was an
unprotected cruiser
An unprotected cruiser was a type of naval warship in use during the early 1870s Victorian or pre-dreadnought era (about 1880 to 1905). The name was meant to distinguish these ships from “protected cruisers”, which had become accepted in ...
of the
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...
. The name ''Tatsuta'' comes from the
Tatsuta River Tatsuta may refer to:
* Tatsuta, Aichi, a former village in Japan, merged into the city of Aisai in 2010
* , a pre-war Japanese ocean liner of the NYK Line
* , an unprotected cruiser in the early Imperial Japanese Navy
* , the second vessel of the ...
, near
Nara
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an " independent federal agency of the United States government within the executive branch", charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It i ...
. ''Tatsuta'' was used by the Imperial Japanese Navy primarily as an
aviso
An ''aviso'' was originally a kind of dispatch boat or "advice boat", carrying orders before the development of effective remote communication.
The term, derived from the Portuguese and Spanish word for "advice", "notice" or "warning", an '' ...
(
dispatch boat
Dispatch boats were small boats, and sometimes large ships, tasked to carry military dispatches from ship to ship or from ship to shore or, in some cases from shore to shore. Dispatch boats were employed when other means of transmitting a message w ...
) used for scouting, reconnaissance and delivery of priority messages.
Background
''Tatsuta'' was ordered from
Armstrong Whitworth
Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Co Ltd was a major British manufacturing company of the early years of the 20th century. With headquarters in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Armstrong Whitworth built armaments, ships, locomotives, automobiles and a ...
in
Elswick,
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is ...
,
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
as a large
torpedo boat
A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of se ...
under the 1891 Fiscal Year budget as a replacement for the ill-fated .
[Schencking, '' Making Waves'', p. 55.]
Design
''Tatsuta'' had a steel hull and retained a full
barque
A barque, barc, or bark is a type of sailing ship, sailing vessel with three or more mast (sailing), masts having the fore- and mainmasts Square rig, rigged square and only the mizzen (the aftmost mast) Fore-and-aft rig, rigged fore and aft. Som ...
rigging
Rigging comprises the system of ropes, cables and chains, which support a sailing ship or sail boat's masts—''standing rigging'', including shrouds and stays—and which adjust the position of the vessel's sails and spars to which they are ...
with two
masts for auxiliary sail propulsion in addition to her
steam engine
A steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid. The steam engine uses the force produced by steam pressure to push a piston back and forth inside a cylinder. This pushing force can be trans ...
. She was armed with two
QF 4.7 inch Gun Mk I–IV QF may stand for:
* Qantas, an airline of Australia (IATA code QF)
* Qatar Foundation, a private, chartered, non-profit organization in the state of Qatar
* Quality factor, in physics and engineering, a measure of the "quality" of a resonant system ...
s guns, four
QF 3 pounder Hotchkiss
The QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss or in French use Canon Hotchkiss à tir rapide de 47 mm were a family of long-lived light naval guns introduced in 1886 to defend against new, small and fast vessels such as torpedo boats and later submarines. T ...
guns, five 2.5-pounder guns and five
torpedo tube
A torpedo tube is a cylindrical device for launching torpedoes.
There are two main types of torpedo tube: underwater tubes fitted to submarines and some surface ships, and deck-mounted units (also referred to as torpedo launchers) installed aboa ...
s, mounted on the deck.
Service record
Rushed through production due to the impending
First Sino-Japanese War
The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the po ...
, ''Tatsuta'' was en route to
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
when hostilities commenced, and she was impounded in the port of
Aden
Aden ( ar, عدن ' Yemeni: ) is a city, and since 2015, the temporary capital of Yemen, near the eastern approach to the Red Sea (the Gulf of Aden), some east of the strait Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000 people. ...
on 28 August 1894 by British authorities, as the United Kingdom took an official position of
neutrality in that conflict. She was not allowed to reach Japan until 19 March 1895, after the war was over.
[Brooke, ''Warships for Export'']
On 21 March 1896, ''Tatsuta'' was re-classified as a dispatch vessel. In 1900, she was assigned to assist in escorting transports supporting Japanese
naval landing forces
A landing operation is a military
action during which a landing force, usually utilizing landing craft, is transferred to land with the purpose of power projection ashore. With the proliferation of aircraft, a landing may refer to amphibious force ...
which occupied the port city of
Tianjin
Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...
in northern China during the
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 ...
