Even a Rice Bowl Floats!
In the year 3813 of Daehan, Shim Deok-bu and Choe Mu-seon enlisted in the Daehan Navy with dreams of glory.
The two young men were assigned to the Dolphin 1211 and tasked with patrolling the Daehan Sea.
"Damn it all…."
"How is there not a single breath of wind?"
Some days were so windless it felt like a lie.
"Mu-seon, what do you think? Should we row?"
"Just wait. It's not like anything's urgent."
Around the pair, a dozen or so other sailors sat doing much the same—shooting the breeze about the lack of breeze.
Granted, patrol duty was their assignment, but what lunatic would put out to sea on the Daehan Sea anyway? And with no wind to speak of, even that lunatic would presumably be stuck somewhere, dead in the water.
"This is so boring…."
"Tell me about it. I wanted to serve on a Horned Whale…."
Every sailor who joined the navy wanted the same thing: to ride the largest ship afloat, sweep across the open ocean, and see the far corners of the world.
But ships were limited, and assignment came down to luck—so most ended up on the Dolphins, which made up the bulk of the fleet.
"Still, you'd think we could move even without wind…."
Mu-seon hated days like this on the water—days when the wind died completely. What would happen if a battle broke out in a calm like this? The thought alone made him shudder.
"Could a steam engine be fitted to a ship?"
Deok-bu had suddenly thought of a train. If you took the drive mechanism off a train and put it on a ship, water was already lying everywhere in the sea—wouldn't you just need to carry fuel?
"I don't think so."
"Why not?"
"You have to stoke a fire for that, don't you? If a spark flew while you were burning coal down in the hold, it'd be a disaster."
There had been attempts in the past to install steam engines on Horned Whales—and during the trial runs, every single one had caught fire and sunk. Drive mechanism and all.
The Artisans' Bureau had raised such an uproar with the Naval Bureau that research was shut down entirely, with a pledge never to attempt it again.
"Could you build a ship out of something that doesn't burn?"
"Ha! You might as well say you'll build a ship out of iron!"
Mu-seon figured that anything fireproof would have to be metal, which was obviously absurd.
"What's wrong with iron?"
Deok-bu had simply started blurting out whatever popped into his head. It was both his virtue and his flaw: he was magnificently simple-minded.
"Can you float an axe on water?"
"A rice bowl floats, doesn't it?"
And just like that, Deok-bu's simple-mindedness produced a shift in thinking that no one could have predicted.
"Huh?"
"Is that not the same thing?"
"Wait—!"
Deok-bu had said it without a thought, but for Mu-seon it was as if lightning had struck inside his skull.
Wait a minute. Hold on. Why did I always assume metal couldn't float? A rice bowl really does float!
"Mu-seon?"
Deok-bu called out to him, but Mu-seon was sunk deep in thought and gave no answer.
So what he's saying is… even a ship made of iron plates would float?
"Hey?"
Deok-bu shook his head slowly. The two had been next-door neighbors and best friends since childhood—they knew each other far too well.
They both knew that once Mu-seon sank into thought like this, nothing short of a whack on the back of the head could bring him out of it.
"Got some good idea, then?"
Deok-bu could see it, plain as day—the same Mu-seon who used to haunt the blacksmith's workshop as a boy, babbling about building a machine gun.
Don't get yourself in trouble again….
Along with the memory of what had happened last time: he'd built the thing, test-fired it at home, wrecked every stall in the marketplace, then fled naked back to his own house.
From that day on, Choe Mu-seon carried a notebook everywhere and began to scribble.
The material has to be iron, no question. Copper or brass would bend—the hull wouldn't hold up.
He sketched the shape of a ship in his notebook and started wrestling with how to build one.
The keel and the basic frame can stay the same, right? It's a structure proven over years of shipbuilding.
For the basic design, he was copying the Dolphin they served on, wandering its decks whenever he had a spare moment. He'd never served on any other class, so he knew no other structure.
He never received a reply, but he kept filing reports to headquarters whenever he could, pressing on with his research.
They haven't answered because it's not good enough yet, right? Then I'll just work harder!
Once Mu-seon latched onto something, he couldn't think of anything else—he was a man who walked one road to the end.
