''Hai Tien'' () was the second ship of the of protected cruisers and one of the last built for the

Manchu The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...

Qing dynasty.

Background

In the late 19th century, China, which had been ruled for over two hundred years by the Qing dynasty, was subject to a series of humiliating unequal treaties with foreign powers after a devastating military defeat at the hands of the emerging Empire of Japan. With their armies and navies shattered, China appeared weak to the great powers who were eager to expand their financial and political control over China. In order to rebuild their military and reassert their own national sovereignty, the Qing government appointed the Marquis of Suyi, Li Hongzhang, as a special envoy to Europe in May 1896. Li, a veteran diplomat, was tasked with ordering new warships from foreign dockyards, visiting the Russian Empire,

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

, Belgium and the United Kingdom throughout summer 1896. A pair of protected cruisers were ordered from Armstrong Whitworth of Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom as part of this. ''Hai Tien'' was ordered along with her

sister ship A sister ship is a ship of the same class or of virtually identical design to another ship. Such vessels share a nearly identical hull and superstructure layout, similar size, and roughly comparable features and equipment. They often share a ...

in October 1896, two months after Li's visit to Britain. The two ships were based on an improved design, which Armstrong Whitworth had built for Argentina a year earlier but made to Chinese dimensional specifications. ''Hai Tien'', although laid down 16 February 1897, three months after ''Hai Chi'', and launched 25 November 1897, two months after ''Hai Chis launch, was completed a month ahead of the ''Hai Chi''. Both ships were brought to China by a contract crew, and handed over to the China's Beiyang Fleet on August 1899. ''Hai Chi'' and ''Hai Tien'' were the largest ships in the Chinese navy until after World War II.

Service history

''Hai Tien'' had a very brief and uneventful career in the

Qing Navy The Imperial Chinese Navy was the modern navy of the Qing dynasty of China established in 1875. An Imperial naval force in China first came into existence from 1132 during the Song dynasty and existed in some form until the end of the Qing dynasty ...

. Shortly after the start of

Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...

which plunged China into chaos, the Beiyang Fleet was sent to reinforce the

Dagu forts The Taku Forts or Dagu Forts, also called the Peiho Forts are forts located by the Hai River (Peiho River) estuary in the Binhai New Area, Tianjin, in northeastern China. They are located southeast of the Tianjin urban center. History The f ...

on 31 May 1900. During this time there was an uneasy state of high alert between the increasing number of foreign warships and the Chinese fleet, although tensions were high no shots were fired between the two sides. Eventually on 16 June 1900, the twenty-three ships of the

Eight-Nation Alliance The Eight-Nation Alliance was a multinational military coalition that invaded northern China in 1900 with the stated aim of relieving the foreign legations in Beijing, then besieged by the popular Boxer militia, who were determined to remove fo ...

anchored off Dagu made an ultimatum to the fort, demanding its surrender to the allied fleet in order to relieve the Siege of the International Legations in the capital, Beijing. The commanding officer of the forts, General

Luo Rongguang Luo may refer to: Luo peoples and languages * Luo peoples, an ethno-linguistic group of eastern and central Africa ** Luo people of Kenya and Tanzania or Joluo, an ethnic group in western Kenya, eastern Uganda, and northern Tanzania. *** Luoland, ...

refused and open fired on the foreign ships, leading to the Battle of Dagu Forts. The anti-Boxer governor of

Shandong Shandong ( , ; ; alternately romanized as Shantung) is a coastal province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the East China region. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilizati ...

, Yuan Shikai ordered the Beiyang fleet south, in order to prevent the possibility of the outgunned ships from being captured or destroyed by the alliance navies, as had happened to the four new German-built s and the torpedo gunboat . These five ships were captured by allied forces during the capture of the forts dock facilities. From Dagu, the remains of the Beiyang fleet, which consisted of the protected cruisers ''Hai Tien'', , , and the torpedo gunboat , sailed south to Shanghai and finally to Jiangyin where they quietly stayed for the next year with the Nanyang Fleet until the end of the war on 7 September 1901. Less than four years later at 5:30 AM on 25 April 1904, ''Hai Tien'' under the command of future admiral

Liu Guanxiong Liu Guanxiong (; 1861, Fuzhou, Fujian – 1927, Tianjin) was a Chinese Admiral from the late Qing dynasty and the early Republic of China who was Navy Minister of China, from 1912 to 1916 and from 1917 to 1919. When he was young he entered th ...

was sailing to Shanghai from

Zhifu Zhifu District is an urban district of the prefecture-level city of Yantai in Shandong Province, China. Name As a separate city, Zhifu's name was variously romanized as Chefoo, and . Although this name was used for the city by foreigners prior ...

when he became engulfed in fog at Weihai. ''Hai Tien'' overshot the entrance to the Yangtze River and struck a pinnacle rock just off the

Shengsi Islands The Shengsi Islands or Archipelago () are part of the Zhoushan Archipelago and located south of the mouth of the Yangtze (east of Hangzhou Bay). They comprise 394 islands, each with an area larger than , but of which just 18 are inhabitable. The l ...

in Hangzhou Bay. Her crew had abandoned her by the evening and was rescued by passing Chinese customs cruisers. Attempts to

salvage Salvage may refer to: * Marine salvage, the process of rescuing a ship, its cargo and sometimes the crew from peril * Water salvage, rescuing people from floods. * Salvage tug, a type of tugboat used to rescue or salvage ships which are in dis ...

the ship failed save for the rescue of her EOC 8 inch 45 caliber guns. This left ''Hai Chi'' as the sole surviving member of her class for the rest of her service.

Notes

External links

Beiyang.org
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hai Tien Hai Chi-class cruisers 1911 in military history Cruisers of the Beiyang Fleet 1897 ships Naval ships of China Maritime incidents in 1904 Shipwrecks of China Cruisers of Imperial China Ships built by Armstrong Whitworth Ships built on the River Tyne