It Floats!
It worked!
"We'll be busy for a while, so tell everyone to go home first. Take about a week off before coming back. Hahaha."
"Huh?"
The moment those words left his mouth, a brief chill of dread swept over Deok-bu.
Three years ago, right after they'd begun their research, the two of them had gone home to show off the first mock-up they'd built — and gotten scolded to within an inch of their lives, both of them, as a matched set.
Mu-seon's wife's beloved pot had to be thrown away, and Deok-bu's pavilion — the bricks he'd cleared away after building a bonfire with them turned out to be scorched pitch-black — had earned him a beating with a stick.
And now, sensing something ominous again today, he asked quietly.
"When did you last go home?"
"Home?"
"Yes. When was the last time you saw your kids?"
"What? I haven't been back once since the lab opened."
"Haah…."
Deok-bu thought his friend was truly remarkable. Getting nagged and beaten all that time, yet never changing a bit.
"You really are something else."
"Oh! Much obliged! Come on, let's head home already!"
"Right…."
Deok-bu prayed he would see his old friend Mu-seon at the lab again someday.
Because if they were going to build the ironclad, they would need him — no matter what.
A week later, one corner of Sinsi's harbor was packed with people.
"Every last one of you has the same face!"
"So do you?"
Among the crowd that had gathered, bruises showed here and there — on faces, on arms and legs — and everyone was nodding at each other with expressions that said, You too?Me too.
They had all gone home after their long absence and gotten beaten.
"No wonder we're scared to go home."
"Tell me about it. Maybe I should just live here?"
Men openly declaring their intentions to become goose fathers — the ones who vanish from the household and only send money home.
But for all their grumbling, they were men who loved their families.
"Right! Starting today, we build the full-scale model! Materials team, are you ready?"
"Yes, sir!"
The materials team answered with vigor. They had gathered iron plates and framework according to the blueprints they'd been working on, and now stood assembled before them.
"Engine team, finished your improvements? All it needs to do for now is move forward."
"You're going to be shocked!"
Off to one side, a whole crowd of them stood around a heap of steam engine parts, waiting for assembly to begin.
"What about the steam tools?"
"No problems!"
During their research, they'd realized that hammering out every single rivet by hand was far too slow, so they'd built a hammer driven by steam pressure.
It was a little heavy, but safer and faster than a man swinging a hammer — and that was the point.
"Let's begin!"
"Waaaah!"
"It's starting!"
The people built a frame on rails like train tracks to hold the hull, and began assembling the ship on top of it.
CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
"Kuh! This thing's strong?"
"Should we lower the pressure?"
"No! You can't hit it weakly — it's people who have to endure!"
The steam hammer was heavy enough, but the recoil every time it struck was considerable too.
Separating the tongs from the hammer would have made the work far easier, but as they worked, that was something the crew would gradually improve on their own.
"Lower hold complete! Engine team, begin! Wear your safety gear! Sparks will be falling!"
Up above, rivets rang out under the hammer and sparks rained down constantly, while down inside the hull, the engine team began assembling the steam engine.
The first thing they installed was a screw fitted with dense, drill-like blades.
It didn't have the pinwheel shape of a modern propeller; it looked rather more like the screw mechanisms chiefly used in pumps.
THUD-THUD-THUD.
The assembly work stretched on and on.
"Ugh! This doesn't fit! Somebody come over and pull on this!"
"Got it!"
Hammering hot rivets into iron plates heated the whole structure up, and it seemed that was why the joints had begun to slip slightly out of alignment.
"We'll have to let things cool down before working on them from now on, won't we?"
"We'll need a different method for bigger ships."
Even the researchers, recording improvement after improvement as they assembled, were all of one mind.
Beside a small ship barely four ja in length, some two hundred people clung, working and watching.
Their roles were all different, but their hearts beat as one: please, let the test succeed.
A week later — the warehouse.
They'd gathered all the materials so that only assembly remained, but four ja turned out to be bigger than they'd imagined.
