Last time we left,
Yi storming through the waters south of Korea,
Savaging the Japanese fleet wherever he went. He had driven them first to consolidate their forces to try to thwart him and then
finally to give up on offensive naval operations entirely.
Restricting their fleets to just defending the vital supplies coming in at Busan.
Now it was in this last harbor that Yi would attack them. In the two months since the battle of Angolpo, Yi had trained his men,
reinforced his fleet, and tried to rationalize the structure of Korean naval command. Now on September 1st 1592,
he was ready to take on the combined Japanese armada at Busan.
His fleet of 166 ships set out to destroy the nearly 500 Japanese ships awaiting them in Busan Bay.
He caught a few stragglers along the way, but the Japanese had finally learned from their past encounters with him.
They were holed up in the harbor now. And while Yi's ships were able to fire into the harbor from outside Japanese cannon range,
he couldn't find an opening to get close enough to achieve the type of complete victory he craved.
As long as the Japanese were in that harbor, they were protected by the surrounding troops and cannon on the shore.
By the end of the day, Yi's fleet had destroyed 130 ships and the Japanese hadn't sunk a single vessel,
but the Japanese forces still held the all important harbor of Busan.
Yi had not been able to break their last line of supply. Now they'd be able to re-entrench and re-enforce the harbor.
As winter set in and the campaign season slowed down, the situation on the ground changed as well.
An army from China had finally arrived in the North, and by January they had driven the Japanese out of Pyongyang.
All over the country the Japanese started to fall back, unable to sustain their lengthy lines of supply, due to Yi's bottling up of their navy.
By April, Seoul was retaken as well, and Busan served as the last great Japanese stronghold, anchoring their control on Southern Korea.
By August, Yi was promoted to supreme commander of the Korean army
and moved his base to the island of Hansando, where he had previously used his 'crane wing' formation to crush the Japanese offensive fleet.
Again and again, Yi petitioned the court for marines so that he could resume naval operations,
because his fleet couldn't attack the Japanese so long as they stayed defended under their shore guns,
and without marines, he couldn't dislodge the shore batteries in order to follow up with a naval attack.
But the Korean army was still in disarray at this point.
Some of the most significant military gains on land were actually being made by guerrilla forces and the righteous armies of Buddhist monks.
And what little of the regular army there was not already deployed on the main offensive with the Chinese,
was simply not up to the task Yi needed.
And so his fleet sat, patrolled the waters, and kept the Japanese from breaking out of Busan.
They would not get to engage in another major battle for some time.
So instead, Yi focused on turning his island base into a production center. With the country ravaged by war and most of the working-age men conscripted into the army or the navy,
the central government couldn't provide Yi's forces with the food, lumber, or weapons he needed to keep his men fed and his fleet in top shape.
So, he invited refugees to come to his island. He would protect them if they would work the land.
At first they were just producing grain, but soon they were harvesting salt and timber. Then the production facilities grew to handle boat building and uniform manufacturing.
Soon there was a full-fledged R&D wing on the island and great forges to produce goods of iron.
The first truly successful Korean muskets were forged here by Yi's research team.
But as Yi was making his navy self-sufficient,
the land war in Korea slowly ground to a stalemate, and peace talks began. The talks wore on for three and a half years, until in September 1596,
negotiations broke down and Hideyoshi prepared a second invading force of a 141,500 men to head to the shores of Korea.
As this new invasion force was setting sail, the Korean court received a letter from one of the Japanese commanders in which he appeared to
be selling out one of his counterparts, telling the Koreans exactly where his hated rival's fleet would be sailing, and
suggesting that if only Admiral Yi Sun-Shin would sail there he could wipe them out and do everybody a favor.
Now Admiral Yi heard this and laughed.
Yeah, nice try. He refused the order to sail his fleet into an obvious Japanese trap. But Yi's
childhood friend, Ryu Sun-Yung, had enemies in court. And when they heard of Yi's refusal to follow orders, they seized on this
opportunity and had Yi tried for treason.
Ryu could do nothing to save him. Yi was ordered to return to Seoul
for his punishment. His replacement as head of the navy would be Won Kyon.
This was the guy who'd sat and done nothing when the Japanese ships first invaded and then promptly scuttled his own fleet. A fleet four
times as large as the one Yi had been using to inflict such heavy losses on their enemies.
Yi was nearly sentenced to death for his insubordination, but there were still those in court who saw his value. And though
they couldn't save him entirely they did save his life.
He was once more reduced to the rank of a common soldier and sent off to fight with one of the armies.
But not long after he arrived at the army, the Japanese tried the same trick again.
