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The ORIGIN of the JUNK and

SAMPAN
James Hornell
Published online: 22 Mar 2013.

To cite this article: James Hornell (1934) The ORIGIN of the JUNK and SAMPAN, The
Mariner's Mirror, 20:3, 331-337, DOI: 10.1080/00253359.1934.10655762
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00253359.1934.10655762

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The 0 RICIN of the JUNK and SAM PAN

'By :James Hornell

HE great war junks used by the Chinese in former days,
resplendent in scarlet paint and golden ornamentation,
have all disappeared giving way to steel-built cruisers and
gunboats of European design; so too have gone the magnificent
merchant junks that voyaged to India and the Persian Gulf in
Marco Polo's day and long before, vessels that boasted even
then many of the structural features that, reinvented, characterise quite modern European ship design. Among these were
the employment of longitudinal and transverse bulkheads and
the provision of separate state rooms for wealthy merchants
taking passage by these ships.
But though these finely built junks have accompanied the
European-built tea-clipper to the lumber room of Ocean,
Chinese sailing craft of the present day, dingy and roughly
built as they often are, conserve the essential features of the
type. No sea-craft elsewhere can compare with them in the
picturesque beauty of their battened lug-sails, often ragged or
patched (when of cloth) with material of diverse colour;
strangely clumsy to our eyes but enjoying practical advantage
over our bellying Western sails in the way they can lie close to
the wind. Skilfully handled, they are seaworthy and weatherly
craft, as witness the voyage of the Keying, a typical deep-sea
junk, to England in 1848.
Every feature of their structure betokens an origin different
from that of the European type of sailing ship, whether it be the
clinker-built Scandinavian design or the now almost universal
carvel one evolved in the Mediterranean basin. No finer example of the convergent development of function can be found;
from wholly different origin, wide apart as the poles, each type
has travelled independently and successfully toward the same
goal of sea-going cargo and passenger carrier and to the bending of the unruly wind, so far as human power can control it, to
perform obedient labour as the propellent force.
European wooden vessels are characterised primarily by
sides built up of planking covering a framework consisting

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332

THE ORIGIN OF THE JUNK AND SAMPAN

essentially of a keel, stem and stern posts and internal ribs. The
keel is a basal beam placed longitudinally along the central line
of what is to become the ship's bottom. At each end it is
scarfed to another stout beam which turns upwards and eventually becomes the stempost at the fore end of the ship and the
sternpost at the after end. The side planks or strakes curve in
toward the ends to make junction with these two posts. A series
of bent timbers, diverging upwards in U fashion from the keel,
form an internal skeleton, strengthening and holding together
the outer planking. Typically, the keel projects downwards
below the bottom and thereby serves to steady the vessel when
she rolls, by offering lateral resistance to the mass of the
water.
There are many types of junks and among them we find
some which show definite approximation to European and
Indian design in one or more main structural features; some are
built with a keel and in some the planking rounds into a true
stempost-modifications borrowed probably from the West; in
others, again, the strakes round upwards from below to form a
swim-head, without any sign of a stempost.
The junk design which I consider to pertain to the oldest
and least modified type has none of these characteristics. In it
there is neither keel nor sternpost, and in the most typical,
where modern innovation has been resisted, the fore end is also
without a median timber or stempost. Planking, usually
transverse, closes in both ends, giving the vessel a transom
head as well as a transom stern; these transoms may be taken to
represent respectively the first and the last of a number of
bulkheads which divide the interior into numerous watertight
compartments.
Unlike the European rudder which is hung by gudgeon and
pintle upon the sternpost, the junk rudder is suspended in a
well or trunk left open in the centre of an overhanging stern
projection of the upperworks of the hull-a form of outsize
counter; it is steadied and held in place entirely by rope tackles.
In the normal sailing position its lower edge projects several
feet below the bottom, and so, besides serving to steer the
vessel, it has the accessory function of lessening leeway after the

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THE ORIGIN OF THE JUNK AND SAMPAN