Ten years passed. It was now 3823, and Mu-seon—still without a single reply from the command staff—was carrying on his research all the same.
"Staring at that iron ship of yours again today?"
Deok-bu, who had served on the same ship, stepped into Mu-seon's house yet again.
"I keep telling you—this is the future of our navy!"
"You haven't gotten one reply, and you still won't quit? It's been ten years."
"It's fine. This is something I do because I love it."
Deok-bu admired that stubborn streak of his—but at moments like this, it also made him want to tear his hair out.
"I wish you'd just try building a small one…."
"And get myself in trouble haunting the workshop again? No thanks!"
The research was almost entirely Mu-seon's own work, but Shim Deok-bu was always at his side.
Only recently, the Dolphin 1211 had run into a violent storm, snapped its mast, and barely limped into Ryeonhwa—only to sink right in front of the harbor. They'd lost every cannon and musket on board, and the chewing-out they received was legendary.
The two of them were now on standby at home, waiting for reassignment to another ship.
"Won't you give me a hand?"
"Can't you just let me rest?"
"Then from now on, you call me hyung."
"Ah…."
Shim Deok-bu was three years younger than Choe Mu-seon. Growing up playing together, Mu-seon had once told him to drop the formalities—but Deok-bu had never once taken him up on it. Until now, apparently.
"So what do I do?"
"Can you get your hands on some iron plates?"
"That's not so hard."
"I'll provide however much money you need."
Deok-bu's family had plenty of relatives working in government offices, which made him the perfect man for errands like this. Meanwhile, Mu-seon's family was well-off, running one of the larger shops in Sinsi.
Clearly this was an old arrangement—Deok-bu cleared the path, Mu-seon paid for it—because the whole thing went off with remarkable smoothness.
As their wait for a ship assignment stretched on, Mu-seon and Deok-bu set a fire in the courtyard in the middle of high summer and threw themselves into building something.
"Did it have to be on a day like this?"
"If we slack off and we get a ship assignment tomorrow, it'll all be for nothing, won't it?"
Spread out before them were thin iron plates and slender iron rods, piled high—materials for a model ship, apparently, with all the measurements already worked out.
"If this model works, we could build the real thing from plates five to ten chi thick!"
"Gah!"
Deok-bu, who had fetched the materials without a second thought, nearly jumped out of his skin. Ten chi was the thickness of two of his own fingers.
"Plates that thick even exist?"
"Well, we have to succeed at this first, don't we?"
"Then let's get to it!"
Something like this was enough to spark Deok-bu's interest too. Who knew—if they pulled it off, they might earn enough credit to rise to high office.
Clang clang clang! Craaack!
Under the blazing midsummer sun, the two men set to hammering. They bent the iron rods into a frame to form the shape of a hull, then began covering the outside with the iron plates.
"Hm? What do we fasten it with?"
Once all the parts were done, it was time to join them—and Deok-bu found himself stumped. It wasn't as if you could glue iron together with rice paste, was it?
"I'm going to try lead."
So Mu-seon had prepared lead. It melted easily over a fire, which made it convenient to work with, and it seemed fine for holding things in place temporarily.
"Isn't that way too soft? You can crush it with your bare hands…."
"We'll find another method when we build the real thing! Right now, it just needs to stick, so it's fine."
"You think so?"
Deok-bu had been worrying about whether lead could hold together a massive iron plate. Which was, of course, a ridiculous thing to worry about—Mu-seon nearly leapt out of his chair.
"I brought a pot out anyway, so let's just try it."
"Hey…."
"Hm?"
"Won't your wife chew you out?"
To Deok-bu's eye, the pot Mu-seon carried out looked brand new, and it worried him.
You could argue it was Mu-seon's problem, not his—but as the neighbor living right next door, those sparks of household wrath had a way of landing on him too.
It had always been that way. The trouble was always Mu-seon's doing, but Deok-bu got scolded alongside him more times than he could count, just for standing there watching. Why didn't you stop him?—that sort of thing.
"It'll be fine."
"It does not look fine to me. Go grab an old one at least!"
"I can't see the bottom shelf, and this is the smallest one there is."
"Aigoo…."
With a presentiment of some unlucky future, Deok-bu sighed.
"Just do it!"
"Ah…."
