was a
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 ...
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 ...
. She was ordered in 1885 from the shipbuilder
Yarrows in London,
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
, where she was built in parts along Japanese specifications, and then assembled in
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 ...
,
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 ...
.
She participated in the
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 ...
(1894–1895) and 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 ...
(1904–1905). She was decommissioned on 1 April 1908, to become a training ship. She was retired on 1 March 1916, but again reactivated in 1917, ending her career in January 1927.
Design and construction
An order for what became ''Kotaka'' was initially planned in 1881, but was delayed by funding issues which also affected completion of Japan's first torpedo boats (the 40 ton ''TB-1''-class), and a final order was not placed with the British shipbuilders
Yarrows until 29 April 1885.
When launched in 1887, ''Kotaka'', at 203 tons, was the largest torpedo boat in the world, and ''"was the forerunner of torpedo-boat
destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort
larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...
s that appeared a decade later"''. She was armed with four 1-pounder (37 mm) quick-firing guns and six
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. In the following years, the Imperial Japanese Navy equipped itself with much smaller torpedo boats of French design, but in her trials in 1899, ''Kotaka'' demonstrated that she could go beyond a role of coastal defense, and was capable of following larger ships on the high seas. The British shipbuilder Yarrow ''"considered Japan to have effectively invented the destroyer"''.
[Howe]
According to ''The Engineer'' dated 2 July 1886, an item reported that the British shipyard of Messrs. Yarrow & Co. at Poplar built for account of the Japanese government a torpedo boat of which the design was not the usual type. She was larger as the torpedo boats until then built while her vulnerable parts including the machinery were protected against machine-gun fire by 1" armour made of steel. Main dimensions were 166 x 19 feet, with a displacement of 203 tons. The 1,400-hp engines delivered via twin screws gave her a speed of 19-20 knots possible.
The torpedo boat was disassembled and shipped to Japan, where she was to be assembled again. She was armed with two torpedo tubes placed in fixed bow launching tubes for (gunpowder-ejected) torpedoes. Amidships and aft were on the exposed deck were turntables placed for mounting each a pair of torpedo guns. It was almost possible to fire parallel with this guns. Yarrow had already built 8 years earlier torpedo boats for Japan which were designed by Sir
Edward John Reed.
In 1904, ''Kotaka'' was experimentally refitted with a mixed oil and coal engine, instead of her original coal-only propulsion.
Notes
References
* ''Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941'', David C. Evans,
Mark R. Peattie
Mark R. Peattie (May 3, 1930 in Nice, France – January 22, 2014 in San Rafael, California, San Rafael, California) was an American academic and Japanologist. Peattie was a specialist in modern Japanese military, naval, and imperial history.Hoove ...
, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland
* ''The Origins of Japanese Trade Supremacy: Development and Technology in Asia from 1540 to the Pacific War'', Christopher Howe, The University of Chicago Press,
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Kotaka
Ships built in Cubitt Town
1887 ships
Torpedo boats of the Imperial Japanese Navy