333

fashion of a drop keel or centreboard. In shallow water it is

hoisted up sufficiently high to prevent it from touching bottom.
Very characteristic is its rectangular form, perforated by rows
of diamond-shaped holes, which are claimed to render its
manipulation easier in a seaway and its service more efficient, on
the same reasoning as an Italian inventor has advocated the use
of many eyelet holes in the canvas of ordinary sails.
A curious ornament sported alike by big sea-going junk and
little sampan, but generally absent on the smaller river craft, is
the large and prominent "eye" or oculus on each bow, put
there, say the Chinese, to enable the vessel to see its way across
the sea. Its origin is doubtful, for the distribution of the oculus
extends westward to Portugal and was common in ancient
Greece, Rome and Egypt; it has been noted in India and
Burma and it is present upon two at least of the ships sculptured
on the walls of Bora Budur, the ninth-century Buddhist shrine
in Java.
The peculiarities of the Chinese sail rig, strange though they
be, need no mention here, as they do not enter into the problem
of origin. Also they have been adequately dealt with by
Warington Smyth in his fascinating Mast and Sail in Europe
and Asia. In passing, it may, however, be of interest to draw
attention to the fact that junks working out of ports frequented
by European ships occasionally hoist a sail of European type,
accessory to the original battened ones. A cotton spinnaker
may be made use of, boomed out from abreast of the foremast,
or a quite typical jib, also of cotton, may be set.
European ships can all be traced back through existing
types of coasters and fishing boats either to the open craft used
by Vikings in their forays or to the round ships and galleys of
Greek and Roman times. From such points each type converges
back to the primitive dug-out with freeboard raised by the
addition of one or maybe two planks sewn vertically upon its
edges.
But in nowise can we trace the junk to such a common
ancestor; its simplest form, seen in the humble sampans that
swarm in every Chinese port, shows no approach whatever to
the dug-out canoe; in the sampan the essential or basic features

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334

THE ORIGIN OF THE JUNK AND SAMPAN

of the junk are present but so simplified, so wholly unobscured

by the overlay of accessory details and additions, that their
significance leaps to the understanding once the key word is
suggested.
Typical sampans are open skiffs, bluntly wedge-shaped in
plan, shallow, keelless and very broad in the beam at the after
end; here on each side the gunwale rail is continued beyond the
stern as an upwardly curved projection, endowing the craft with
great horns, facing astern. The boatman commonly sculls his
sampan with the aid of two long-handled oars, worked in the
standing position and facing forward; alternatively, by a scull
over the stern. In the latter method we see in embryo the idea
that led to the invention or rather the evolution of the suspended
median rudder of the junk, just as the closing-in of the space
between the stern horns would lead directly to the evolution of
the overhanging counter of the larger vessel.
The theory has been advanced that the broad, truncate head
and stern of the junk, the lack of keel and the peculiarity of the
median rudder, are evidence of derivation from a double canoe
design where twin hulls, set parallel and a short distance apart,
have had the space between them closed in with planking; a
pontoon-shaped craft would result, broad at head and stern and
with two longitudinal divisions within, comparable with the
longitudinal bulkheads which are a striking feature of the old
junk type. No such craft is in use anywhere, but in Ceylon we
find a closely allied plan employed in the construction of broad,
blunt-ended boats of punt shape, employed in the seine-net
fishery, where long lengths of heavy nets have to be carried
aboard during the operation of shooting the net. A dug-out
hull of the required length having been selected, it is sawn
down the centre into two equal halves; these are connected at
the requisite distance apart by means of frames, the space
between the two half-hulls being thereafter closed in by means
oflongitudinal planking nailed to the frames. This design might
conceivably lead to the junk and sampan type, but this is far
less likely than another hypothesis whereby we would look for
the ancestor of these craft in some form of sea-going raft. In
Europe rafts have never been looked on with favour as a

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THE ORIGIN OF THE JUNK AND SAMPAN

