Established in China by Kublai Khan, the Yuan dynasty was drawing to a close in the mid-14th century. The Ming and the Han were the two groups that chose to succeed the Yuan, and, logically, it would be the arms that determined who would present himself as a claimant to the Yuan throne. From August 30 to October 4, 1363, both dynasties would fight in Lake Poyang what is considered the largest naval battle in history. It seems difficult for the largest naval battle to be fought on a lake, but the dimensions of the Poyang, the largest body of fresh water in China, allowed it:170 kilometers long by an average width of 17 (3,585 km²), and an average depth of 8 meters and a maximum of 25.
With his lou chan , true floating fortresses, Chen Youliang , commander of the Han, began the naval siege of the city of Nanchang, where the Ming had become strong. Despite heavy bombardment, the city's fortifications withstood the attacks. One of the besieged soldiers managed to break through the siege and warn Zhu Yuanzhang of the siege. , the general of the Ming army. He regrouped his forces and headed for the lake. Zhu's ships were much smaller than Chen Youliang's, so they couldn't put up a direct fight against the mammoth ships. Of course, given their speed and maneuverability, they were ideal for launching lightning attacks and fleeing into shallow waters where the floating fortresses would not reach for fear of being stranded. As the damage caused by the Ming boats was little, Zhu Yuanzhang chose to set fire to some barges and launch them against the lou chan as fire ships, and even moved boats overland to surround them and attack them from all fronts. After a little over a month of playing cat and mouse, the battle reached a stalemate. Zhu decided to retreat to the mouths of the Yangtze and Gan rivers and block the outlet of the lake by chaining his boats. After a month of blockade and fed up with waiting for events without anything happening, Zhu Yuanzhang launched an all-out attack with all available means, and... one stray arrow changed everything. In the midst of the scuffle, Chen Youliang fell mortally wounded by an arrow. Faced with his general's death and lack of leadership, the Han surrendered. The Ming were the official hopefuls. Barely five years later, with the fall of the Yuan, Zhu Yuanzhang he would become the first emperor of the Ming dynasty.
The title of largest naval battle is due to the number of contenders, about 850,000 soldiers participated:600,000 from the Han and 250,000 from the Ming.
If today we wanted to recreate that battle in the same place, we could not. The 850,000 soldiers would have to fight on foot . The construction of the Three Gorges Dam, responsible for reducing the flow of the Yangtze, the drought and, above all, the extraction of sand have caused the lake to become an immense meadow. More than 236 million cubic meters of sand was removed each year from the lake for use in construction, making Poyang the largest sand mine in the world.
