Part 5

[Illustration: ADMIRAL ITO.]

JAPANESE FLEET.

----------------+-----+--------+-----------------------------+------ Ship. |Tons.|Captain.| Armament. | Speed | | | | in | | | | 1894. ----------------+-----+--------+-----------------------------+------ Knots. Flying squadron. Yoshino[21] | 4150|Kawara | Four 6-in. Q.F., | 20 | | | eight 4.7-in. Q.F. | -------------------------------------------------------------------- Takachiho | 3650|Nomura | Two 10-in. Krupp, six 6-in. | 15 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Naniwa | 3650|Togo | Ditto | 16 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Akitsushima | 3150|Kamimura|Four 6-in. Q.F., | 16 | | | six 4.7-in. Q.F. | -------------------------------------------------------------------- Main fleet. Matsushima[22]| 4277|{Omoto |One 12.6-in. Canet, | 14 | |{Dewa | twelve 4.7-in. Q.F. | -------------------------------------------------------------------- Chiyoda | 2450|Uchida | Ten 4.7-in. Q.F. | ? -------------------------------------------------------------------- Itsukushima | 4277|Yoko-o |One 12.6-in. Canet, | 14 | | | eleven 4.7-in. Q.F. | -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hashidate | 4277|Hidaka | Ditto | 14 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fuso | 3718|Arai |Four 9.4-in. Krupp, | 11 | | | two 6-in. Krupp | -------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Yei | 2200|Sakurai | Nine old 6-in. | 9 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Out of line. Akagi | 615|Sakamoto| Two 4.7-in. Q.F. | 8 -------------------------------------------------------------------- Saikio-maru[23]| 2913|Kano | Two light guns and | 10 | | | some small Q.F. | ----------------+-----+--------+-----------------------------+------

[21] Rear-Admiral Tsuboi.

[22] Vice-Admiral Ito.

[23] Vice-Admiral Count Kabayama.

CHINESE FLEET.

(From starboard to port.)—

+-----------------+----+------------+--------------------------------+------+ | Ship. |Tons| Captain. | Armament. |Speed | | | | | | in | | | | | | 1894.| +-----------------+----+------------+--------------------------------+------+ |Battle-line. | | | |Knots.| | Yang Wei |1350| — |Two 10.2-in., four 4.7-in. Krupp| 6 | | Tchao Yung |1350| — | Ditto | 6 | | Ching Yuen |2300| — |Three 8.2-in., two 6-in. Elswick|14 | | Lai Yuen |2850| — | Two 8.2-in., two 6-in. Krupp |10 | | Chen Yuen |7430| Lin | Four 12-in., two 6-in. Krupp |12 | | Ting Yuen[24] |7430|Lin-Poo-Chin| Ditto |12 | | King Yuen |2850| — | Two 8.2-in., two 6-in. Krupp |10 | | Chih Yuen |2300| Tang | Three 8.2-in., two 6-in. Krupp |15 | | Kuang Chi |1290| — | Three 4.7-in. Krupp |10½ | | Tsi Yuen |2355| Fong | Two 8.2-in., one 6-in. Krupp |12½ | | | | | | | |Inshore. | | — | | | | Ping Yuen |2100| — | One 10.2-in., two 6-in. Krupp |6 or 7| | Kwang Ping |1000| — | Three 4.7-in. Krupp |10 | | One torpedo boat| 128| — | Three tubes |15 | | ” ” ” | 69| — | Ditto |16 | +-----------------+----+------------+--------------------------------+------+

[24] Admiral Ting.

[Illustration: YALU: THE BEGINNING OF THE BATTLE.]

The first shot, which fell short, was fired by the Ting Yuen at 12.30. A moment later the battle was general.

The sea was smooth—almost glassy—the sky dull. There was, however, a growing breeze, and this blew towards the Chinamen, so that the black smoke from the Japanese cruisers acted as a helpful screen.

