"The Canton deep-sea craft carried bulkheads fore and aft
And took good care to keep 'em water-tight"
--Kipling, The Junk and the Dhow

Far-Eastern Junks for Colonial-era Gaming

The junk is the basic sailing vessel of China and many far-Eastern waters. In spite of its awkward appearance to Western eyes, the junk design is extremely sophisticated. By the time of Marco Polo, junks were standardly compartmented with many watertight bulkheads - a technique which was not used in the west until the 19th Century. Its rig can be handled efficiently by a small crew, and its segmented sails allow the junk to sail closer to the wind than any other sailing vessel. The junk's characteristic large rudder can be slid down to serve as a keelboard to limit leeway in deep water, or raised to let the flat-bottomed hull navigate the shallows or even to be drawn up on shore, sitting upright.

The model is 8.5" long over all (21.6cm), with a 3" (7.6cm) beam and 8.5" mainmast. This is larger than the Major General's ship-size philosophy dictates, but the model needed to accommodate hordes of Malay-type pirates for the Sher-Li game. Unfortunately, its wide prow and stern and impressive sails make it seem even larger, and it visually dwarfs even the ironclad. The decks of actual junks are typically cluttered with multiple windlasses, small deckhouses, supports for the sails when they are dropped, and so forth. To maximize space for figures, I left most of this detail off.

The sails on this model are cut out as single pieces of buff posterboard, and use bamboo skewers for the battens. Between each pair of battens, I cut the sail into three horizontal strips per segment and linked them vertically with two pieces of brown twine. I added random horizontal distressing with a brown colored pencil. This gave the sails something of the appearance of a painting I had seen where the junk sails appeared to be made up of horizontal strips of flattened bamboo material, linked like a venetian blind. The masts have long streamer pennants flying horizontally; I had seen this odd arrangement in a 19th century engraving of a seagoing junk.

On the poopdeck is a wicker deckhouse, made from brown burlap curled over a prescription drug vial, and stiffened with dilute white glue. When removed it reveals a Reviresco quickfiring gun. The section of deck with the gun can be popped out to create the U-shaped poopdeck common to many junks.

The green junk is smaller, 7.5" x 2.9" (19 x 7.4cm) with an 8.25" (21cm) mainmast. Even this is a bit large. The upper works were painted with acrylic dark red, without significant warping. The masts are removable for easy play access and convenient storage. Junk sails are traditionally made of matting, and this is represented by brown burlap from the fabric store. This method is quick, but far too coarse-textured.

One problem with these sails and the cardboard ones on the brown junk is that they are relatively heavy and are unequally balanced on the mast. I glued spent .22 caliber cartridge cases to the deck for mast sockets, and over time, the sails tend to pull the masts and the sockets over at an angle. I am rebuilding them with the decks drilled out and the sockets firmly cemented in place. Note that the rather extreme fore-and-aft cant of the foremast and mizzen is intentional, and very characteristic of junks.

The decorative 'eyes' on the front of the prow are wood turnings from the craft store. Most junks have painted eyes facing forward, but fishing junks' eyes face downward to locate fish shoals. The distinctive anchors have cables that end at the rail, since the windlass that controls them has been omitted for the sake of deck space. On some junks the rail itself served as a windlass.

There is more work that could be done on the junks. Many junks were highly decorated and some scrollwork with a gold pen might give a more impressively oriental look. Many junks have an arched framework at the front or rear of the poopdeck and another on the foredeck or maindeck which presumably is a rest for the battened sails when dropped. The distinctive rounded blocks and exotic windvanes with multiple streamers still need to be added to the mastheads of the brown junk. Junks have a web of lines leading to the batten ends and the masts, but these would get in the way of figure placement and should probably be omitted in a gaming model.

For a marvelous contemporary account
of an 1855 battle with Chinese pirates,
click here.

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