Junk (ship)

A junk (Chinese: 船; pinyin: chuán) is a type of Chinese sailing ship characterized by a central rudder, an overhanging flat transom, watertight bulkheads, and a flat-bottomed design. They are also characteristically built using iron nails and clamps. The term applies to many types of small coastal or river ships, usually serving as cargo ships, pleasure boats, or houseboats, but also going up in size up to large ocean-going vessels. There can be significant regional variations in the type of rig and the layout of the vessel.

Chinese junks were originally only fluvial and had square sails, but by the Song dynasty (c. 960 to 1279), they adopted ocean-going technologies acquired from Southeast Asian k'un-lun po trade ships. Tanja sails and fully battened junk rigs were introduced to Chinese junks by the 12th century CE.

Similar designs to the Chinese junk were also adopted by other East Asian countries, most notably Japan, where junks were used as merchant ships to trade goods with China and Southeast Asia.

Etymology and history of the term

The English word "junk" comes from Portuguese junco from Malay jong, which was in turn loaned from the Old Javanese word jong. The word originally referred to large trading ships that the Portuguese first encountered in Southeast Asia. It later also included the smaller flat-bottomed Chinese chuán, even though the two were markedly different vessels. After the disappearance of the jong in the 17th century, the meaning of "junk" (and other similar words in European languages) came to refer exclusively to the Chinese ship.