⑱ Why Did the Turtle Ship Fight for Only Three Months? (Part 4)

In this post, I want to talk about Admiral Yi's fourth sortie. On this sortie, he fought the Battle of Busanpo, striking directly at the enemy's main base.

Admiral Yi's Fourth Sortie -- the Report “Busan pawoe byeongjang”

On August 1, 1592, the fleets of the Jeolla Left and Right Naval Commands gathered to organize the fourth sortie and discuss strategy. The fleet would number 74 warships and 92 support vessels. That day, they agreed with the Gyeongsang Right Province inspector on a joint land-and-sea strike: the navy would strike from the sea, the army from land, together against the Japanese at Busan.

From August 1 to August 23, the Joseon navy appears to have spent the time preparing to sortie. The actual departure came on August 24.

Admiral Yi reached the waters off Saryang on August 24. On the 25th, he moved to the waters off Dangpo to spend the night, where the Gyeongsang Right Naval Commander Won Gyun and the deputy commander Jeong Geol joined the fleet.

On the 26th, a heavy storm made it impossible to launch the ships, and the fleet stayed at Geoje Island. On the 27th, they moved to Ungcheon; on the 28th, they spent the night anchored off Cheonseong.

On the 29th, they set out at the first crow of the rooster at dawn. They met a small boat coming from the direction of Yangsan, caught and burned it in the waters off Jangnimpo in Dongnae, and took one head. They then passed straight by Mounundae.

On September 1, again at the first crow of the rooster, the fleet set out.

Battle sites of Admiral Yi's fourth sortie

At Hwajungumi they found and burned five large Japanese ships. At Dadaepo they spotted one large Japanese ship and burned it without a fight. At Seopyeongpo they found and burned more large Japanese ships. Reaching Jeolyeongdo, they found two large Japanese ships moored close to the shore, but with no sign of the enemy -- they burned everything aboard, including any goods and weapons, so nothing could be salvaged.

Past Jeolyeongdo, looking out, five or six ships appeared in the lead out on the open sea toward Busan, but on seeing the Joseon fleet they turned in fear and pulled back into Mounundae.

Inside Busanpo, along the hillside stretching east to west, roughly 470 Japanese ships lay anchored. Five or six Joseon ships in the lead charged straight toward them.

The right-flank commander and Nokdo manho Jeong Un, the turtle-ship assault commander and staff officer Yi Eon-ryang, the vanguard commander and Bangdap deputy commander Yi Sun-sin (a different man from Admiral Yi Sun-sin, sharing the same name), the center commander and Suncheon magistrate Gwon Jun, the left-flank commander and Nagan magistrate Sin Ho, and other officers pressed forward at the risk of their lives, firing the cheonja and jija cannons to smash the large enemy ships.

The enemy abandoned their ships and climbed the hills, firing cannon and arrows from six points along the hillside in defense. The Joseon ships fought with everything they had, all day long, and in the end shattered every one of those ships without exception.

In this battle, the Nokdo manho Jeong Un was struck by a bullet and killed.

Admiral Yi recorded the man's character and his service in his dispatch:

That his dignified spirit and pure soul should vanish so quietly, and go entirely unremembered by later generations -- it breaks my heart.

(I'll cover General Jeong Un's own story in a later post, in the series about the people around Admiral Yi.)

I believe the Battle of Busanpo -- where, on September 1, some 100 Japanese ships were sunk in a direct strike on the enemy's main base -- deserves to be called the Great Victory of Busanpo, on the same level as the Great Victory of Hansan Island.

The turtle ship's participation in the Great Victory of Busanpo is confirmed by the dispatch's record that the “turtle-ship assault commander and staff officer Yi Eon-ryang,” together with the other panokseon warships, sank four of the enemy's leading large ships.

Across his four sorties in 1592, Admiral Yi's Great Victory of Busanpo stands, by the count of enemy ships sunk up to that point, as the single battle in which the most Japanese ships were destroyed. And as an achievement won by striking the enemy's main base directly, the terror it struck into the Japanese was truly unforgettable.

The fourth sortie came to a close on September 2. The fleet withdrew to Gadeokdo on the night of September 1, and the following day, September 2, they broke camp and returned to their home base.

Three Months of the Turtle Ship

With this, I've now covered, across four posts, the turtle ship's role through Admiral Yi's four sorties of 1592.

To sum up: the turtle ship first appeared on May 29, 1592, at the Battle of Sacheon during the second sortie, and closed out 1592 with the Great Victory of Busanpo on September 1.

Over these three months, the turtle ship fought alongside the panokseon warships -- the mainstay of the Joseon navy -- from the second sortie through the fourth, and earned great distinction. But after the Great Victory of Busanpo, the turtle ship no longer shows the same kind of activity. Whether it truly vanished completely, I'll dig back through the original sources again in the next post.

👉 Next post: ⑲ Why Did the Turtle Ship Fight for Only Three Months? (Part 5)

— Momcheolhak.