When Lieutenant Hitomi rowed over a second time, Galsworthy attempted to meet him at the gangplank. Even as Galsworthy tried to explain his situation to Hitomi, he was surrounded by a gaggle of irate Chinese, yelling at him that he was under orders from their government, and that if he obeyed the Japanese, they would kill him. Hitomi heard someone else (the list of suspects is short and favours von Hanneken) pointing out: ‘This vessel is possessed by a British company. However wild Japan may be, she will certainly not inflict any injury upon a ship of a neutral country.’
Galsworthy offered Hitomi a compromise. He could turn his ship back around for its port of origin, the Dagu forts near Tianjin. The Japanese would thereby prevent the arrival of 1,100 Chinese troops at Asan, and Galsworthy would not be beheaded by his passengers. Hitomi sternly warned Galsworthy that the occupants of the Kowshing were obliged to come quietly or to swim home, but that there was no other compromise on offer. If the Chinese had mutinied and were impossible to control, then Hitomi offered Galsworthy a last resort – he and his fellow Europeans could be ferried to safety aboard the Naniwa.
Captain Galsworthy was in an impossible position. The Chinese would kill him if he tried to leave, and the Japanese had already promised to blow his ship out of the water if he stayed. Meanwhile, Tōgō was similarly troubled – it was his duty to sink or capture the Kowshing, despite her official registration as a British ship. He was also well aware that time was passing and that it would only take the arrival of a Chinese warship to tip the delicate situation once more in the Kowshing’s favour. Tōgō weighed the many precedents in his head and reached a difficult conclusion. The Kowshing had lost its claim to be a British ship when her captain had been forcibly overruled by his passengers. It was effectively in a state of mutiny, and one that had essentially transferred its ownership into Chinese hands. ‘Four hours had been consumed in these fruitless negotiations,’ Tōgō wrote, ‘and there was no longer room for hesitation, so I signalled ML [quit the ship immediately].’6
Galsworthy’s return signal was hopeless: ‘We are not allowed to leave.’ Tōgō stared at the distant flags with his arms folded. On his orders, the Naniwa was already raising a single red signal flag, a symbol that she was about to open fire. Captain Tōgō’s face remained impassive. His cheeks filled with air – known by his subordinates to be a sign of their captain weighing a difficult situation in his mind. Suddenly, he blew out the air in an explosive sigh. He had made up his mind. ‘Sink her,’ he said.
The Naniwa’s propellers whirred into life, and the warship began to approach the helpless merchant vessel. A single torpedo whooshed into the water, and then all the Naniwa’s guns opened up. Despite the target being a sitting duck that had not moved for four hours, the Naniwa’s torpedo somehow managed to miss the Kowshing. The ship’s guns, however, had an easier time of it, and landed five devastating shells on the defenceless vessel in two thunderous salvos. Something hit the Kowshing’s bunkers amidships, and the middle of the ship exploded in a black cloud of coal dust and smoke, so thick that ‘day became night.’7
The Europeans on the Kowshing dove overboard. The Chinese ran to the rails with their rifles and began taking futile potshots at the distant Japanese warship. Deserted by his panicking captors, Captain Galsworthy took his chance, grabbed a life-jacket and jumped into the water on the far side of his ship, the Kowshing herself shielding him from any stray shots from the Naniwa. The Kowshing was already listing in the water, beginning to sink at quarter past one on a hot July afternoon. But as Galsworthy bobbed in the water, noting the sporty von Hanneken swimming steadily for shore, he was astounded to hear not only the continued discharge of rifles from the sinking ship, but the unmistakeable whoosh of bullets around him in the water. Up on the deck of the Kowshing, some of the Chinese had decided to take aim at Galsworthy himself.8 Gifted with a vast supply of ammunition, the Chinese soldiers kept up their barrage of rifle-fire for the next half-hour. Unwilling to put his ship’s boats in the line of fire, Tōgō was forced to wait until the Kowshing finally slipped below the waves.
A handful of men from the Kowshing managed to swim ashore. Others appear to have put to sea in two of the ship’s boats and rowed in a suicidal attack against the Naniwa, cut to pieces by the Naniwa’s deck-mounted machine guns. Still more stayed aboard the sinking ship, firing into the floating bodies of their own countrymen. Galsworthy’s chief officer, Lewes Tamplin, initially began swimming towards the shore, but decided that he stood better chance of surviving in Japanese captivity than marooned on an island with hostile Chinese.
