Junk (ship)

A junk is an ancient Chinese sailing ship design that is still in use today. Junks were used as seagoing vessels as early as the 2nd century AD and developed rapidly during the Song Dynasty (960–1279). They evolved in the later dynasties, and were used throughout Asia for extensive ocean voyages. They were found, and in lesser numbers are still found, throughout South-East Asia and India, but primarily in China. Found more broadly today is a growing number of modern recreational junk-rigged sailboats.

The term junk may be used to cover many kinds of boat—ocean-going, cargo-carrying, pleasure boats, live-aboards. They vary greatly in size and there are significant regional variations in the type of rig, however they all employ fully battened sails.

The term ultimately stems from the Chinese chuán (, "boat; ship"), also based on and pronounced as [dzuːŋ] (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: chûn) in the Min Nan variant of Chinese, or zhōu (), the old word for a sailing vessel. It entered the English language in the 17th century through the Portuguese junco from the Malay jong or Javanese djong. The modern Standard Chinese word for an ocean-going wooden cargo vessel is cáo (). That said, there are divergent views on this, Pierre-Yves Manguin, amongst others, pointing a probable Old Javanese origin.

Junks were efficient and sturdy ships that sailed long distances as early as the 2nd century AD, although whether this is indeed a date by which the hull form which we know as the junk's had found its final form is extremely dubious. Most scholars consider it was the early Song Dynasty (c.10th century CE) before the fully developed hull forms and rigs were in regular use in offshore trade. The fully developed junk design exhibited innovative, though subsequently very little further developed sail plans and hull designs. There is no evidence that these were adopted in Western shipbuilding by direct emulation. In this case, as in so many others, parallel invention, often in response to quite different hydrodynamic, aerodynamic or technical stimuli, is the historically better evidenced explanation.

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