The Development of the Times from Ancient Shipping: An Atlas of Ship Forms in Guangdong

Lu Shijie’s Sailing to Taiwan: A Maritime Chronicle of Taiwanese Boats and Vessels (2013) and Wang Guanzhuo’s Atlas of Ancient Chinese Ships (2000) represent two foundational works on the typological and technological evolution of traditional vessels in Taiwan and its adjacent maritime regions. Lu’s work systematically traces the migration and transformation of ship types originating in Guangdong and Fujian since the Ming and Qing dynasties, with particular focus on vessels such as the red-head junks (hongtou chuan), Cantonese ships (guang chuan), and sand junks (sha chuan). It underscores the ethnocultural diversity and geopolitical diffusion pathways of maritime traditions. Published by China Water Conservancy and Hydropower Press, Wang’s atlas is the first comprehensive visual archive in China to integrate historical scholarship, engineering schematics, and archaeological findings. It offers detailed documentation of both inland and ocean-going vessels, emphasizing structural innovations such as watertight bulkheads, keel configurations, and double-planked hulls. The atlas includes extensive records of commercial and military vessels prevalent in Guangdong during the Ming and Qing periods, including fu chuan (Fujian junks), guang chuan, and naval warships. Together, these two sources offer complementary perspectives from ethnographic and craft-historical standpoints, providing critical visual evidence for maritime archaeological studies in China. Through sustained effort, the research team has consolidated and categorized a dataset of 174 vessel samples derived from these works. Users of this dataset are kindly requested to cite the original sources accordingly《卢世杰〈渡海赴台：台湾船舶海事编年史〉（2013）》与《王冠卓〈中国古船图集〉（2000）》是研究台湾及其邻近海域传统船舶类型学与技术演进的两部奠基性学术著作。卢世杰的著作系统梳理了明清时期源自粤闽两地的船型流变与转型，重点关注红头船（hongtou chuan）、广船（guang chuan）与沙船（sha chuan）等典型船型，着重阐明了海洋传统的族群文化多样性与地缘传播路径。王冠卓的图集由中国水利水电出版社出版，是国内首部整合历史考据、工程原理图与考古发现的综合性视觉档案。该图集详细记载了内河与远洋船舶，着重阐释了水密隔舱、龙骨构型、双层船壳等核心结构创新，还收录了明清时期广东地区盛行的商用与军用船舶的大量史料，包括福船（fu chuan）、广船及海军战船。两部著作分别从民族志与工艺史视角提供了互补的研究维度，为中国海洋考古研究提供了关键的视觉佐证资料。经研究团队长期整理与分类，最终从上述两部著作中凝练出包含174份船舶样本的数据集。敬请本数据集的使用者遵照规范引用原始文献。