Shipbuilding Industry in the Song Dynasty

This chapter discusses the geographical distribution of official shipyards, raw materials and costs for shipbuilding, load capacities and sizes of ships, and estimated number of ships built in the Song Dynasty. The author of this book finds out that the most developed shipbuilding was in Jiangnan West Province, then Liangzhe East Province, followed by Jinghu South Province. The Yegu Shipyard of Shaanxi Province was also a leading producer in shipbuilding across the country. With a decrease in the demand of grain vessels, the output of ships was greatly reduced. The official shipyards were the main producers of grain vessels and warships. Some of the most important raw materials in the Song Dynasty included timber, bamboo, iron nails, lime, tung oil and others. Most of the widely used timbers were pines and Chinese firs. The deadweight tonnage of a boat refers to its effective volume on board, that is its net tonnage, which was used to calculate its taxation for the loaded commodities. The deadweight tonnage adopted the “Liao” as a unit to evaluate the volume of a boat. The shapes and structures of ships varied depending on deadweight tonnage and the proportion of length and width. Different shapes of ships were used for different purposes, and on different routes, depending at least in part on the waters they were meant to travel. From the quotas set for different provinces in the early period of the Southern Song Dynasty, and the service life of boats, the number of boats must be in excess of 15,000, with grain boats in the Bianhe River possibly reaching 6,000. Since the Southern Song Dynasty, grain boats were greatly reduced, but warships were added for the purposes of sea defense. In the later period of the Southern Song Dynasty, when the troops of the Southern Song Dynasty clashed with the Yuan Dynasty troops, the boats deployed in the inland rivers may have exceeded 30,000.