The Japanese came on, and passed right across the Chinese front, turning in succession eight points to port, when they opened on the Chinese at 3000 yards. This passing across the front was dangerous, and the Chinese nearly succeeded in cutting the Japanese line. They lost station in doing so, masking each other; and to this the Japanese fleet owed much, and only their tail was endangered. The Fuso was badly hit. The Hi Yei, in danger of being rammed, had to alter her course. She passed between the Chinese battleships at short range, getting badly hit as she cleared them. The Akagi was badly knocked about; the Saikio alone passed on unhurt.

The Chinese had by now half won the battle, but they were in such a muddle with their ships that the advantage was never followed up. At this time the flying squadron, which had cut off the two old gunboats to starboard of the Chinese line, was masked by the remaining four vessels of the main fleet; and an inspection of the plan of the second stage will show how near victory was for the Chinamen had their fleet only been in hand. Overwhelming heavy gunfire was theirs.

They lost the opportunity, however, and the flying squadron, after a short engagement with the Ping Yuen division, circled and came round on the Chinese front, while the main squadron, also turning, assailed its rear. The Ping Yuen devoted herself to a fruitless attempt at chasing the main Japanese fleet, while the bulk of the Chinese wasted effort in an attempt to complete the destruction of the little Akagi. In doing this they came under fire of the flying squadron, which sank both the King Yuen and Chih Yuen with its 10.2-in. guns.

Attempts by one of the torpedo boats to sink the Saikio-maru failed; she also survived a fire from the Chinese battleships. The Lai Yuen was by now ablaze; the Ching Yuen was no better off. Both battleships were also on fire. The pendulum had swung round, and everything pointed to a complete victory for Japan.

Matters were thus when, at 3.30, the Matsushima was put out of action. The incidents enabled the battleships to recover, and they took, without much serious harm, a hammering from the entire Japanese fleet that remained.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF YALU: SECOND STAGE.]

This stage continued till nightfall, when the Chinese got into line and steamed away, followed for a short distance only by the Japanese.

Both sides claimed the victory; as a matter of fact, it was a drawn battle. When the length of time the battle took is considered, the damages were relatively small. In detail, they were as follows:—

JAPANESE FLEET’S DAMAGES.

The Japanese flagship, Matsushima, went through the battle without any particular harm for a considerable while, when one of the Chinese ironclads fired a 12-in. common shell at her, which hit her, making a big hole. It went in and wiped out practically the entire battery, disabled two or three guns completely, and exploded some spare ammunition. Altogether 100 men were killed or wounded by that one shell, and she had to be hauled out of action. When that 12-in. shell hit, the majority of the men were in working dresses, in cotton things and so on, and a great many of them were men with beards, and a Japanese officer who was on board the ship at the time tells me that every single one of these men with cotton dresses was set on fire, and all the men with beards and long hair also had their beards and hair set on fire, and were rushing all over the ship, whereas several officers, who happened to be in serge uniform near by, were comparatively little hurt. The ship was set on fire to a certain extent, but a few buckets of water very easily put the fire out.

This ship was also hit by a 10.2-in. shell a little earlier in the action. It hit her torpedo-room, glanced up, and knocked up against the barbette; but as the shell was loaded with cement its burst did not do very much harm.

The second ship in the Japanese line was the Chiyoda. She was also hit by a 12-in. shell, but that was another cement or coal-dust shell, so did not burst. It went through just above the belt. Had it hit the belt it ought to have sunk her; above, it simply made a large hole through and went out again, and the ship was none the worse; there was not a single man killed or wounded.

The Naniwa was hit by an 8.2-in. on the water-line, which went into the coal bunkers, but it did no particular harm there. The shell was afterwards picked up and pieced together, and a photograph taken of such sections as were got. Twenty-seven pieces were recovered, and they say there must have been a great many more. But that 8.2-in. shell practically did no harm whatever to the ship. The coal bunkers acted very efficiently.

In the Itsukushima there were shells in the torpedo-room, but none of the torpedoes exploded—if there were any there with war-heads, which is rather uncertain. There was also a shell in the engine-room, which, curiously enough, did no harm.

