16th century European vs Korean naval comparison

This is from this thread http://historum.com/asian-history/87178-toyotomi-hideyoshi-s-invasion-korea-6.html, but I'm continuing the discussion here so as to not derail the thread.

Aetius said:

A detailed argument would qualify for a thread of its own, but I can recommend those articles which deal with the introduction of broadside artillery in European naval construction.

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I'm interested in those articles. Maybe if you could PM me, if you don't mind?

Building ships as floating artillery platforms was not simply an exercise of stowing more cannon on deck. The tremendous recoil of a full broadside and the change in the centre of gravity of the vessel meant that sailing ships had to be build specifically for this purpose in order to be seaworthy.

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Korean ships since 1377 were specifically built for cannon to be the primary weapon.

By inference, the absence of multiple decks meant that ship artillery was lighter and less powerful. The turtle ship had no such artillery decks, all ordnance was placed on the main deck. This means the ordnance must have been rather small so as to prevent the ship from getting top heavy and imbalanced.

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Well, I don't think we should be comparing the turtle ship with European ships. They not by a long shot the primary warship. The panokseon was. But even then, large turtle ships could have two gun decks. But you are correct, Korean ships probably had a significantly higher center of gravity than did Chinese or European ships.

By the way, the turtle ships never numbered more than six in the Korean war navy IIRC.

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Yeah, that's completely true. The vast part of the fleet consisted of warships many of which were significantly larger than turtle ships. Most Korean ships of this time period seem to have generally carried between 30 and 40 guns, which is an amazing amount given their small size. In comparison, a contemporary large Chinese ship typically carried 10-15 or guns. Granted, two of these were way larger than anything the Koreans used until 40 years after the war. The smallest turtle ships carried a maximum of 16 guns.



Koreans fired shot (which came in four sizes, the largest of which was comparable to a European cannonball) about half the time, and the other half the time they fired large wooden arrows with iron heads and iron or leather fins. The largest cannon fired one that was 64 pounds, but against the Japanese most used were 33 and 9 pounds.

These giant arrows had semi-sharp points, making them significantly better than round shot for piercing wooden hulls. They were slow-moving, but this was largely counteracted by their extreme weight and better piercing capabilities (they didn't need the power). They barely lost any of their kinetic energy even to their maximum range (which was usually between 1000-2000 m), and were way more accurate than a round shot (due to being more aerodynamic). The maximum range for which they were practical was 400-600 m, but most naval engagement was no farther than 250 m at the most.

Sorry, I made a big mistake in the title. I meant the 16th century.

EDIT: A mod fixed it for me.

Thanks for the papers.

I have looked at both Luis/Luigi Collado's and Eugunio Gentilini's works. They were Genoese and Venetian, respectively.

And for the record, the main primary sources for Korean cannons I have are the Yungwon Pilbi (written in 1813, available here in three parts http://kostma.korea.ac.kr/riks/read...lder=TOYO_1584_001&totPage=62#page/1/mode/2up, http://kostma.korea.ac.kr/riks/read...lder=TOYO_1584_002&totPage=66#page/1/mode/2up, and http://kostma.korea.ac.kr/riks/read...lder=TOYO_1584_003&totPage=62#page/1/mode/2up) and Hwaphoshigeonhae (1635, available here http://www.hangeulmuseum.org/sub/information/bookData/total_List.jsp?d_code=00167&g_class=05). There's very little reliable secondary source data.

Aetius said:

As for cannon, one needs to differ between caliber meant for destroying the rigging or piercing the hull on the one side and those intended for sweeping the deck against 'soft targets' on the other. Subsuming the anti-personnel small calibre weapons under the former conveys an inflated picture of overall firepower.

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Admiral Yi Sunshin in his writings frequently describes enemy ships being "destroyed by cannon fire" as well as being burned by fire arrows. In at least one account the Japanese explicitly describe Koreans firing at the ship and its structures. Also, Korean ships were designed mostly for countering Japanese pirate ships. Japanese ships of the time had a single square sail at most. Oars were the primary means of propulsion, so I think it's highly unlikely Korean cannons were used against rigging much.

I am not aware of useful literature which compares Korean and European naval artillery at the time, but as I wrote ship firepower was ultimately determined by the ability of the ship to remain seaworthy when functioning as a mobile wooden artillery platform. And this was accomplished by the introduction of gunports and gundecks which could allowed to shoot broadsides without endangering ship stability.

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I am not aware of any either except Hendrick Hamel's 1600s account, where he describes the ships as being armed with "a number of small pieces [of artillery]". The only cannon he describes specifically was a type of copper-bound-with-leather cannon that was popular for a short time but never caught on.

Aetius said:

But does destroying mean sinking? Those papers pinpoint the date of the first recorded sinking of a ship by naval gunfire to the early 16th century. But even then it took 150 years more until the broadside became in the Anglo-Dutch Wars the weapon par excellence. In the timespan in between boarding remained an effective strategy.

Those Korean cannons used to have rings. Were these pieces cast or were they wrought-iron?

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I am not aware of any record that explicitly describes sinking, but I know that at least some of them were floating wrecks after the battles because they looted them.

Yi Sunshin avoided boarding as much as possible (with a very few exceptions); he preferred bombardment from a distance. On more than occasion he used multiple groups of ships taking turns bombarding the enemy. There was a line-of battle formation that was known. Yi's famous Hagikjin (Crane's Wing) formation was essentially a U-shaped line of battle where the enemy were lured into the U and then encircled.