And there had been unexpected setbacks along the way — a mismeasured dimension here, a weakened joint there.
Still, the people looked up at the ship with faces caught between joy and tension.
"All right, time to set her in the water! On three — push!"
"Let's go!"
"Heave — ha! Go!"
They threw open the warehouse doors and began shoving the ship, mounted on its rails, out into the open.
Rails had been laid outside as well, angled down a gentle slope so the ship would slide straight into the sea.
"Here it goes!"
"Float! Float!"
"Float, damn you!"
As the cradle carrying the ship began its descent along the rails, breathless tension hung over the crowd.
This was a ship made of iron. It defied all common sense — not some wooden hull merely plated over with metal, but iron through and through. The moment was history in the making.
SPLASH!
"…."
"…."
"Gah…."
Had she gone down too fast?
The iron ship was sinking, nearly swallowed whole by the water.
"No!"
"Ohh…."
"No, no…."
When she was half-submerged—
Buoyant... bwosh~
"Huh!"
"It floated!"
"She floats!"
"WOOOOAAAH!"
"Iron floats on water!"
The mere sight of the ship riding on the water sent the dock into pandemonium. People threw their arms around each other and wept for a long while.
"Hold on! We still have to start her up! Quick!"
"Hurry!"
"Coal! Get the coal, fast!"
"And we need to load more weight — and more people. She's riding higher than we calculated!"
The ship was floating higher than their calculations had predicted — so high they worried she might tip over sideways if they weren't careful.
"Ha-hahaha! This is insane! We've lost our minds!"
"To think iron could float this well!"
With two hundred men swarming about like lunatics, shoveling in coal and hauling up seawater, it was only natural that onlookers kept drifting over to see what all the commotion was.
And since this harbor sat right next to Navy headquarters, plenty of high-ranking officials had come down to watch as well.
"What kind of construction project is this loud?"
"I hear a shipyard is moving in here."
"Isn't this area short on timber, though?"
There were plenty of trees in the mountains off in the distance, but they were quite far away, and the onlookers thought that made a poor spot for a shipyard.
"I hear they're building ships out of iron. That's why they're building it here, close to Moda."
"…What?"
It was staggering. In this era, common sense held that iron sank in water. Even ships reinforced with a little iron here and there were understood to float only because the wood carried them.
"By the way, what is that thing?"
"That, you see? Those are the people who said they'd build a ship out of iron. Looks like they've made something."
"Is that actually true?"
"Word is that when the higher-ups saw the report, they ordered research to start on the spot?"
Some were hearing the news for the very first time. And amid all that skepticism, smoke began to rise from the object floating in the sea.
Steam needs a certain amount of pressure to build up, so getting underway took quite a while.
Hiss... hiss...
Steam gathered slowly. Since they only intended to make a short loop nearby, they hadn't loaded much fuel.
They hadn't had the space for it, either — but this was a test craft, and their hearts were too impatient to plan for such niceties.
"Ugh, this is so slow!"
"Tell me about it. One minute feels like an hour…."
Chug-chug.
The steam pressure gauge began to climb little by little. It was a small engine, so relatively speaking, it was on the fast side.
"Anyone who wants a ride, get aboard now!"
"Aaah! Me first!"
"I'm going first!"
"Slow down, you lot!"
Two hundred men nearly came to blows over who would board first — but if they piled on too many and she sank, all their months of toil would be wasted, so no one could quite bring themselves to step forward.
"You can ride her again after the first run. Board a few at a time, starting from the front — she's riding so light we should worry about that."
That was what they said, but the truth was she was a flat-bottomed boat, and hardly the sort of craft to tip over at a breath.
"Right! We'll have to keep running her if we want to test anything! There'll be plenty of chances!"
"Still, nobody wants to miss the first voyage! I'm going first!"
"Whoa!"
They'd planned for four passengers, but twelve were already aboard — and the ship didn't seem to so much as wobble.
"That's enough aboard! Let's cast off!"
"Let's go!"
"Underway!"
Chugga-pugga-pugga.
