열두 척의 하루

The fighting of September 16 begins in the morning and runs into the afternoon.

As more ships close on the channel the shape of the battle changes. At first one flagship took the oncoming vessels by itself. Now several fire together. The Japanese ships caught in the narrow water cannot turn back either, because their own hulls are packed behind them and there is no room to come about.

The Man in the Red Coat

While the fighting is at its height there is a man named Jun-sa aboard Yi Sun-sin’s ship.

He is Japanese and had surrendered some time before, and he has been with them since. Having fought at Angolpo, he knows the faces of the commanders on that side.X-ray

Looking down at the water, Jun-sa calls out. He points to a body floating there in a red coat and says that it is Madasi, the enemy commander from Angolpo.

Yi Sun-sin has the archer Kim Dol-son throw a hook. The body is drawn up to the bow, and Jun-sa looks again and says it is the man.

He orders it displayed where the enemy can see. The spirit of the Japanese visibly breaks at the sight.

Thirty-One

Thirty-one Japanese ships are destroyed that day.

The rest cannot come further and pull back. The channel never opens, and the road up to the west coast stays shut for that day.

When the fighting ends Yi Sun-sin does not stay where he is. The water has fallen too low for large ships, and the enemy could come again at night. The fleet moves camp that same day and passes the night at Dangsado.

What the Diary Does Not Say

This is one of the longest entries in the whole war diary. And yet several of the things we usually know about the day are not in it.

There is no account of the current turning at some moment and sweeping the Japanese ships away. There is no passage about whirlpools swallowing hulls, and none about an iron chain strung across the channel to snag them. What it says about the water is that the tide had fallen too low for large ships, so the camp was moved to the harbor opposite.

Those stories were added afterward. The current at Uldolmok really is fast, and imagination settled onto that fact and took hold, growing sharper as it passed through films and novels.

That does not mean the water was beside the point. The water was why Yi Sun-sin chose the place, so it was the premise of the battle from the start. But water winning on its own and people fighting with the water in their calculations are two different stories.

Twelve Ships or Thirteen

The same thing is true of the number twelve this series has been using all along.

Twelve is the count from the memorial Yi Sun-sin sent from Boseong. That was how many hulls Bae Seol handed over at Hoeryeongpo.

The accepted view now is that by the day of the battle one more had joined, making thirteen. Whether that ship came from Kim Eok-chu, the Right Jeolla naval commander, or was brought in late by ordinary people is recorded differently in different sources.X-ray

One hull does not change who won. But let a detail like this pass and the story smooths out a little, and a smoothed story ends up standing somewhere other than the facts.

The Last Line of the Day

The entry for that day ends this way.

此實天幸。 This was truly a gift of heaven. (September 16, 1597)

A gift of heaven means a good fortune granted from above. He wrote it on a day he had spent standing in the channel holding off one hundred and thirty-three ships.X-ray

Today, The Word Fortune

Lay out what Yi Sun-sin did that day and the list is hard to call luck. He chose the ground the day before, took a pledge that evening, stood at the very front in the morning, and called in the ships that had held back.

And still the last line says heaven.

You can read the word as modesty, or as an exact account of the part that was never his to control. Either way, on the day after winning he counted no merit for himself and moved his ships instead.