The Hashidate had a 6-in. shell burst right up against the barbette of a big gun, which was not hurt at all by it.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF YALU: THIRD STAGE.]

The Hi Yei, an oldish ship, was raked by a 12-in. common shell, and also by some smaller shells, which set her on fire and practically blew the ship to pieces.

The Sakio-maru was quite a small vessel. She was hit first of all by a 12-in. common shell, which, in theory, ought to have blown her to atoms. It disabled her steering-gear and wounded one man. She altogether got eleven hits from pieces of 4.7-in. or over. Of these, four were 12-in. shell, of which two burst inside; and the net result of those eleven hits was to wound eleven men, to kill nobody, but to make the ship leak a bit. The torpedoes fired at her missed, as has already been stated. The reason was that the boat fired as she turned, and the torpedo went under. Two others fired at longer ranges missed badly. The torpedo boat was not hit. The Chinese version of the affair runs to the effect that the Japanese on board the Saikio deserted their guns in panic at the attack. This statement rests, of course, only on the Chinese assertion.

The Akagi was hit by a 12-in. common shell, which struck the mainmast and sent it overboard, and killed the captain. The peculiar thing about it was that all the hits took her about that part; there was not a single hit forward, but the bridge, which stands somewhere aft, was continually swept, and the second in command was wounded almost immediately after he went on the bridge. The third officer, Lieut. Sato, then went up, and was hit by a fragment of shell that scraped the top of his head off, and he went down below. A fourth man went up; he got wounded, and the third man went up again and carried on. She was able to steam and go home quite comfortably after the battle.

A gun shield, about two inches thick, was struck, and the shell that hit it is supposed to have been a 6-in. common. It simply scooped out the shield about an inch or so, and did no harm to the men inside, who were just round the corner, and did no harm whatever to the gun.

One shell burst on the upper deck, wrecked everything, made a tremendous mess, and riddled the deck all over, but the harm was practically _nil_.

The old battleship Fuso was hit more than any other Japanese ship, but every hit upon her has been kept confidential. Still, so far as can be guessed, the Japanese opinion of the result of the fire on this ship was that armour under the peculiar circumstances of the Yalu tended to aggravate hits rather than the reverse, and it is certainly interesting that this ship, with an armoured battery, completely armoured belt, and fairly thick armour which could not be penetrated by any of the Chinese 6-in. shell, should have been one of the most damaged ship of any.

[Illustration: A JAPANESE PICTURE OF YALU.]

CHINESE FLEET’S DAMAGES.

The Chinese flagship was an ironclad of 7000 tons displacement, the Ting Yuen. The first thing that hit her was a big ricochet which flew up and knocked the mast, carried it over the side, and killed all the men in the fighting-top. She was peppered all over by the Japanese, and hit something like 300 times, the result of the 300 hits being 14 men killed and 25 wounded. She was set on fire practically continuously all through the action. As soon as one fire was put out she was set on fire again in another place; but the Chinese managed to get these fires out without any bother, and no harm was done to her that way.

The second principal Chinese ship was the Chen Yuen. She was hit 400 times. The photograph of her in dock is how she appeared shortly after the battle. The funnel was peppered over everywhere. All the men in the fighting-tops were killed. The fore 6-in. turret was hit; it is only about an inch thick, and this shell went through and killed or wounded the gun’s crew, but did not hurt the gun. The only gun that was disabled at all in the battle was one of the 12-in., and it appears to have been disabled by something very big—probably one of the Japanese 12.6-in. shell hit the barbette of the ship, and the concussion upset the training gear of the guns in some way. Nothing could be done with them for about ten minutes. After that they were got in working order and fired again: This ship was also set on fire all over the place, but was perfectly able to fight when the battle was over.

The Chen Yuen had on board her the famous Captain McGiffin, who wrote a great deal about his adventures in the fight. He was an American, who was usually described as commander of the ship and as having fought the battle. He was photographed against the hits in a desperately wounded condition, but afterwards it was surmised that he was not blind to dramatic effect. His narratives can hardly be accepted as historical evidence, save in a general way.