Tamplin, however, also claimed that the Japanese had joined in the shooting in the water:
I was not swimming long when I saw [the Naniwa] lowering two of her boats, and one coming towards me, I was picked up. I explained to the officer the direction in which I had last seen the captain and the major swimming, and he directed the other boat to pull that way. No attempt was made to rescue the drowning Chinamen. Two volleys were fired from our boat with the object of sinking two of the lifeboats, which, having got clear of the ship, were filled with Chinese. Our boat was then recalled and I was taken on board, and dry clothes given to me.9
By firing upon a vessel flying the British flag, Captain Tōgō gained worldwide notoriety. His decision to sink the Kowshing led to outraged protests in Britain comparing him to a pirate, while the commander of Britain’s naval squadron in the Far East sent a passionately worded admonition to the Japanese Admiralty. Itō Hirobumi, the Japanese Prime Minister, commented: ‘I wonder what the Japanese navy will do to cope with the grave international complications created by this.’10
Journalists and inquisitive passers-by soon attempted to elicit commentary from Tōgō’s own family, who remained at his Tokyo home. They were shooed away by his venerable mother Masuko, who refused to make any comment except a pious statement of loyalty to the Emperor and a heartfelt wish that her prayers would be answered and that the Imperial forces would return home in triumph. Although it might sound like an attempt to avoid being drawn out on the incident itself, this seems to have been a fair summary of Masuko’s general state of mind regarding military matters – her old-time samurai attitude never quite left her.11
Clearer heads eventually prevailed, even in London, where the letters page of the Times became a battleground between legal minds. The sinking of the Kowshing was a hot topic for several years to come, but much of the opposition to it, particularly in Britain, was based on early reports that muddled the facts. Eventually, the consensus went in Tōgō’s favour – although war had not been officially declared, there was clearly a state of belligerence between China and Japan, and nobody aboard the Kowshing could seriously pretend that they were not going to Asan to shoot Japanese soldiers. With that in mind, it was the right of the Naniwa to sink the Kowshing if the Kowshing refused to surrender. Far from being pilloried by the international community, Tōgō was instead widely praised for his incredible patience in the many hours of prolonged negotiations, during which he had diligently tried to save the lives of all aboard the Kowshing.12
Tōgō fared less well over his treatment of the Chinese survivors. It was, as many noted at the time, deeply suspicious that the Naniwa had only rescued European survivors. Von Hanneken openly asserted that the the Japanese had shot at the men in the water, and he was not alone in this accusation. Galsworthy, however, could not have been clearer in his testimony: ‘I can positively say I did not see the Japanese fire upon the Chinese in the water.’ Testimonies universally agree that many Chinese ‘in the water’, and even in the lifeboats, were not awaiting rescue at all, but continuing their futile attack against the Naniwa, rendering it impossible for Tōgō to save them. Galsworthy’s own testimony made it clear that it was the foreign officers who were in danger from the Chinese, and it was these men that Tōgō fished out of the water.13
Some time later, when the Naniwa put into her home port, Tōgō’s launch was met at the jetty by a fellow captain, Yamamoto Gonnohyōe,
and his roommate, a Mr Matsunami. Matsunami reported that Yamamoto enthusiastically grabbed Tōgō by the hand and congratulated him, while Tōgō replied with nothing but a mumbled monosyllable. Yamamoto introduced Matsunami as a scholar of maritime law, which was Matsunami’s cue to tell Tōgō that he had examined the evidence and that his behaviour had been exemplary. ‘I did it,’ said Tōgō, ‘because I thought it right, but I feel easier when I am assured by a scholar.’14
Politicians and soldiers were already scurrying to make good on Tōgō’s act. On 29 July, four days after the sinking of the Kowshing, Japanese forces overwhelmed Chinese forces at Asan that were at least 1,100 men short thanks to Tōgō’s actions. Two days later, with southern Korea already in Japanese hands, the Meiji Emperor tardily declared war on China. Even then, the Emperor hedged his bets by leaving such business in the hands of politicians. He did not officially go on the record by ceremonially reporting hostilities to his ancestors until 11 August.15 By 16 September, Japanese troops had occupied Pyongyang, and all Korea was effectively under Japanese control. The Chinese forces retreated north across the Yalu River into Chinese territory. The Japanese would soon follow.
7
The Angry Dragons
The Yalu River was not merely a border between the territory of China and Japan. Its mouth also marked the boundary of Chinese waters. This was not the decision of Ding Ruchang, now Admiral of the Chinese fleet, who would have much preferred to take the battle to the Japanese, perhaps even landing a body of Chinese troops somewhere behind Japanese lines in Korea to mount a counter-attack. Instead, Admiral Ding was fettered by the decisions made by bureaucrats in distant Beijing, determined to draw a line that they were sure the Japanese would not dare cross.
The Japanese, of course, wasted no time in crossing it. On 10 August, with the battle still raging in north Korea, Admiral Itō Sukeyuki steamed the short distance across the gulf and fired some desultory shells at the fortifications of Weihaiwei, Admiral Ding’s headquarters. However, Itō did not hang around for long, instead turning tail and running back towards open water. If he had been hoping to lure the two Chinese behemoths, the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, out of hiding, he was to be disappointed. Nor did Admiral Ding rashly send his two giants chasing after the Japanese tormenter – Ding was no fool, and would not readily run into a Japanese trap.