335

means of sea transport-! know of no single instance-but

on the Asiatic seaboard they are numerous even at the present
day.
Apart from riverine rafts common from Mesopotamia to
China, we find fishermen along the whole length of the eastern
littoral of India venturing many miles to sea on log-built
catamarans varying greatly in design, complexity and size; all,
however, are carefully shaped and much ingenuity is shown in
adapting them to their purpose. Some are of logs set side by
side, with one or several short pieces added to form a pointed
prow; in others, the ends are truncate and similar, without sign
of a definite head or stern. In some the side logs are set
slightly higher than those toward the centre, so imparting a
curved outline in transverse section; in others, definite sides
are actually built on by pegging a deep plank vertically upon
each lateral log. The small ones are paddled, but all others
hoist a serviceable form of primitive lateen sail when the wind is
favourable.
Still more elaborate are the sea-going rafts of Formosa. In
these the raft platform is composed of many lengths of long
bamboos of the greatest girth obtainable. These are so bound
together and secured by curved poles lashed athwart at intervals, that the whole structure has a considerable sheer
toward each end. As bamboos taper gradually toward the
upper end, the builders of Formosan rafts, by lashing them side
by side with the upper ends directed toward the same point, are
able to give a decided taper to the structure, the fore end
though wide being distinctly narrower than the stern. Head
and stern are truncate, the bamboos cut off flush except that it is
usual for the outermost one on each side to project, curving, a
considerable distance beyond the stern. A long steering oar is
used, and of other accessories the most noteworthy is the provision of several boards let down as required through interstices
between the bamboos and exactly comparable with the centreboards or drop-keels of small yachts. A curious device,
characteristic of the practical good sense of the Chinese, is the
presence aboard of a large wooden tub, well secured, in which
passengers may place their legs in order to keep them out of

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336

THE ORIGIN OF THE JUNK AND SAMPAN

the water swirling through the wide chinks in the bamboo

flooring.
To see in the design of this sailing raft the rudiments of that
on which the sampan is constructed entails little strain upon the
imagination. Substitute planks for bamboos, curve in the sides
to form a half-cylinder, close the open ends with transverse
planking, add a deck, and the essentials of a junk's hull are
obtained. By bunching together the planks at the fore end we
obtain the pointed prow of the harbour sampan, probably a comparatively recent modification of the older type distinguished
by the truncate form of the fore end, for, until recently, small
sampans carried as ship's boats by large junks were usually of
this peculiar construction; there are also a number of river
types of sampans which retain this peculiar form of truncate,
cross-planked head.
The alternative to this is evolution from a type of catamaran akin to those in use on the Ganjam and Vizagapatam
coasts of India (cf. M.M. vol. xvm, Pl. IV b). This might conceivably develop into the common type of harbour sampan with
sharp, upturned fore end and widespread, winged stern, but it
is a far cry from the east coast of India to China, whereas
bamboo rafts of the Formosan type are well known on the
China coast.
Whichever view be favoured will in no way affect the validity
of the generalised conclusion that sampans and junks are
developments and descendants of shaped rafts, for both the
Chinese bamboo raft and the Indian catamaran are of this
character and must have had a common ancestor in one of less
specialised design.

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PtATE VIII

Fig.
I

Fig. z

337

THE ORIGIN OF THE JUNK AND SAMPAN

EXPLANATION OF PLATES

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PLATE

VI

Fig.

I. Chinese cargo sampans at Rangoon. In these the bottom is rounded

and without keel; cross planking closes in the stern in transom fashion.
The rudder, of European form, is a recent innovation.

Fig.

2.

Fig.

I.

Fig.

2.

Chinese passenger sampans at Rangoon. These are lighter editions of

the cargo sampans seen in Fig. I. As in the latter the gunwales are continued
outwards at the stern as stout projecting "horns." These sampans have no
fixed rudder, being sculled when necessary with a long oar over the stern.
PLATE

VII

A Chinese junk at Hongkong, viewed from the port quarter. Note the
transom stern of counter design and the perforated rudder.

The same vessel seen broadside on. The form of the lug-sails and
the arrangement of the battens are clearly shown. The adoption of a sharp
stem is probably due to European contact.
PLATE

VIII

Fig. r. A small Chinese fishing junk, Penang. The hull approximates closely
to that of the sampans seen in Plate I, except that the stem is truncate and
of modified transom type. Compare the general shape of the hull and the
form of mast and sail with those of the Formosan raft below.
Fig.

Model of a bamboo raft from Formosa, for comparison with Fig. I. It

has been photographed resting upon a block of wood; the rectangular
projections in front of and behind this block are the three drop keels used
in order to reduce leeway. Abaft the mast is an oval tub used either as a
receptacle for perishable goods or to keep dry the feet of passengers. Three
pairs of long oars are used when the wind is unfavourable.

2.

(The figure of the Formosan raft is by courtesy of the Science Museum; all
the others are original photographs by the author.)

MM

22