It pains me to take issue with the scholars at Oxford University
Press, and it is especially painful to find myself disagreeing with
the editor of the invaluable _Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea_.
That said, I strongly suspect that "Chinese gybe" originated in much
the same way as the expression "Chinese fire-drill," rather than
reflecting any shortcoming of the junk rig. By most accounts, this rig
is as stable and forgiving as any devised. H. Warington Smyth, for
example, writing in his 1906 classic _Mast and Sail in Europe and
Asia_, noted that "for flatness of sail and for handiness the Chinese
rig is unsurpassed."
For the benefit of those who missed the opportunity to deepen their
understanding of different cultures which the US Marine Corps made
available to selected conscripts in the late 1960s, "Chinese
fire-drill" was often used by Drill Instructors and other NCOs to
describe any rout, shambles, or cock-up. (An illustrative example:
"Listen-up, now, ladies! We don't want a f--king Chinese fire-drill
this time, do we?")
Of course, older Marines -- those, for example, who remember the
horrors of the frozen Chosin -- might not agree with this assessment
of the competence of the Chinese. And students of history, recalling
the wide-ranging expeditions of the Grand Treasure Ship Fleet under
Imperial Palace Eunuch Cheng Ho in the 15th century, may have cause to
doubt the accuracy of the characterization of Chinese seamanship
implicit in "Chinese gybe."*
Forrest Brownell
South Colton NY
forrest@slic.com
* At a time when a typical European caravel displaced perhaps 100
tons, the ships of Cheng Ho's fleet exceeded 1000, and each was
divided into multiple compartments by watertight bulkheads -- an
innovation not widely adopted by European nations until iron began
to replace wood in shipbuilding, in the latter half of the 19th
century.