Re: ship General Sherman?/NK 1860's


"old hoodoo" <alflags@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0rg9f.35541$OM4.10749@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Big snip (to conserve bandwidth) of an interesting history ..

> The account talks about korean turtle boats that may have been
> driven off in the first attempt at taking the ship, but then again
> says the boats could have been makeshift warships. I had never heard of
> the Turtle boats before...the artist rendering looked pretty cool.

I too, hadn't heard of 'Turtle Ships/Boats" until my first visit to
Korea(Corea).
it would seem that 'westerners' are taught about wooden walls and
know the significance of Santa Maria; Pinta; Nina; Pelican/Golden Hind;
Victory; Constituion; et.al: but don't learn much about Oriental
developments
in naval science.
Large models of examples of 'Turtle Ships' are on display in hotel foyers;
shopping malls and museums in Korea - at least in Seoul - . The Koreans
appear to be as proud of their historic Turtle-Ships as, for instance, Brits
are of
'Victory' , USA-ian are of 'Old Ironsides', Swedes are of 'Vasa' {insert
nationality- ship's name according to choice). :)

BTW; I was under the apprehesion that the 'Turtle' designation refered to
the 'testudo' style of amouring over the upper-deck which combined with
the junk-style rigging (no Shrouds) and the capabilty of manning sweeps
made the turtle ships both manoueverable and resistant to small calibre
weapons. I note that one of the URLs stated it was because of a turtle-head
dual-purpose projection.
Personaly, although I'll concede it _might_ have been the orifice of a
non-trainable projector its efficacy as a ram is somewhat doubtful -
but ... one should always be receptive to another's point-of-view ... :)

--

Brian


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