, as part of the Japanese contribution to 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 ...
.
[Nish, ''The Origins of the Russo-Japanese War'', p. 86.] In 1902, she underwent overhaul at
Kure Naval Arsenal
was one of four principal naval shipyards owned and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
History
The Kure Naval District was established at Kure, Hiroshima in 1889, as the second of the naval districts responsible for the defense of the J ...
, where she became the first vessel in the Japanese navy to have her locomotive-type cylindrical boilers were replaced with high pressure
Niclausse boilers.
[Evans, ''Kaigun'', p. 182.]
During the
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...
of 1904–1905, ''Tatsuta'' participated in the naval
Battle of Port Arthur
The of 8–9 February 1904 marked the commencement of the Russo-Japanese War. It began with a surprise night attack by a squadron of Japanese destroyers on the neutral Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, Manchuria, and continued with an en ...
and subsequent
blockade
A blockade is the act of actively preventing a country or region from receiving or sending out food, supplies, weapons, or communications, and sometimes people, by military force.
A blockade differs from an embargo or sanction, which are le ...
of that port. Despite her small size and obsolescence, she was also present at the
Battle of the Yellow Sea
The Battle of the Yellow Sea ( ja, 黄海海戦, Kōkai kaisen; russian: Бой в Жёлтом море) was a major naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War, fought on 10 August 1904. In the Russian Navy, it was referred to as the Battle of 10 A ...
and the final decisive
Battle of Tsushima
The Battle of Tsushima (Japanese:対馬沖海戦, Tsushimaoki''-Kaisen'', russian: Цусимское сражение, ''Tsusimskoye srazheniye''), also known as the Battle of Tsushima Strait and the Naval Battle of Sea of Japan (Japanese: 日 ...
. During the war, she assisted in the rescue of crewmen from the
battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...
s and when those ships had been sunk by Russian
naval mine
A naval mine is a self-contained explosive device placed in water to damage or destroy surface ships or submarines. Unlike depth charges, mines are deposited and left to wait until they are triggered by the approach of, or contact with, any ...
s, and Admiral
Nashiba Tokioki
Baron was an admiral in the early Imperial Japanese Navy, noted for his role in the battleship naval disaster of 1904.
Biography
Nashiba was born in Chōshū domain (now Yamaguchi prefecture, as the 4th son to a 1000 ''koku'' ''samurai'' reta ...
transferred his flag to ''Tatsuta'' after this disaster.
[Warner, ''The Tide at Sunrise'', p. 282.] However, ''Tatsuta'' ran aground in the
Elliot Islands outside the entrance to
Port Arthur that day,
[Chesneau, p. 234.] and had to be refloated and then repaired at
Yokosuka Naval Arsenal
was one of four principal naval shipyards owned and operated by the Imperial Japanese Navy, and was located at Yokosuka, Kanagawa prefecture on Tokyo Bay, south of Yokohama.
History
In 1866, the Tokugawa shogunate government established the ...
from 16 July to 31 August 1904.
On 28 August 1912, ''Tatsuta'' was re-classified as a 1st class
gunboat
A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies.
History Pre-steam ...
. She was officially struck from the
navy list
A Navy Directory, formerly the Navy List or Naval Register is an official list of naval officers, their ranks and seniority, the ships which they command or to which they are appointed, etc., that is published by the government or naval author ...
as a
combat
Combat ( French for ''fight'') is a purposeful violent conflict meant to physically harm or kill the opposition. Combat may be armed (using weapons) or unarmed ( not using weapons). Combat is sometimes resorted to as a method of self-defense, or ...
vessel on 1 April 1916 and her armaments removed. However, she was retained by the navy for use as a utility vessel and was designated as a
submarine tender
A submarine tender is a type of depot ship that supplies and supports submarines.
Development
Submarines are small compared to most oceangoing vessels, and generally do not have the ability to carry large amounts of food, fuel, torpedoes, and ...
on 9 December 1916 and renamed . The name was shortened to ''Nagaura'' on 1 July 1920. She was retired after her second career again on 12 March 1926, and was sold for scrap on 6 April 1926.
[
]
Notes
References
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
External links
Materials of the IJN
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tatsuta
1894 ships
Cruisers of the Imperial Japanese Navy
Ships built by Armstrong Whitworth
Ships built on the River Tyne
Naval ships of Japan
Russo-Japanese War naval ships of Japan
Maritime incidents in 1904