In the 180s BCE, a Yan renegade named Wiman seized the throne of Gojoseon and barred trade between the smaller states in southern Korea and China. The Han emperors tolerated this arrangement until 109 BCE, when they conquered Gojoseon and divided the peninsula into three commanderies, the only time the Chinese succeeded in establishing a full colonial presence in Korea. These eventually evolved into the kingdoms of Goguryeo (Koguryo), Baekje (Paekche), and Silla. Baekje occupied the southwest part of the Korean Peninsula, and acted as an intermediary between China and Japan. Silla, in the southeast, also traded with Japan. The heart of Goguryeo was astride the Yalu River, but despite its proximity to the Middle Kingdom it was not until the fourth century that Goguryeo began to emulate Chinese forms of governance, law, writing, and Buddhism. In the fifth century, Goguryeo annexed the Liaodong Peninsula and eastern Manchuria and became the dominant power on the Korean Peninsula, with Silla as a junior partner. Fearful of Goguryeo expansion, Baekje recruited soldiers from the Yamato state in Japan, which had emerged in the plains of Honshu Island a century before, possibly under Baekje influence.
Chinese references to Japan are few until well into the common era, but it is known that a Japanese mission reached a Chinese commandery in northern Korea in the first century BCE, and that when a Japanese mission arrived at the Han court in 57 ce, the emperor sent the king of Wa (as the Japanese were called) an inscribed gold seal. By the third century, the Chinese appear to have formed a clear picture of the people, government, and customs of “the mountainous islands located in the middle of the ocean to the southeast” of the Korean Peninsula. Among the more bizarre observances recorded was the Japanese practice of employing ritual abstainers to ensure the safety of difficult enterprises like seafaring.
When they travel across the sea to come to China, they always select a man who does not comb his hair, does not rid himself of fleas, keeps his clothes soiled with dirt, does not eat meat, and does not lie with women. He behaves like a mourner, and is called a “keeper of taboos” [literally, “man with mourning death”]. If the voyage is concluded with good fortune, every one lavishes on him slaves and treasures. If someone gets ill, or if there is a mishap, they kill him immediately, saying that he was not conscientious enough in observing the taboos.
People can be quick to blame problems aboard ship on outsiders—foreigners or the religiously compromised like Faxian or the biblical Jonah—but if this account is accurate, the practice of embarking a ritual scapegoat to ensure safe passage at sea is apparently unique to the Japanese tradition.
Direct contact between China and Japan was infrequent in the Yamato period, but there was considerable movement of people, commodities, culture, and religion by way of Korea, which bore a strong imprint of Chinese culture. Relations between Yamato and the Korean kingdoms were more intense. After Sillan envoys accidentally destroyed a Japanese fleet in 300, the kingdom sent shipwrights to Yamato to build replacement ships. A century later, Goguryeo defeated a Yamato invasion of the peninsula where the Japanese probably intended to frustrate Silla’s expansion at the expense of their ally Baekje, where Japanese merchants congregated in Mimana, near modern Busan (Pusan). The Chinese declined the Japanese king’s request to be made supreme commander of an invasion against Goguryeo, and in 512 the Yamato court ceded control of Mimana to Baekje.
Fifteen years later, the Yamato raised a force of sixty thousand troops against Silla, but despite this support for Baekje, Goguryeo’s advance against Baekje continued. By the end of the century it was the most threatening of China’s northern neighbors and frequent raids finally provoked retaliation by Emperor Sui Gaozu in 598. The land and sea campaign ended with Goguryeo’s perfunctory acknowledgment of Chinese supremacy, but in 612 Sui Yangdi launched a second invasion that included three hundred ships that crossed from the Shandong Peninsula to Korea for an attack on Pyeongyang. This and two subsequent expeditions failed thanks to the defenses erected against a seaborne attack. Although the presence of Korean ships can be assumed, there is no mention of a sea battle. Yangdi only refrained from a fourth invasion because, thanks to his preference for lavish construction projects and foreign adventures over addressing domestic crises like a disastrous flood of the Yellow River, China was on the verge of civil war. In 616, he moved his capital to Yangzhou, where he was murdered two years later. But rough-hewn though its end may have been, the Sui Dynasty laid the foundation from which sprang the unrivaled prosperity of the Tang Dynasty, the brilliance of which would shimmer across Asia.
