The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World (38 page)

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:

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 double 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.