Smaller than a locomotive's steam engine, but the exhaust began to chug in earnest all the same.
Vrrrrmmm.
The sound from the rear screw was far louder than the engine itself — worse than expected, since they hadn't yet worked out proper treatment for the friction surfaces.
"Oh! She's moving!"
"She's going backward!"
The ship began, ever so slowly, to move astern. In reverse! No sails, no oarsmen, and yet she moved — something beyond all common sense was happening before their eyes.
"What! What is that!"
"It's moving without sails or oars!"
Her one flaw was the truly terrible smoke.
"Cough, cough."
"Ugh, dammit — we need a taller funnel."
CLACK.
Just as Mu-seon, half-lost in the black smoke, rolled some lever forward—
VRRRRRMMM!
With a sound distinctly different from going astern, the ship began to move forward.
"Aah! Whoa, too fast!"
"Turn! Turn her now!"
"AAAAH!"
Caught off guard by the speed, Mu-seon began cranking the rudder — rather belatedly.
"AAAAAH!"
"We're going to hit!"
The ship was turning, yes — but the ironclad kept drifting toward the waterfront. It looked certain she was about to crash.
SCREEEEEEECH.
"AAAAAAH!"
"Eeek!"
Scraping diagonally along the dock, she forged ahead — and then began, little by little, to pull away from the harbor wall.
"Haah… haah…."
"I aged ten years just now."
"If she'd broken… ugh…."
More than the risk of hurting themselves, what terrified them was the thought of the ship they'd poured their souls into being wrecked in an accident.
Vrrmmm.
"She's good — but isn't she a bit slow?"
"Hmm, she'll get better in time."
The ship was cruising along at just a touch faster than a man could walk.
"And now — full speed ahead!"
"What? Now we start?"
"That wasn't it?"
KA-CHUNK — VRRRRRMMM!
The moment Mu-seon worked some mechanism, an ominous sound began building from behind.
The steam engine at their very feet rattled and clattered, and unease crept across every face on deck.
"Uh… is this thing about to blow?"
"I doubt it. It held up fine in testing…."
"Couldn't assembling the whole thing change something?"
"…."
"Why aren't you saying anything? Now I'm nervous!"
With the steam engine roaring right beneath them, spinning the screw, the ship began to pick up speed.
"Is she okay?"
The ironclad kept accelerating, faster and faster, until she seemed to be moving quicker than a man at a dead sprint. Her bow was even beginning to rise slightly out of the water.
"What! She's this fast?"
"I wonder how fast she's actually going?"
"The wind's too strong and the dust too thick — we need a separate wheelhouse!"
"Still, this is amazing!"
Amid the bedlam on deck, the faces of the spectators along the waterfront were all lit up with beaming grins too.
On the twenty-second day of the third month, in the year 3826 of Daehan, the world's first iron ship — born of the labors of Choe Mu-seon and two hundred researchers — crossed the waters before Sinsi.
Though the iron ship's maiden voyage succeeded under the eyes of the Navy's top brass and countless onlookers, it was burdened with far too many flaws.
"She's rusting far too quickly!"
"The rivets are loosening faster than we expected, too!"
"We have to find solutions — fast!"
Building the ships a little larger with each iteration, they set out in search of one improvement after another.
The years slipped by, and the harbor grew ever more colossal.
The first ironclad was erected in a warehouse like a museum piece, and ships too large to build indoors anymore were now being assembled out in the open yard.
"Ha-ha. How fast the years fly…."
"Think we'll live long enough to build a ship bigger than the Horned Whale?"
"Well, we're getting close, roughly speaking."
Choe Mu-seon and Shim Deok-bu, who had devoted their lives to the ironclad, now had heads full of white hair.
"I'll give it everything I have for as long as I live. And if we can't finish it, those youngsters will build it for us."
Mu-seon turned his gaze to the window. Beyond it, an enormous crowd of people rushed back and forth, examining and building the great ships.
So it was that he would be recorded in history as a pioneer and educator — the man who raised the countless futures of Daehan.