Maritime Frontiers, Territorial Expansion and Haifang 73
boats, vessels of small size and unβit for war, were only thinly deployed.^58
This description of the Ming waterborne-force might have been true in
peacetime. Nevertheless, in emergencies, the Ming authorities were able
to assemble war junks that were large and solid. They were also effective
in attacking their targets in the outer coastal waters (waiyang), thereby
preventing the hostile vessels from entering harbors. Later, tactics
changed and government vessels attacked an advancing force only after
it had entered a harbor. This was recipe for disaster as the large war
junks lost their maneuverability in the shallow waters and the smaller
pirate vessels had no difβiculty in avoiding a head-on clash with them.^59
Consequently, the sailors who served in the naval force also suffered from
low morale and were often afraid of going to sea, offering an explanation
of the reason the Wo could come ashore at will. Although a decisive
victory over the intruders was eventually won on land in Xinghua by the
prominent Ming general Qi Jiguang (1527‒87), his success owed much
to an effective blockade by war junks under the command of Yu Dayou
(1503‒80) in Nanri that cut off the route of the enemy’s retreat.^60 During
the late Ming, there was no consensus about where intruders should
be confronted. Some ofβicials argued that the best way to deal with
pirates was to stop them at sea. Others believed that pirates could be
more effectively dealt with after they had landed because the ocean was
too vast to discover and crush them. The pirates would change course
once they had spotted the war junks. Even if a few pirate vessels were
destroyed, the pirate band could still afford the loss. As far as they were
concerned, the sinking of a few boats was not much different from losing
them to shipwreck in a storm, a disaster that occurred from time to time.
The lack of success at sea might explain why defense strategists thought
that the bandits could best be rounded up and annihilated in a decisive
land battle.^61
The defensive approach employed in the past led Wei Yuan, in his
investigation of maritime affairs in the wake of the Opium War, to
observe that, “there was a (coastal defense [system] but no sea battles”
(you haifang er wu haizhan). As he saw it, ships had been employed as
troop convoys but battles were fought on land. Zheng He and Zheng
Chenggong (Coxinga) were two partial exceptions. The former led a
- QCHJTS, in TWWXCK, no. 155, p. 11.
- TXJGLBS, 26: 18a.
- QCHJTS, in TWWXCK, no. 155, p. 11.
- Guangdong haifang huilan 廣東海防彚覽 [A comprehensive compilation of
source materials relating to the coastal defense of Guangdong] (hereafter
GDHFHL), comp. Lu Kun, et al. 盧坤 (1772–1835) 等編撰 (printed in 1838), 12:
4b–5a.