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| 19th century oil painting of a Qing-era war junk. Image Credit: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London. |
When people think of pre-modern naval warfare in China and to a lesser extend
East Asia, most think of imposing tower ships raining arrows and stones
against the opposing fleet, or masses of fire ships turning the sea into a
raging inferno à la
Battle of Red Cliff.
But there were more to Chinese naval warfare than just missiles and fire.
Though often overlooked and understudied, naval battle at close quarters such
as boarding action remained an important, even predominant, facet of Chinese
naval warfare. In this article, I will introduce some of the tools and weapons
used by Chinese navies for close quarters engagement.
Gou Ju (鉤拒, lit. 'Hook-resist')
Since naval boarding was the oldest and predominant form of military tactic
in the age of pre-modern naval warfare, it is unsurprising that the earliest
naval weapons ever devised were tools to facilitate boarding. Gou Ju, also
known as Gou Qiang (鉤強), was a tool, or possibly a set of tools,
developed during China's
Warring States period
and attributed to legendary Chinese carpenter and inventor
Lu Ban (魯班). Although the exact design of Gou Ju is now lost, its purposes couldn't be
more straightforward: to hook and pull over an enemy ship for boarding, and
to fend and push away enemy ship to prevent boarding. As such, it most
likely took the form of grappling hook and wooden push pole, or a
combination thereof, i.e. something akin to a
boat hook. Gou Ju was one of the principal naval weapons of
State of Chu (楚國), which used the boarding tool to great effect against the navy of the
rival
State of Wu (吳國). In fact, military training for Gou Ju became a cultural pastime for the
people of Chu state and remained observed long after the demise of the
state, eventually evolved into
tug of war
sport in China.
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| Ming period boarding tool Liao Gou (撩鈎) essentially fulfilled the same function as ancient Gou Ju. |
Gou Ju became overshadowed by other, more advanced naval weapons as Chinese
naval warfare became increasingly sophisticated, and largely disappeared
from written records after the end of Warring States period. However, such
useful tool(s) most definitely continued to see use, either in altered forms
or under other names, for as long as naval boarding remained a viable
tactic.
Zhuang Liang (撞樑, lit. 'Ramming beam') or Zhuang Gan (撞竿, lit. 'Ramming pole')
A curious and very obscure naval weapon, Zhuang Liang was essentially a
wooden beam, longer than the ship's breadth, that was sodded with iron
on both ends and built directly into the ship's hull, presumably by
replacing one of the planks of its
watertight bulkhead. The reinforced ends of Zhuang Liang jutted out from both sides of the
hull and functioned as naval rams for the ship, although they were
designed for lateral ramming rather than the more familiar
head-on ramming. In fact, it may be the only weapon in the world
purpose-built for such tactic, as side-mounted rams would seriously
interfere with the rowing of oared vessels such as Mediterranean
galleys, but won't present a problem for Chinese ships propelled by
banks of
yuloh (搖橹), as unlike normal oar, the blade of a yuloh is submerged at all
time during sculling.
Zhuang Liang was one of the notable armaments of the powerful
Wu Wei Chuan (烏尾船)
fleet employed by notorious pirate lord
Zeng Yi Ben (曾一本), which allowed him to pulverize Ming navy's
Fu Chuan (福船)
with ease. Fortunately, Ming navy was able to counter his formidable
fleet by equipping the same weapon on its own purpose-built ironclad
warships.
Naval ramming
Unlike their counterparts in the Mediterranean Sea, for the most part
Chinese navies of the antiquities never seem to develop a specialised
naval ram, and instead favoured fortified superstructures on warship to
better capitalise on their advanced missile weaponry as well as to deter
boarders. The formidable yet ponderous
Lou Chuan (樓船)
and its many derivatives, packed to the brim with commanding firepower yet
ill-suited for ramming, thus remained a staple of Chinese navies for
thousands of years.
Despite having been employed only sporadically in previous dynasties, naval ramming suddenly
gained popularity in the Ming era, when the tactic came to be known as
Chong Li (衝犁, lit. 'Charge and plough') or simply
Li (犁, lit. 'Ploughing'). Curiously, this only
happened after older oar-powered ships were largely phased out by sailing
junks, and ramming was largely abandoned by navies elsewhere. The
reason for this change is unknown, although it may be related to the
primary naval threat faced by Ming Dynasty at the time: the
Wokou (倭寇) or Japanese pirates. To elaborate, Japanese ships were considered
rather shoddily built by Chinese standard and could be easily destroyed in
a collision, which probably enabled ramming to become a viable tactic.
This is indirectly supported by the fact that Ming military thinkers never
seem to bother with ramming prevention/defence or military formations
designed around ramming tactic, as the underlying assumption seem to be
that ramming was one-sided, and Ming ships were largely safe from
retaliation.
Still more questions remain. For example, how was ramming conducted with
typically flat-prowed sailing junks without a ram? How did Chinese ship
captains avoid the common pitfalls associated with ramming, such as
getting stuck in the hull of the ramming target? Fortunately, a late Ming
period military treatise, Bing Lu (《兵錄》), sheds some light on these
questions, and the solution was surprisingly simple and ingenious: anchor.
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| A large Ryukyu Kingdom wooden anchor displayed in Okinawa Prefectural Museum & Art Museum. |
It turns out instead of designing a purpose-built ram, Chinese sailors
simply used secured anchors as rams instead. Traditional Chinese anchors, of
both arrow-shaped wooden and four-clawed iron varieties, could weigh
anywhere from 400 kg to 800 kg (for comparison, the Athlit bronze ram, the
largest naval ram ever discovered, weighs 465 kg) and equipped with long
arms to prevent overpenetration, which made for an ideal ramming weapon. In
addition, anchor had the added benefits of being readily available on
practically every ship, and could be easily cut loose if it somehow got
stuck.
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| Old photo of a Chinese junk with its anchor fixed to the prow. |
Using an anchor as a ram was only possible with a Chinese junk, thanks to its
flat prow that allowed an anchor to be directly fixed to the front. Ships with curved/pointed prows, or those with long
bowsprits, generally required a
cathead
to secure the anchor to the side, rendering them unable to use it for ramming. Moreover, many war junks like Fu Chuan typically had multiple
anchors, which made their ramming all the more devastating (not to mention an entire row of anchors was visually strikingly reminiscence of a plough).