They sent the court a letter, this time informing them of a large
transport fleet that was on its way and saying how easy it would be to pick off these
transports if they hurried. Won Kyon was ordered to intercept this juicy target,
and he immediately set sail with every ship Yi had built.
But when he reached the waters near Busan, he was shocked to find not an unarmed transport convoy,
but a massive war fleet of 500 ships.
Despite this and the exhaustion his men faced from traveling so quickly, Won Kyon ordered a head-on assault. The winds picked up and a gale
began to form. Won Kyon couldn't keep his fleet together. Soon,
some 30 Korean ships were burning, having drifted close enough to the enemy that for the first time in the war, the Japanese could deploy
their preferred form of naval warfare,
boarding parties. In a panic, Won Kyon ordered a retreat and fled to the island of Kadok-Do,
where he ordered his men off the ships to resupply.
What he hadn't realized was that this island was under Japanese control. As his men searched for fresh water,
they were set upon by the Japanese island garrison and slaughtered. Those who escaped fled back to the ships without any of the supplies
they desperately needed. Then the fleet just sat there, deflated and listless.
Commanders asked for orders, but Won Kyon had none. Though Busan itself was not far away,
he didn't even send out scouts or reposition his fleet. Then on the night of July 15th, guided by a full moon,
the Japanese struck. Won Kyon's forces were in a disadvantageous position. His men were fatigued from lack of supply, and
demoralized by their loss and the days of waiting.
Caught off guard at night and without any sort of plan, they were no match for the organized and coordinated
Japanese assault. Even abandoning ship couldn't save them, as those that made it to one of the nearby shores found themselves face-to-face with
the Japanese army, who were silently waiting there for any stragglers who might try to escape and were quickly cut down. Of the fleet
Yi had so carefully built, only
12 ships escaped, saved by one of the sub commanders who had tried to warn Won Kyon of the danger they faced.
157 Korean ships were lost that day, including every turtle ship ever built.
So with only 12 ships left in the entire navy, who did Korea call upon? Who else. But mere days after
reinstating Yi as admiral, the court informed him that they were disbanding the navy. Yi responded thusly,
'This humble subject still has 12 ships. However small the number may be I solemnly swear,
I will be able to defend the sea if I prepare myself for death to resist the enemy.'
And so, they let him. So Yi plotted and pondered where he would make his last stand.
This would be it. This one decision would seal the fate of Korea.
He studied charts and tides and finally came to decide on Myeongyang, the roaring strait.
This particular strait had a strong current,
but unknown to the Japanese, its current had a strange property. Every 3 hours it changed direction.
It was upon this unusual current that Yi would gamble everything.
On September 16th, the Japanese fleet, looking to destroy the final remnant of the Korean navy, found Yi's scouts at the mouth of the strait.
They chased the scouts into the strait, and that's when Yi fell upon them.
Yi's flagship dashed into their midst, roaring cannon and tearing through Japanese timber.
But his ship fought alone. The rest of his navy, possessed by fear at facing such a large force, had lagged behind.
Eventually though, seeing the havoc Yi's ship was wreaking on the enemy,
they took heart. Messengers were sent from boat to boat with a mix of
inspirational words, threats, and the hope of victory. And soon the rest of Yi's tiny armada dove into the fray.
Then, a stroke of luck. The enemy flagship was blown apart by friendly fire and the Japanese began to waver.
Some of their ships began to turn about to fall back,
and it was just at this moment
that the waters current turned.
The strait was too narrow for all the Japanese ships to maneuver around each other. And with the current roaring against them, ship slammed into
ship. They tried in vain to retreat, tangled ships smashing into one another, screams and chaos and over it all, the roaring water.
With the current now on their side, the Koreans gave chase. Laying into enemy ships on either side a hail of fire and arrows.
The Japanese boats burnt and sank. 133 vessels had come to crush this tiny remnant of Korean navy, and
31 of them wouldn't be returning. Yi, even when facing odds of ten to one, had once again not lost a single ship.
Word of Yi's victory spread. As his tiny fleet sailed, one by one other ships began to show up, ships that had been thought lost,
ships that had been hiding after the previous disaster under Won Kyon. These ships now came to join
Yi's tiny armada.
Refugees flocked to where Yi's ships were anchored, willingly giving him food, cloth, and iron. And perhaps most importantly, the
Chinese, who had mostly limited their naval efforts to guarding ports until now,
decided that they could work with the Korean navy and take the offensive. And so we'll leave Yi
rebuilding the Korean navy until next week when we see the Japanese invasion ended for good.