Our straight-shooting, zero-reverse-gear Mu-seon went ahead and plopped the pot straight over the fire and dropped the lead in.
"Fine, fine—might as well!"
Deok-bu decided that since the water was already spilled, he'd better help make the boat as well as he could.
Crackle crackle.
"Hold it steady!"
"You're the one who needs to be careful!"
Lead melted at a low temperature, sure—but low for metal still meant several hundred degrees. Even a moment's contact meant a burn.
"Ow—hot! Hot!"
"Yaaargh!"
And so it went. Deok-bu flung down the iron plate as it grew hotter and hotter in his grip, and Mu-seon, who'd been smearing lead across it, scorched himself in the process.
"You can't even stand that much?"
"Do you have any idea how hot this is?!"
"Go grab some gloves, for heaven's sake!"
It took the two of them this long, working bare-handed, to think of that.
Their work was a hard road. Sunlight beat down from above, the bonfire roasted them from the side, and though they'd finally put on gloves, the combination of molten lead and blazing sun was cooking them through.
"Hm…."
After working for a good while, Deok-bu hit upon a question.
"What?"
"Couldn't we be doing this in the shade?"
"…Gah."
The fact that Deok-bu sometimes looked like the smarter of the two was surely just his imagination.
With plenty of work still ahead, the two relocated to the pavilion in the courtyard.
"Um…."
Deok-bu was worrying about something again.
"What now?"
"Are we allowed to do this in the pavilion?"
"Why wouldn't we be?"
"…Right."
Deok-bu, reassuring himself that surely, surely no fire could break out this time, laid bricks down in the pavilion and moved the bonfire over.
"Should've come to the shade ages ago!"
"Ha! Nice and cool, isn't it?"
Working in the shade, the two made faster progress and concentrated far better, and before long the model was finished.
"Oh!"
"It's done!"
"Let's put it in the water, quick!"
"Go fetch some water!"
The ship was complete, and only the final test remained. If this toy-like model floated, it would be an absolute breakthrough.
Slosh, slosh.
The two filled a small washbasin to the brim and began carefully lowering the little ship toward the water.
"Nngh… come on!"
"Float! Float, damn you!"
Between hammering under the morning sun and patching seams all afternoon, there wasn't a spot on their hands that wasn't raw. If the ship didn't float, all their suffering would have been for nothing.
Sploosh.
"There—about that much, right?"
"How's it feel? Think it'll float?"
Mu-seon hesitated, dipping the ship partway into the water. He was scared to let go in case it failed.
"Nn… I don't know. Just let go already!"
"Hah!"
Mu-seon released his fingers, inch by careful inch.
Bobbity~
If anything, having been pressed so deep into the water, the ship rose even higher, bobbing up and up.
"WAAAAAH!"
"Holy—! What is this?!"
It was the two of them who were most startled. They'd never imagined the ship would float this lightly. It rested on the surface like a fallen leaf.
The Dolphin that Mu-seon had studied and copied was a flat-bottomed vessel. If it had been a sharp-bottomed ship like an Orca or a Horned Whale, it would have heeled over and capsized.
"Let's try it with wind!"
"Yes!"
Wind, of all things—but their model did, quite proudly, carry a sail. He'd said they'd fit an engine, so who knew why that thing was still on there.
Whooo! Flutter~ SPLASH!
They blew at it from the side. The sail caught the breeze, and the model tipped over and capsized on the spot.
"Huh?"
"Huh?!"
"Why'd it flip?"
"Maybe it's floating too lightly?"
"Haah…."
The two stood there baffled. The ship was so light it had tipped right over.
"When we build a bigger one, we'll just have to weight it down more, eh?"
"Exactly what I was thinking!"
Granted, it was only a model—the real thing would behave very differently. But having confirmed the possibility, the two were overjoyed.
"I want to build a bigger ship!"
"Me too!"
"Who knows—maybe we could build a vessel even bigger than a Horned Whale!"
"Gah! Really?!"
"Iron is harder than wood, so it should hold, right?"
For the first time in ages, the two men were thinking the exact same thing: let's build a bigger ship, and fast.
If ships could be made of iron, the fear of fire would vanish—steam engines could finally be installed, and ships would sail come fair weather or foul. Hope had taken root, and it was growing fast.