The next ship of interest at the battle of Yalu was the Elswick cruiser, Chih Yuen. She is described in most accounts of the Yalu as having very gallantly charged the entire Japanese fleet, attempting to ram; a tremendous fire was poured into her till she went down, and there was an end of her. According to Japanese officers, what really happened was that at an early stage in the action her steering-gear got disabled; she was simply wandering about unable to do anything. She was simply a cloud of white smoke drifting along. The Takachiho, one of the Japanese cruisers, had a 10-in. gun. She waited until the Chih Yuen was within something like 400 yards, when they could not miss, then let drive with this 10-in. They did not attempt to pick out any particular part of the Chih Yuen; they simply fired “into the brown.” They hit her somewhere rather high up near the funnel; there was a tremendous cloud of white smoke, which became red, and when that cloud went the ship was gone. There is no idea that any magazine was hit, or that there was any ammunition on deck to account for it, and the favourite theory of the Japanese officers is that this particular hit upset her stability in some way and did the finishing touch, and thus caused her to capsize.

[Illustration: [_Sketch by a Japanese Officer._

SINKING OF THE KING YUEN (p. 139).]

Opposite is a sketch by a Japanese officer of the sinking of the King Yuen, which was a small Chinese ironclad. There is a great deal of mystery in all the histories as to how that ship really did go down. The Japanese account of it is that “she was on fire, and apparently the fire could not be put out; she began to roll very much indeed—first very heavily over one way and then very heavily over the other way; she continued rolling like that, and one time she rolled and did not come back.”

She had a sister ship, the Lai Yuen. This ship was set on fire at an early stage of the action, and the Chinese apparently did not trouble to put the fire out. The consequence was it got a large hold and burnt every scrap of woodwork in the ship. But the extraordinary thing is that her people managed to go on fighting. Of her deck nothing was left but twisted beams. The ship was nearly white-hot, and a number of men got roasted to death in her; but she was still in fighting condition when the battle ended. Probably only Chinamen could have fought in such conditions.

The Ching Yuen was set on fire, but not badly hit in any way.

There were two other Chinese ships lost, the Tchao Yung and the Yang Wei. These were set on fire at a very early stage, and most of the accounts that we hear of the danger of fire in action are based upon these two particular ships. It appears that their captains were economical men, who liked to make a little money; so when the ships were painted they did not scrape off the old paint, and as the ships were about twelve years old the paint got very thick. Moreover, as they found kerosine cheaper than linseed oil, they mixed the paint always with kerosine. The ships, therefore, were of a somewhat inflammable nature. When they got hit, the men trying to put the fire out got hit also, and the ships were then simply left to blaze away. That is the true cause of most of the fire scares that happened just after Yalu.

The Chinese shell were very defective indeed. They had very few shell with any charges; nearly all they had to fire with were solid shot or cement shell, the very worst possible thing for firing at cruisers with; and this fact that they had no good shell must, perhaps, account for the survival of the Japanese fleet. For although just after Yalu the Japanese said that their shooting was 15 per cent. and the Chinese 10 per cent., they have since stated that the Chinese hits were something like 25 per cent. and their own about 12 per cent., and they say that in the early stages of the battle the Chinese never missed a single shot with their big guns—they hit every ship that they fired at; and they describe them as being some of the best gunners in the world—that these No. 1 Chinese gunners were born shots; but gradually, as the battle went on, the Japanese 3-pounders and machine guns playing on the Chinese ships took off the heads of those men, and they were replaced by other men who were not such good shots, and this went on until, towards the end of the battle, practically no hitting at all was done by the Chinese. But in the early part of the fight their shooting was very good indeed.

[Illustration: BATTLE OF YALU: FOURTH STAGE.]