The Ships of East Asia
Detailed study of shipbuilding in East Asia is hampered by a dearth of archaeological finds and written descriptions. The remains of Dong-Son logboats in northern Vietnam have transverse bulkheads and sides raised by the addition of planks fastened by lashings and mortise-and-tenon joinery similar to that found in western Eurasia. Many Dong-Son drums are decorated with bands of paddled warships carrying archers, spearmen, and drums, the latter presumably struck to help the paddlers keep time (as in Greek triremes), for signaling, or for encouragement in battle. In these scenes, the drum is in a deckhouse aft, just forward of where the helmsman stands by a quarter rudder. The hulls are crescent-shaped, although no hogging trusses to support the ends are visible. On some, the paddlers appear to sit on the deck, which suggests that the vessels might be rafts—perhaps of bamboo, with turned-up ends achieved by steaming, as was the practice in China. Others interpret the vessels as logboats, a view supported by the fact that some of the images appear to show elevated platforms where archers are stationed.
These images bear comparison with a bronze ship model on the island of Flores in south-central Indonesia, but believed to have been cast in northern Vietnam or southern China around the first century ce. The model measures 56 centimeters long, 19.5 centimeters high, and 8.5 centimeters broad and there is an upper deck surmounted by three platforms of uncertain purpose. Those at the bow and stern are taller, supported by four uprights, while the platform amidships is longer and erected on eight posts. Below the deck are a dozen paddlers, six on either side of the hull, sitting with their feet forward. The vessel also seems to have a keel, with a pronounced overhang forward. While the Dong-Son boats are generally shown with one quarter rudder, no steering mechanism survives on the Flores boat, and the figure of the helmsman (if there ever was one) is missing. Study of the ancient model is complicated by the fact that it remains a venerated object that can be accessed for study only after the performance of appropriate rituals, a difficulty that attests to the remarkable durability of maritime traditions in parts of island Southeast Asia.
The first-century bronze ship model from Kampong Dobo on the island of Flores in eastern Indonesia seems to represent a seagoing warship. It measures 56 centimeters long by 8.5 centimeters broad at the stern, and has an overall height of 19.5 centimeters. The twelve paddlers portrayed may be stock figures, and the vessel on which this is based surely carried more than the three warriors and a helmsman (much of which is missing) in the model. Photograph by Herwig Zahorka, Wiesbaden, Germany.
Later Chinese sources offer some information about foreign ships, both those that came to China from Linyi, Funan, or Posse (the latter thought to refer either to a place on the Malay Peninsula, or to Persia), and those engaged in trade between foreign ports. The envoy Kang Dai, who wrote of a ship with seven sails in the western Indian Ocean, sketches the salient features of a large Funanese vessel of the third century:
In the kingdom of Fu-nan they cut down trees for the making of boats. The long ones measure 22 meters and their breadth is 2 meters. The stem and the stern resemble the head and tail of a fish, and they are decorated all over with ornaments of iron. The large boats can carry a hundred men. Each man has a long oar, a short oar [a paddle], and a pole for quanting [pushing a pole against the streambed]. From stem to stern there are 50 men, or more than 40, according to the boat’s size. In full motion they use the long oars; when they sit down they use the paddles; and when the water is
shallow they quant with the poles. They all raise their oars and respond to the shouts in perfect unison.
