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Updated: May 10, 2025
These vessels, having great beam and perfectly flat bottoms, would only draw a few inches, and as their provenance was evidently from shallow waters, where neither keels, centre-boards nor lee-boards could be employed, recourse was had to enormous rudders and these cut-waters as a means of hauling a wind, the device apparently answering fairly well.
The same types of junk that called forth the admiration of Marco Polo may be seen to-day, not only along the internal waterways of the Empire but far afield, at Singapore, in Siamese waters and amongst the East India Islands, and it may be interesting for yachtsmen to know that the problems of water-tight compartments, centre-boards, balanced and perforated rudders, which during the past few decades have exercised the minds of designers and builders in this country, were solved many centuries ago by the Chinese, and almost every junk afloat contains some, and not unfrequently all, of these equipments.
I cannot repeat it satisfactorily, for the reason that I don't know anything about jibs, and bowsprits, and masts, and centre-boards, and I did not understand it at the time; but I received enough out of the mass of evidence presented in that language, to be sure that there had been considerable danger, and that everybody had behaved well.
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