Admiral Yi Sun-sin

First comes the sound of the water.

In the southwest of the Korean Peninsula, near an island called Jindo, the sea is squeezed into a very narrow strait. Any water that wants to pass through has to push its way in. And when a great mass of water forces itself through a small gap, it roars. It is not the sound of waves breaking on a shore. It is a steady rushing, like a river pouring downhill, right in the middle of the sea.

That strait is called Myeongnyang.

The current there runs at about 10 knots. A wooden boat caught in the middle of that flow can hardly decide for itself where it goes. The water decides.

And every three hours, the current changes direction. Running one way, it slows down, goes quiet for a moment, and then turns right around.

Only now does the story come to the people.

Yi Sun-sin was a naval commander of Joseon. Joseon was the royal dynasty that ruled Korea for about five centuries from 1392. He was born on April 28, 1545, in Hanseong, the city now called Seoul. He fought at least 23 battles at sea and never lost a single one.

And yet in 1597, a scheme made the royal court suspicious of him. Yi Sun-sin was stripped of his command and reduced to an ordinary foot soldier. The fleet he had built up was handed to someone else. Not long after, that fleet lost a great battle and was almost entirely destroyed.

The court called him back, but he had only about twelve warships of the panokseon type left.

Looking at so few ships, the court reached a conclusion that sounded very sensible. The navy should be disbanded and its men sent to fight on land. King Seonjo gave that order.

Yi Sun-sin wrote back. His letter held one very short line. In substance it said this: your servant still has twelve warships, and as long as your servant lives, the other side will not dare to take us lightly.

Twelve ships. A little later he found one more, which made thirteen.

On the morning of October 26, 1597, scouts ran back with news. The Japanese fleet was spreading out at the southern end of the strait. That side sent about 120 to 133 ships into the fight. Its whole force may have reached 330. The odds were at least ten to one.

If this were a problem of strength, there would be nothing to work out. The answer was already plain.

But Yi Sun-sin was not working on that problem. He was working on a different one, the problem of the water.

He did not take his ships into the middle of the strait. He had his thirteen ships drop anchor in the calmer water just north of it. That was the exit, the place where anyone coming through the strait would have to come out.

That position changed the whole shape of the battle. A fleet hundreds of ships strong cannot squeeze through a narrow gap all at once. It has to line up. The number 330 suddenly meant much less. At any one moment, only a handful of ships could actually reach the spot where the thirteen were waiting.

At first, only the flagship of Yi Sun-sin moved forward to face the leading group of ships. The others still hung back behind it. For a while that one ship stood alone in the roaring water, as steady as a fortress raised in the middle of the sea. Then the ship of An Wi, a local official, came forward. Then the whole fleet went in together.

And then the tide turned.

The current reversed, just as it did every three hours. The Japanese ships, packed tight in the narrow gap, were pushed back by the water. They drifted backward and ran into one another. Yi Sun-sin ordered his ships forward. By the close of that day, 31 ships of the other side had been sunk or badly damaged. The Joseon side did not lose a single ship.

Night fell, and both wind and current were against him. He did not give chase. He drew his ships back to a small island, then withdrew farther toward the Yellow Sea to take on more food. The Japanese fleet turned back to the south and stopped looking for a way out into the Yellow Sea. That route had been closed.

And then there is the famous turtle ship.

The turtle ship belongs to an earlier period, not to this battle in the strait.

It appears in records from 1413 to 1415, and after that the knowledge of it was lost. Yi Sun-sin is credited with designing an improved version. The new ship made its first appearance at the Battle of Sacheon in 1592. In that battle he pretended to retreat, to lure twelve opposing ships out of their harbor. The newly finished turtle ship sailed in the front line. All twelve of those ships were destroyed.

The builders laid a full roof over the deck, and on that roof they set iron spikes. A dragon head was fixed to the bow, meant to make the other side hesitate. According to some records, it also gave off thick smoke to hide the ship from view.

No one knows exactly how many of these ships were built. What remains is the shape of it: a creature in a shell, crawling across the water, with a dragon head in front.

Today, on Gwanghwamun Square, which leads to the old palace in Seoul, there is a statue of Yi Sun-sin. It was put up in 1968. He was born in that same city, nearly five hundred years ago.

People crossing the square look up at that statue every day. But what decided things on October 26, 1597, was very small, and it lay under the water. It was the rhythm of the current, which one man had taken the trouble to learn by heart. He knew at what hour it ran each way, at what hour it turned back, and which spot was the right place to stand.

Then he chose that spot, and he stayed there with his thirteen ships.