Kang Dai does not elaborate on this vessel’s purpose, but given its extreme length-to-breadth ratio it was probably intended for ceremonial occasions in relatively sheltered waters rather than for trade or warfare. Another third-century text entitled Strange Things of the South describes a vessel called a kunlun bo, which may correspond with “the very big kolandiophonta that sail across to Chryse [Southeast Asia] and the Ganges region” mentioned in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. Kunlun is the Chinese name of an otherwise unidentified country in Southeast Asia, while bo is a word of unknown origin. According to Strange Things of the South, “The people of foreign parts call ships bo. The large ones are more than fifty meters in length and stand out of the water four to five meters.… They carry from six to seven hundred persons, with 10,000 bushels of cargo”—according to various interpretations, 250–1,000 tons. These ships carried as many as four fore-and-aft sails of woven leaves. Unlike in Chinese and Indian Ocean ships, “The four sails do not face directly forwards, but are set obliquely and so arranged that they can all be fixed in the same direction, to receive the wind and to spill it.” Similar details are found in the seventh-century Ajanta ship, and in descriptions of ships with seven hundred passengers from the Jatakas. This adjustable rig was probably similar to that illustrated in bas-reliefs of ships on the ninth-century Javanese temple complex at Borobudur. These show quadrilateral sails that were canted forward when set fore and aft, or swung perpendicular to the centerline of the hull when running downwind. Strange Things of the South explains that ships with this rig were more stable than those with taller, fixed masts and that they could use high winds to their advantage when other vessels would be forced to ride out gales under bare poles.
Southeast Asian shipbuilders used cordage to fasten their vessels, but their method of sewing hulls differed from that employed in the Indian Ocean. Rather than bore holes straight through the planks so that the stitching could be seen on the outside of the hull, shipwrights achieved a more finished look with a technique known as “lashed-lug and stitched-plank” fastening. The planks were stitched to one another through holes bored diagonally from the inside face to the edge of the plank so that the stitching was visible only from within the hull, as in the Egyptian Khufu ship. The inside face of the plank also had raised lugs carved out of them through which holes were bored so that frames could be lashed to them. At some point, shipwrights began inserting dowels in the edges of the planks to prevent the planks from slipping against each other, and in time builders of larger ships abandoned stitching altogether. Sewn-plank fastening was common throughout Southeast Asia and as far north as Jiaozhi, Hainan Island, and Guangdong.
In maritime matters, people of the ancient Yue culture area of southern China demonstrated greater affinities with the Austronesian-speaking people of Southeast Asia than with their Han overlords, but in most respects the Chinese approach to hull form, propulsion, and steering differed significantly from that of virtually every other maritime community in Eurasia. In this regard, the Chinese were surprisingly resistant to outside influence, while their ideas about ship design were seldom adopted outside Northeast Asia. The distinction between Chinese and others’ approaches to the design of seagoing ships may be attributed to the influence of concepts honed in craft intended for freshwater navigation. Thanks to the diverse employments and conditions encountered, from navigating the tumultuous rapids of the Three Gorges or the flat waters of the canals, to fishing, to living aboard boats, there was within this tradition of inland watercraft as much variety in design as could be found in any strictly seagoing culture. While planks tended to be joined edge-to- edge, as in the shell-first tradition, they were fastened to the bulkheads and frames with a care that suggests frame-first development. Unlike vessels in other traditions, in which both bow and stern tend to taper to a fine edge, Chinese vessels have a relatively sharp bow below the waterline though the hull is often squared off above the waterline. However, the stern generally ends in a flat transom below the waterline. This allowed for the adoption of a centerline or axial rudder, the oldest evidence for which is a first-century clay model of a riverboat, a good thousand years before they were used anywhere else. However, it is doubtful that Chinese seagoing ships mounted centerline rudders until considerably later. A fifth-or sixth-century fresco from the Buddhist cave complex at Dunhuang in Central Asia shows a Chinese sailing ship mounting a quarter rudder, and the earliest extant rendering of a Chinese oceangoing ship with a centerline rudder is in a bas-relief from the Bayon temple at Angkor Thom, Cambodia, dated to the twelfth century, contemporary with the earliest evidence for centerline rudders in the Indian Ocean and northern Europe.
