Junks

Pirate Junks

Pirate Junks

Because most pirate's vessels were captured and not commissioned, scholars can only make estimations as to the types of vessel used by pirates.12 It is difficult to know which of the vessels targeted by pirates were kept and added to the fleet. In rough times, a large majority of pirate vessels were standard merchant or fishing vessels gone rogue. These standard vessels generally have much better documentation and therefore much of the scholarly work I have done is to locate historically documented ships, typically non-rogue vessels, and shipbuilding details in an attempt to match them to the little documentation that exists on pirate vessels.

Two main divisions exist between river junks and ocean junks due to the differences in water, intensity and depth of water, as well as intent of the vessel. Additionally, there are specialty crafts such as fishing junks, which differ by region. Because the focus of this project is on pirates in South China, riverine and fishing junks are only discussed when they are significant within that geographical region.13

In contrast to naval war junks, vessels used by pirates were swifter and more maneuverable. They ranged from 15 to 100 tons, with the majority averaging between 70 and 150 tons. Most of the vessels chosen by pirates were very fast, such as the kai lang chuan [open-the-waves junk] or the kuai chuan [fast ship]. Some vessels were equipped with both sails and oars to provide greater speed and maneuverability. Pirate vessels also had shallow drafts so they could sail close to shore, to attack or hide, without fear of running aground.14

Ocean-Going Junks

Most pirate seagoing junks were of eight types: 15

  1. Ch'i-wei hai-fei fei-ch'uan, or even-masted pirate junks.
  2. Ta-t'iao ts'ao-ch'uan, great hook or great fish-shaped cargo junks. In Guangdong the ts'ao-ch'uan were a type of commercial or merchant junk, and from the Ming dynasty on, they were one of the larger craft seeking shelter in the Hong Kong harbor.
  3. Pai-ts'ao ch'uan and wu-ts'ao ch'uan, white- and black-hulled junks, respectively. First built in Fujian for the transport of wood, they were originally called "Shanghai junks," after the port they most often frequented. These vessels were made of ironwood and were constructed like war junks. Their appearance resembled that of a horse trough (ts'ao). According to one account, the character ts'ao is a kind of pun derived by substituting the boat radical for the wood radical of the character meaning horse trough. The heads and tails of the ts'ao-ch'uan also resembled those of a large whale (hai ch'iu); consequently the ostensible purpose of the two large eyes of either black or white painted on their bow was so that whales seeing them at a distance would take them for other whales and not eat them. The black-hulled junks were used primarily to transport food and salt, the white to catch fish or carry goods.
  4. Shuang-wei ch'uan, two-masted junks.
  5. Liao-ch'uan, materials boats, which were probably a type of small transport used for a variety of local produce.
  6. Lao-tseng ch'uan and liu-tseng ch'uan, arrow vessels of a still undetermined type. It appears that these "arrow vessels" may have been a kind of small warship resembling a corvette, ranging in size from 40 by 12 feet to 80 by 21 feet, with two masts and a mizzen that was stepped on the port side and had no sail.
  7. K'uai-ch'uan or "fast boats." These were common two-masted vessels of the local type used for both fishing and the coasting trade. They carried a lot of sail and handled well in high seas. The dimensions of the one in Fig. C.2 [not included here] are 27m 50cm from bow to stern, 21 m long at the water line, 6m wide outside the bulwarks, 6 m2 surface of the rudder, and 16m 30cm high at the tallest mast.
  8. Ta-k'ai po ch'uan, "great break-through-the-waves junks." Perhaps these vessels resembled the hai-po ch'uan, vessels from Ch'ao-chou that traded to Hainan and Annam; their average cargo capacity was 350 tons, but they were known to have been as large as 1000 tons. Or they may have been similar to the k'ai-lang ch'uan ("open-the-waves junks") of Guangdong, known also as the ch'ih-shui ch'uan ("eat-water junks") because of their ability to cut through the waves. Equipped with four oars and a sweep, the k'ai-lang ch'uan could move "like flying" and could accommodate between 30 and 50 people.

Fleets

Although by the early nineteenth century the pirates had organized themselves into several huge leagues and fleets, the normal operational unit was a single vessel or perhaps several vessels. The division of the Guangdong Pirate Federation was separated first into the six fleets with 'branch bosses' or 'admirals'. An entire fleet would sail together for large undertakings, but most activities were carried out by smaller units called ku or ta-ku [squadrons]. Squadron commanders were referred to as 'inferior chiefs' by European travelers, 'great heads' by pirates, and 'robber heads' by officials. The squadrons were generally comprised of ten to forty vessels. Although there was no national flag for China at the time, flags were commonly used by private vessels to identify one another even, or especially in the case of pirates, if they were not identifiable to unfamiliar vessels. Pirate ships also did not follow the government vessel pattern of placing identifiable characters on the sails.16

12 Major sources such as Dian Murray and Robert Antony identify typical types of junks pirates would most likely have employed.

13 For more information on these vessels, please see G. R. G. Worcester's works cited in the bibliography.

14 Antony 2003:107.

15 Listing from Murray 1987:168-169. Note these are in Wade-Giles system rather than the pinyin system of the rest of the paper.

16 Antony 2003:106-107; Murray 1987:60-61.