Chinese battleship Dingyuan

''Dingyuan'' (, English: Everlasting Peace) was an ironclad battleship and the flagship of the Chinese Beiyang Fleet. She was the lead ship of the , which included one other vessel, , both of which were built in Germany in the early 1880s. Delivery of the two ironclads was delayed by the Sino-French War of 1884–1885. The ships were armed with a main battery of four guns in a pair of gun turrets, making them the most powerful warships in East Asian waters at the time.

''Dingyuan'' served as the flagship of Admiral Ding Ruchang during her active career. In the 1880s and early 1890s, the Beiyang Fleet conducted a routine of training exercises and cruises abroad, with emphasis placed on visits to Japan to intimidate the country. The latter resulted in the Nagasaki Incident in 1886 and contributed to a rise in hostility between the two countries that culminated in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894. She led the Chinese fleet during the Battle of the Yalu River on 17 September, where the Japanese Combined Fleet sank much of the Beiyang Fleet, though both ''Dingyuan'' and ''Zhenyuan'' survived despite numerous hits, thanks to their heavy armor. The survivors then retreated to Port Arthur for repairs, but after that city was threatened by the Japanese Army, fled to Weihaiwei.

As the Japanese continued to advance, they laid siege to Weihaiwei in late January 1895. On 5 February, a Japanese torpedo boat slipped into the port and hit ''Dingyuan'' with a torpedo, inflicting serious damage. The Chinese crew were forced to beach the vessel to avoid sinking, and for the next week, ''Dingyuan'' was used as a stationary artillery battery. Japanese ground forces seized the city's coastal fortifications on 9 February, allowing their artillery to shell the ships in the harbor, which prompted Ding to surrender. ''Dingyuan'' was scuttled in the harbor on 10 February. A full-scale replica of the ship was built in Weihai in 2003 as a museum ship and in 2019, the Chinese government announced that an underwater survey had located the original vessel's wreck.

Design

left, An overview of the layout of a ''Dingyuan''-class ironclad

Following the direct intervention of the imperialist European powers in the mid-19th century, including the First and Second Opium Wars, where their superior steam-powered fleets overwhelmed the small Imperial Chinese Navy that still relied on traditional junks, the Chinese began a naval construction program in the 1880s to meet these threats more effectively. They enlisted British and German assistance, and two s were ordered from Germany.

''Dingyuan'' was long overall, with a beam of and a draft of . She displaced normally and up to at full load. She was powered by a pair of compound steam engines that each drove a screw propeller. Steam was provided by eight coal-burning fire-tube boilers that were ducted into a pair of funnels amidships. She was capable of a top speed of from . Her crew consisted of 350 officers and enlisted men.

The ship carried a main battery of four 20-caliber breech-loading guns in two twin-gun turrets that were placed en echelon forward. These were supported by a secondary battery of two guns in a pair of single turrets, one at the bow and the other at the stern. For defense against torpedo boats, she carried a pair of Hotchkiss revolver cannon and eight Maxim-Nordenfelt quick-firing guns in casemates. ''Dingyuan'' was also equipped with three or torpedo tubes.

She was protected by compound armor that was 14 in for the armor belt, which covered the central part of the ship were the ammunition magazines and propulsion machinery spaces were located. An armor deck that was thick provided horizontal protection. Her conning tower was covered with of armor plate on the sides. The barbettes for the gun turrets were 12–14 in thick. A strake of armor that was 8 in thick protected the casemate guns.

Service record

Early career

''Dingyuan'' was ordered in 1880 and was laid down at the AG Vulcan shipyard in Stettin, Germany in March 1881; her name means "eternal peace" in Chinese. Work proceeded quickly and she was launched on 28 December 1881 to clear the slipway so work could begin on her sister ship . Fitting-out work continued into May 1883, when the vessel was completed, but delivery was to be delayed until ''Zhenyuan'' was finished in April 1884. The start of the outbreak of the Sino-French War in August prevented both ''Dingyuan''-class ships from being delivered until 1885, since Germany would not transfer the vessels to a country at war.

Both vessels were manned by German crews, sailing on 3 July 1885 under the German flag in company with the also German-built protected cruiser . The three ships arrived in Tianjin in November, where they were transferred to Chinese control. Li Hongzhang, the Viceroy of Zhili and director of China's naval construction program, inspected the vessels following their arrival. The two ironclads were then commissioned into the Beiyang Fleet, which was based in Port Arthur. The ships steamed south to Shanghai for the winter of 1885–1886.

In the 1880s, the Beiyang Fleet was occupied with an annual routine of winter training cruises to the South China Sea, often in company with the Nanyang Fleet. This cruise typically involved visits to Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong provinces, and sometimes went as far south as stops in Southeast Asia. The rest of the year was spent in northern waters off Zhili, Shandong, and Fengtian provinces, conducting training exercises. Training cruises to foreign ports were conducted in the mid-1880s and early 1890s, both to train navigational skills on voyages far from shore and to show the flag