I can provide a few points of interest on East-Asian ship construction. Though typically referred to as junks, this term actually describes the form of sails, the "junk rig," where the sail is build of a series of rigid frames holding the material. This sail type is strong and easy to repair, as an induvidual segment can be taken simply patched up, while providing a strong structural support. With the boom of the maritime trade from the Song Dynasty onwards, came a boom of ship-building, which can be divided into two main styles.

The Northern Chinese style used semi or fully sealed wooden bulkheads as the basis of construction, held together with iron nails. This style offered a fairly resilient and tough ocean-going ship, though hardly unsinkable. The South-East Asian style usually uses a keel first construction method and was held together with wooden dowels, which made construction simpler and cheaper. Hybrid designs were quite common in Southern China and northern maritime South East Asia, if the shipwrecks discovered are any indication.

Such ships could be between 10 and 60 metres long and carried between one and three sails, though there are many exceptions, notably the treasure ships of Zheng He's famous expeditions, with estimations of 100 metres or more and some (very unrealistically) putting them close to 400 metres. Construction material would most commonly be locally sourced materials, such as pine wood in Guangdong, though there was a valuable trade in rare or desirous woods such as Burmese teak. Steering was usually accomplished with aft rudders on these vessels, while compasses were commonplace for navigation.