The Chinese practice of constructing hulls with two or more layers of planking created what was in effect a laminated hull. This imparted great longitudinal strength to the vessel, while the outer planks also served as a sacrificial layer easily replaced—or overlaid by an additional skin of planks—in the event of damage from collision or degradation. The insertion of frames and especially bulkheads gave hulls enormous lateral support, as well. Despite the prevailing belief that these bulkheads were watertight, this is unlikely if only because a lack of limber holes to allow the water to drain would have led to widespread rot. Archaeological evidence from later thirteenth-and fourteenth-century ships shows that except for the foremost and aftermost bulkheads, all had limber holes that allowed water to run between compartments. It may well be that in the event of the hull’s being stove in these could be blocked to confine the inrushing water to one part of the hull, thus protecting the rest of the cargo and decreasing the risk of sinking. The use of bulkheads also allowed for innovative designs. Riverboats built for the rapids of the upper Yangzi often had free-flooding compartments forward of the foremost watertight bulkhead. In these, the hull was pierced with holes. This reduced the hull’s resistance to the water and enabled boats to shed water quickly when the bow dipped beneath the waves and so increased the vessel’s maneuverability in a highly dangerous environment in which the currents could exceed thirteen knots, and the crew had to add a couple of knots in order to give the helmsman steerage way. Fishermen also used free-flooding compartments between bulkheads in the center of the vessel to keep fish alive until they reached market, a practice not attested in Britain until the eighteenth century.
Inland vessels were propelled by paddling or rowing, poling, towing, and sailing. Although rowing was widespread, the repertoire of Chinese shipping included nothing comparable to the oared galleys of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean. Rather than face backward and pull the oar, as in the west, Chinese oarsmen stood facing forward, and as the motion of the oar was intended to gain much greater purchase on the water—so that rowers could propel their craft “at a moderate speed with a minimum of effort”—usually on the side of the boat opposite to that where the blade entered the water, which it did at angles of up to sixty degrees. In addition to oars carried on an axis perpendicular to the hull, larger junks and sampans were propelled by powerful oars called yulohs. These were slightly curved oars usually half as long or more as the hull and balanced on a pivot at the stern (or less often at the bow). A lanyard led from the forward part of the handle to the deck, and the yuloh was powered by pushing simultaneously on the lanyard and the handle so that the blade feathered along an axis parallel to the hull. Larger yulohs could be handled by up to six men, four to work the handle, and two to work the lanyard.
Towing, or tracking, was a common means of moving vessels throughout China’s networks of internal waterways. Animals could be used, but on the upper Yangzi the vessel’s crew—up to 80 people on vessels of 120 tons—was so employed, and in the Three Gorges these could be supplemented by gangs of as many as 250 people. Photographs from the early twentieth century illustrate the brute labor required to move these huge vessels against torrential currents. In one, two files of trackers bent d
ouble on a muddy riverbank are harnessed to towing lines, their right arms grabbing the hawser behind their backs while they keep their balance by touching the ground with their left hands. In gorges where there was no riverbank, a narrow gallery too low for a man to stand upright was cut into the rock, and tracking teams struggled forward, certain of death from slipping or being yanked from the gallery by their hawsers if the pilot made a wrong move.
Gangs of trackers bending to their work towing a riverboat along the banks of the Yangzi River. Sixteen trackers are seen in the gang in the foreground, which is pulling the second vessel from the left. The photograph was taken in the 1930s, but little had changed in the millennium since Zhang Zeduan painted Along the River During the Qingming Festival eight centuries before (see insert, figure 11). Photograph by Dmitri Kessel; courtesy of Life magazine.
While the Chinese had sails by at least the end of the first millennium BCE, they were not used extensively on inland waters owing to the prevalence of bridges, at least until the development of a hinged mast (called a tabernacle mast) that could be easily lowered and raised. The earliest sails were square sails, but by the second or third century the balanced lugsail was ubiquitous in river craft. (The balanced lugsail is a quadrilateral fore-and-aft sail set from a boom and yard, with the luff forward of the mast.) The primary materials for the sail were woven mats of bamboo or reed stiffened by bamboo battens. These keep the sail flat, thus allowing the vessel to sail closer to the wind than otherwise, making it easy to douse or reef the sail, and providing a means for the crew to ascend the mast. Because the junk sail is broken into smaller sections, each of these is exposed to less pressure than an unbattened sail of the same overall area and the sail can therefore be made of weaker material. When the junk sail was first taken to sea is not known, but the ship in the Dunhuang fresco is shown running before the wind with a single square sail.
The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World Page 27