Battle of Lake Poyang

With the Yuan dynasty collapsing, the question was which rebel would inherit, and in 1363 the two strongest met on Lake Poyang with something close to the entire riverine strength of central China. Chen Youliang had the bigger fleet, with tower ships chained together into floating fortresses, and Zhu Yuanzhang had smaller, more manoeuvrable vessels and the wind. Over five weeks of fighting Zhu used fire ships against the chained line, blockaded the lake's outlet to the Yangtze, and starved what was left. Chen was killed by an arrow trying to break out. Five years later Zhu Yuanzhang proclaimed himself the first emperor of the Ming.

Lake Poyang is regularly described as one of the largest naval battles in history, which rests entirely on chronicle troop figures that Ming official history had every reason to inflate, since a longer-odds victory made a better founding myth for a peasant emperor. Later retellings also borrowed heavily from Red Cliffs, chained ships and fire attack included, so distinguishing what happened from what was narrated to echo an earlier battle is a live problem in the scholarship. The Ming shilu and the later Ming History are the main sources and both are dynastic, with the founder's biography rewritten more than once during his own reign. The site itself resists study: Poyang's shoreline and depth vary enormously between seasons and have shifted over six centuries, so no battlefield can be fixed on the modern lake.