is commonly known as "junk rig", was likely not Chinese in origin: The oldest depiction of a battened junk sail comes from the Bayon temple at Angkor Thom, Cambodia.Needham, Joseph (1971). Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 3, Civil Engineering and Nautics. Cambridge University Press. From its characteristics and location, it is likely that the ship depicted in Bayon was a Southeast Asian ship. The Chinese themselves may have adopted them around the 12th century CE.
The full-length battens of the junk sail keep the sail flatter than ideal in all wind conditions. Consequently, their ability to sail close to the wind is poorer than other fore-and-aft rigs.
Hull
Unlike other major shipbuilding traditions which developed from dugout canoes, the junk evolved from tapering rafts. 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.
Classic junks were built of softwoods (although after the 17th century teak was used in Guangdong) with the outside shape built first. Then multiple internal compartment/bulkheads accessed by separate hatches and ladders, reminiscent of the interior structure of bamboo, were built in. Traditionally, the hull has a horseshoe-shaped stern supporting a high poop deck. The bottom is flat in a river junk with no keel (similar to a sampan), so that the boat relies on a daggerboard, leeboard or very large rudder to prevent the boat from slipping sideways in the water.
The internal bulkheads are characteristic of junks, providing interior compartments and strengthening the ship. They also controlled flooding in case of holing. Ships built in this manner were written of in Zhu Yu's book Pingzhou Table Talks, published by 1119 during the Song dynasty.See also plates CDIII, CDIV, CDV, CDVI in Needham, Volume 4, Part 3. 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).Needham, Volume 4, Part 3, 469.
Benjamin Franklin wrote in a 1787 letter on the project of mail packets between the United States and France:
Similar wet wells were also apparent in Roman small craft of the 5th century CE.
Tung oil and mixtures containing it was used for waterproofing for Chinese ships.Ebrey, Walthall, and Palais (2006), 133. Marco Polo wrote in the 13th century "The Chinese take some lime and chopped hemp, and these they knead together with a certain wood oil; and when the three are thoroughly amalgamated they hold like any glue, and with this mixture they paint their ships". This putty, known as Tung putty (桐油灰, lit. "tung oil ash") was used to seal the seams and holes in the hull and decks to make them seaworthy. Loose hemp or coir rope were coated with the putty wetted with more tung oil and pounded into the seams with a caulking iron or pointing tool, and then sealed with more of the tung putty.
Leeboards and centerboards
Other innovations included the square-pallet bilge pump, which was adopted by the West during the 16th century for work ashore, the western chain pump, which was adopted for shipboard use, being of a different derivation. Junks also relied on the compass for navigational purposes. However, as with almost all vessels of any culture before the late 19th century, the accuracy of magnetic compasses aboard ship, whether from a failure to understand deviation (the magnetism of the ship's iron fastenings) or poor design of the compass card (the standard drypoint compasses were extremely unstable), meant that they did little to contribute to the accuracy of navigation by dead reckoning. Review of the evidence shows that the Chinese embarked magnetic pointer was only sometimes used for navigation or reorientation. The reasoning is simple. Chinese mariners were as capable as any, having undertaken the journey safely for hundreds of years, had they needed a compass as an essential tool to navigate, they would have been aware of the almost random directional qualities when used at sea of the water bowl compass they used. Yet that design remained unchanged for some half a millennium. 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.
Steering
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. A second reason for this slow development was that the side rudders in use were still extremely efficient. 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. A sizable junk can have a rudder that needed up to twenty members of the crew to control in strong weather. In addition to using the sail plan to balance the junk and take the strain off the hard to operate and mechanically weakly attached rudder, some junks were also equipped with leeboards or dagger boards. The world's oldest known depiction of a stern-mounted rudder can be seen on a pottery model of a junk dating from before the 1st century CE.Konstam, Angus. 2007. Pirates: Predators of the Seas. 23-25
History
Han to Northern and southern dynasties era (2nd–6th century) Chinese ships at this time were heavily fluvial (riverine) in nature and operation, while a minority was focused on travel on the open seas and oceans. Chinese ships in the ancient era crossed the East China Sea and visited regions such as Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. Chinese ships did not make regular maritime voyages to Southeast Asia and beyond until the 9th century CE. Heng suggests an even later date (11th century CE) for the beginning of Chinese maritime shipping, when the first actual records of Chinese ships (mostly from Fujian and Guangdong) leaving for foreign trade appear.
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. They called them the kunlun bo or kunlun po (). They were described as being capable of sailing against strong winds and violent waves, implying that Chinese ships at that time did not have that capacity. These ships were booked by Chinese Buddhist pilgrims for passage to Southern India and Sri Lanka. In the 3rd century CE, Chinese envoys were also sent to Southeast Asia ("Nanhai"), all of them explicitly used foreign ships for passage.
Sui to Tang dynasty (7th century–9th century) In 683 CE, Tang court sent an envoy to Srivijaya, which does not mention a ship or even a mission, implying that like in previous cases, the envoy booked passage in a foreign ship. Wang (1958) stated that there are no Tang dynasty records that mentioned Chinese junks being used for trading with Southeast Asia. Kunlun bo trade increased by the 9th century, and were described as arriving regularly in trading ports in southern China in Chinese records.
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. Chu LingYiin, for example, deployed many-decked naval vessels in the Wu Tai Battle of 934 AD.
Rise of Song dynasty (10th–13th century)