Yi feigned a retreat to draw the Japanese out of a fortified harbour, then turned on them in open water — and committed the geobukseon, the turtle ship, for the first time: a low, ram-bowed vessel with a roofed deck covered in iron spikes, cannon firing from every side, and a dragon's head at the prow belching smoke. The Japanese could not board it, and boarding was how Japan fought at sea.
The turtle ship is famous, but the real weapon was doctrine. Korean ships were built as gun platforms with heavy cannon on strong flat-bottomed hulls; Japanese ships were troop transports built to close and board. Yi never let them close. He fought an artillery war against an infantry navy and lost, across six years and more than twenty engagements, not one battle.
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Abercrombie led 15,000 British and colonial troops — the largest army ever assembled in North America — against Montcalm's 3,600 at Fort Carillon. In a colossal blunder, he ordered frontal assaults against log breastworks without waiting for his artillery. The attacks were repulsed with devastating losses — 1,944 British casualties in a single afternoon. Montcalm, who had expected to lose, could scarcely believe his own victory.
Britain's worst defeat of the war — and a turning point in how colonials viewed British military leadership. The disaster led to Abercrombie's replacement by Amherst and contributed to the colonial sense that British generals were incompetent and arrogant. These seeds of resentment would bloom into revolution fifteen years later.
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