They were always cast in iron or bronze. The rings were for reinforcement and cooling.

As for planking, Korean ships were planked in pine. The thickness of most of the upper parts was quite thin, between 3-4 inches with outside braces about 6 inches. The hull, however, was about 10 inches thick.

Aetius said:

Following the broadside approach, I found out that European ships had acquired the capability to sink enemy ships by cannon fire by the early 16th century. The two earliest recorded instances in the papers I cited are in 1501, an engagement of Vasco da Gama with Indian ships off the coast of Calicut, and in 1513. From then on sinking by cannonfire became the third tactical option next to boarding or ramming, although it took another 100+ years for the full development of the ship-of-the-line.

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Sadly Korean records that have survived today are rarely specific about this type of thing. Koreans already had the line formation by the time of the Imjin War. And since they preferred bombardment from a distance, it seems most logical to assume that they had some form of the broadside system in use, as that is the most straightforward execution of that tactic.

By contrast, Korean naval artillery of the Imjin war, even the heaviest "heaven"-type, seems to have favoured firing heavy arrows. These, of course, had no such hull-penetrating ability, but were rather used anti-personnel.

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Yes, just about all the cannons during the Imjin war probably favored giant arrows. But why do you think they didn't have hull-piercing abilities? The Koreans had grapeshot, which is much easier to make, transport, and store, and much more effective as an anti-personnel weapon. Why, then, would any humans choose the vastly inferior weapon for a particular purpose?

A test in the 1990s by the Korean Naval Academy of the "heaven" cannon with about 1/3 charge flew 400 m and pierced around 50-80 cm into a granite brick wall. These projectiles had approximately 170 kj of energy when leaving the muzzle, and since they had sharper points, they'd be better at piercing than a round shot.

What do we know of the bore size of these four types of ordnance?

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The "heaven" had a bore of ~13 cm, the "deep/earth" ~11 cm, the "black" ~8 cm, and the "yellow" ~5 cm.

Aetius said:

How do they know? Turnbull is silent on the bore size. Are there extant examples?

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Yes, there are extant examples.

And the Yungwon Pilbi, written in 1813, actually gives the values down to units 0.21 cm in length. But of course the actual value varied over time.

Turnbull is good for basic introductory knowledge, but is not very in depth about Korean weapons or ships.

Here are some pictures of surviving examples:

A "Heaven" cannon made in 1555:


And "Earth" cannon made in 1557:


A "Black" cannon made in 1596:


A "Yellow" cannon. The exact year of make is unknown but it is almost certainly between c. 1550-1600.

HackneyedScribe said:

The quote Aetius gave did not say that the giant-arrow-firing cannon was only an anti-personnel weapon, Aetius read too much into it. Read it again:

There were four types of cannon in order of size: chonja (heaven), chija (earth), hyonja (black) and hwangja (yellow).

Stone and iron balls were fired from the Korean naval cannon, but the preferred projectiles were wooden arrows tipped with iron and with iron or leather flights that made them look like rockets, although they were of course not self-propelled. The largest ones were nine feet long and were fired from the heaven-type cannons. They had a longer range and greater accuracy than cannon balls, but packed no less a punch when the iron head smashed into the side of a Japanese warship, sending deadly showers of wood splinters among the crew even if the ship was not holed through.

Source: Stephen Turnbull: Fighting Ships of the Far East. Japan and Korea AD 612-1639, p.21

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Yeah, I noticed that, but didn't directly address the quote.


@ Aetius -- Turnbull is well-known to be good for general overview, but not good for anything in-depth. We should be careful of what he says.

Aetius said:

How can a 1813 book give a qualified answer on what cannon in the 16th century looked like? Does it rely on older works?

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Korean cannons from the 16th century until the modern era only changed in outside structure. The bore and size remained basically the same, though it did get very slightly smaller over the years. Maybe I shouldn't have brought it up, but I was just saying that we do have detailed information on these cannons.

Aetius said:

I am aware of that.

As I said total number means as such little as long as we do not have a detailed breakdown of the cannon types. We cannot treat a swivel gun as being on par with a 16 pounder in terms of raw firepower, obviously.

I noticed that the overall number of shipboard artillery pieces in Europe increased in the 15th century...:

...but thereafter actually declined on the most powerful warships (!), the galleons:

Since galleons were doubtlessly a more advanced design, and usually larger, than any of the ship types of the 15th century, this can only mean that the quality of the ordnance had been so much improving that it overcompensated the drop in raw numbers.

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Good, then we can agree on something.

Yi Sunshin mostly used "earth" and "black" cannons, but this is possibly exceptional. Koreans didn't use breechloaders much until the very end of the 1500s, so they're largely irrelevant.

Korean ships would have some advantages if they were fighting in shallow water, in a place where maneuverability was important or if there was little or no wind. But the European fleet would have so many other advantages (somewhat greater firepower, larger size, faster, and tougher), so it's highly situation-dependent.

How big were those "heavy guns" and "large pieces"?

To understand the difference in piercing power in those arrows vs balls, imagine trying to hammer a BB into a board vs a nail.

I know the speed at which it travels would change the actual results, but the principle remains the same.