Originally posted by TheBorg
And a question, who said that the ships were made out of bamboo ONLY? I never did.
TheBorg
You're right, you didn't. You said,
We need to bear in mind that the Chinese ships, although they were built out of bamboo and other organics, were still VERY buoyant.
Alright, so what
other organics were you refering to that kept the ships so buoyant? Consider that older Junks were made of softwoods such as
pine, cedar, etc, though admittedly teak was later used. They employed things such as lime oil and such as a sort of bitumen, but what organic
material made them
buoyant besides the bamboo? The wood? If that is what you meant, then I would assume that this was a give-in. They hardly
would have fashioned their ships out of iron, or something equally
in-organic and hardly seaworthy. Also, bamboo was mostly used in the rigging
and the sail structure. It had little to do with the hull itself.
They even had rocket boats that would lift up out of the water and fire smaller rockets from inside at enemies in battle.
One particularly interesting rocket was the Ming dynasty Huolung Chushui or "Fire Dragon Emerging from Water". The Huolung Chushui was a 1.5m
length of bamboo, carved to resemble a dragon's head and tail, and powered by four large propulsion rockets. Nearing its target, the four rockets
would in turn ignite secondary rockets slotted into the bamboo within the mouth of the dragon, shooting out and dispersing, to spray a deadly hail of
smaller incendiary arrows at the enemy. Fired from just above the water surface, this "cruise" missile reportedly could skim 2 or 3 metres above the
water surface and had a range of two to three li. This was probably the world's first double-stage rocket and a crude forerunner of the modern naval
cruise missile.
Chinese Siege Warfare
This is the only reference I could find to rockets being used in a way such as you described. Do you have any support for these "hovering boats"
that you could link to? I am actually quite curious how they would have worked, considering the propulsion needed to lift a ship and crew
out
of the water using rockets alone. Then there is the issue of doing it again. These early rockets were based on gunpowder. They would have had to
replace every single one each time the boat was elevated. And when you have something like that which is described above, why would you need to lift
your ship from the water anyway? Other ships were easily dispatched by these surface rockets, and anything on land could be fired from the deck.
Gunpowder would change everything for them. Transportation then becomes a non-issue if you ask me.
I don't see how the invention of gunpowder makes transportation into a non-issue. The subjects are entirely unrelated. An leap on one front does
not necessarily correlate to a similar leap on another. Unless, of course, you meant that the Chinese actually used gunpowder fueled propulsion
systems on wagons, carts, and ships! If you could prove
that one, I would truly be humbled.
[edit on 29-6-2006 by EdenKaia]
