The Admiral: Raging Currents

Quite a good Korean action movie about the a famous naval battle against the Japanese in the late 1500's.


You can see it on youtube if you can stand the ads, or find it elsewhere.

Yup. At least from all the bits I've seen. Might have been the result of some kind of arms race to have the higher decks than your opponents since they mainly fought by boarding actions and having the high ground is a valuable advantage for that kind of thing. Thats purely personal speculation on my part though.

There is a turtle ship in the movie, but only one. The rest, and all but 12 of the rest of the fleet, lead by the incompetent Admiral Won Gyun, were lost in a disastrous battle with the Japanese fleet over several days (Battle of Chilcheollyang). The ships the newly reinstated Admiral Yi has in the movie are a group of 13 ships that deserted that battle at the start, which includes the one turtle ship in the movie. The movie covers Admiral Yi's and the remnants of the navy's heroic comeback at the Battle of Myeongnyang while outnumbered at least 11 to 1 (historical numbers vary, but thats the lowest estimate).

This is a link to the subtitled movie on youtube. The sound is distorted all the way through, but you get the tone, and the picture is perfect. Being Youtube its got those forced ads scattered through it and after each ad break the built-in overlays the video has advertising a movie called "No tears for the dead" restore themselves (its only one active overlay, and 3 blank ones) but their easy enough to click through/click off. Ignore the still image on the link- I think its an image from "No tears from the dead", its not part of the actual video. Its available for purchase or rental in some places if the free version doesnt do it for you.