The Japanese in their fleet had three enormous guns, each of 66 tons, which would penetrate something like double the thickness of any armour opposed to them. Only one of those guns seems to have been in a condition to fire. In the excitement of the battle the Japanese got something wrong with the gear, and had to manipulate them by hand; and the consequence was that two of those guns fired about once each, and the third once an hour. It is unfortunate that these guns did not secure at least one fair and square hit—the data of it would have been extremely valuable.

After the battle of Yalu the Chinese ships were patched up. The Tche Yuen, which had already taken part in the battle of Asan, took part in Yalu, but was then knocked about and ran away. Although she had been so badly hit in the battle of Asan, when she was doing the strategical movement at the rear, she only took eight days to patch up, and she was then able to go out to sea again. After Yalu she was very quickly got ready once more.

The first conclusion one is forced to is that penetration does not seem to have done anything in this battle. Where a gun was matched against some very inferior armour, it went through and smashed it up, but wherever the armour that it ought to penetrate was anything like equal to the gun, the result was failure.

The second point is the astonishing amount of hitting that all these ships seem to have been able to stand. There are many cases of quite little ships that in theory one single shell would finish, but it has taken five or six shells to disable them at all, and in a week or two they have been fit to go out fighting again. The Saikio-maru, and the way she was hammered and still managed to go on fighting and remain in a fairly good condition, is a particular case in point. Although the upper works may be knocked about and splintered, and so on, it does not seem much good splintering the upper works and making a mess of the ship unless there is a gun near it, and somebody to be disabled. Now, this conclusion is dead against the “moral effect” theory. It is almost a gospel that if the upper works are shelled enough the crew somewhere else will get demoralised. I do not believe it; they will not in a modern war be aware of it. I think this point should be laid to heart and thought over by those who have 6-in. guns to attack ships with. To do harm, they must fire those guns with all the intelligence they can bring to bear.

On the other hand, it is well to remember, as in the case of the King Yuen and Chih Yuen, that hits in the upper works caused the loss of these ships by affecting stability, so far as can be gathered in the absence of the hulls now at the bottom of the Yellow Sea.

[Illustration: [_Official photo._

ON BOARD THE TING YUEN AFTER THE SURRENDER AT WEI-HAI-WEI.]

A third point is, that the danger from fire in action is grossly exaggerated. As to the Japanese, they one and all say that they had no trouble with fire at Yalu. They have not entirely done away with woodwork in their ships. Following the fashion set by the Germans, they have done away with a fair amount, but their ships are by no means without wood, like German ships and others which have not been in action—though even Germans are now reverting to a certain amount of wood. The Japanese say that they had buckets of water standing round; the men ran to the buckets of water, and the fire was under. The Chinese had exactly the same system, and they had no trouble till about the end of the action, when they got demoralised, and then the fire began to get headway. Hose pipes seem to have always been untrustworthy, too liable to be holed by splinters. Wet sand proved excellent. It may be noted that hits on the sea near the ships deluged all the exposed parts of ships at Yalu with water. The loss of life was returned as follows:—

Japanese—90 killed, 204 wounded. Chinese—36 killed, 88 wounded, 700 drowned (approximate).

Details (official) of the losses are:—

JAPANESE.

+-------------+--------------+--------------+ | | Killed. | Wounded. | | +---------+----+---------+----+ | |Officers.|Men.|Officers.|Men.| +-------------+---------+----+---------+----+ |Matsushima | 2 | 33 | 5 | 71 | |Chiyoda | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |Itsukushima | 0 | 13 | 1 | 17 | |Hashidate | 2 | 1 | 0 | 9 | |Hi-yei | 3 | 16 | 3 | 34 | |Fusoo | 0 | 2 | 2 | 10 | |Yoshino | 0 | 1 | 2 | 9 | |Takachiho | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | |Akitsusu | 1 | 4 | 0 | 10 | |Naniwa | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | |Akagi | 2 | 9 | 2 | 15 | |Saikio | 0 | 0 | 1 | 10 | | +---------+----+---------+----+ | Total | 10 | 80 | 16 |188 | +-------------+---------+----+---------+----+