In Weihaiwei, the stronghold of Ding’s navy, the Chinese rushed to prepare their ships for a new encounter. There was, as Captain Tōgō might have wryly observed, no longer any talk of laundry strung between the gun barrels. Many of the ships’ guns were stripped of their ‘protective’ shields, since they had been found to be an additional hazard for glancing blows and no help at all in the case of a direct hit. Sails, too, were dismantled and disembarked. It had been decided that they were next to useless in the close-quarters manouevering of the Yellow Sea and were likely to be a fire hazard.
The ‘Chinese’ fleet was not wholly Chinese. In a scheme that had already caused ructions within the fleet, many Chinese commanders both with and without the necessary skills and experience shared their commands with foreign advisers. The question of precisely who was in control had already cost the Chinese fleet its foreign admiral, a British officer who had quit in disgust when Liu Buchan had scrambled ahead of him on the promotion ladder.
Whereas most foreign officers had been purged from the Japanese fleet, Admiral Ding still had a number of white faces among his men – perhaps, it was unkindly alleged, to ensure that foreigners could take the blame in the event of defeat and thereby allow their Chinese colleagues to keep their heads, execution being the Chinese punishment for military failure. Ding’s own flagship, the Dingyuan, was technically captained by Liu Buchan, who supposedly shared his authority with the English Captain Nicholls, and her chief engineer was Albrecht, a German. Also aboard was von Hanneken, survivor of the Kowshing, and William Tyler, another Englishman. There was a similar division of labour on her massive sister-ship, the Zhenyuan, with a nominal Chinese captain, but a ship’s master from Britain and an engineer from Germany; also a maverick American officer, Philo McGiffin, described by Tyler, even before the Battle of the Yalu supposedly drove him mad, as ‘not quite all there’.1
Admiral Ding led his fleet in a dogleg course across the gulf to the Liaodong Peninsula, where the Chinese ships were able to take on new supplies of coal at Dalian. He then hugged the coast of Liaodong all the way down to the mouth of the Yalu River, where he unloaded several troop ships for the Chinese war effort. Then, Admiral Ding turned back and sailed back on a course that would take him back towards Shandong. He did not steam directly towards Weihaiwei, as that would have been tempting fate. Instead, he steered a few degrees further towards the west, in order to take his fleet behind the small island of Haiyang.
The Japanese, meanwhile, had sent much of their fleet on a wide sweep of the area, approaching Haiyang Island from the other direction. Admiral Itō had suspected that the Chinese might have been using Haiyang harbour as a way station, but, finding no evidence of the Chinese fleet there, gave up on the search and headed for home. His ships consequently rounded Haiyang and headed back towards the mouth of the Yalu, putting them on a collision course with the Chinese coming in the opposite direction. Each unaware of the other, the two fleets were converging on the same point, sure to run into each other within a few hours.
The Japanese were the first to realise. At 11:30 a.m. lookouts spotted a shroud of what initially appeared to be mist on the sea in the distance. It was a cloudless day, and the experienced sea captains realised that only a rival fleet could put so much smoke into the air that it would be visible on the horizon. The Chinese, whose clocks seem to have been set an hour earlier, on Beijing time, sighted the Japanese shortly afterwards, at what for them was lunchtime.2
The Chinese, realising that there was still a little time before the fleets would be close enough for action, went back below and hastily bolted down their meal. Meanwhile, on the Naniwa, Tōgō called his officers around for a pep talk.
‘The pick of the enemy’s fleet is over there,’ said Tōgō to his subordinates. ‘Not very far away now. A glorious battle is imminent. I would not waste my words on you brave and loyal subjects of the Emperor. Only I would like to say at the last moment that the brave action of an individual and that of a squadron is based on that of an individual ship. I trust that you will bear this well in mind and do your duty and destroy the enemy, thus answering to the gracious blessings of the Emperor.’3
The Japanese vessels were strung out in a long line, with Tōgō’s Naniwa fourth from the front. Behind the Naniwa, there was a gap of several thousand metres, and then the slower Japanese ships, mainly the older, less efficient vessels like the aging Fusō. As for the Chinese, it had been Admiral Ding’s plan to meet his enemy in a similar fashion, with his ships strung out in an oblique line. However, aboard Ding’s own flagship, the Dingyuan, Liu Buchan gave a signal that ordered the Chinese vessels to form a crescent, with the two giant battleships in the centre and the smaller vessels strung far out in front on the tips of the horns.
Aboard the Dingyuan, William Tyler was aghast. By the time anyone noticed the error, the fleet had already formed up, and it was deemed too late to change formation, lest that lead to further confusion. Tyler later wrote of his suspicion that Liu’s ‘mistake’ had been nothing of the sort, but a calculated decision to push the smaller Chinese vessels on the southernmost flank of the fleet into the sight of the Japanese first, thereby drawing fire from the Japanese and reducing the chances of any shells landing on the Dingyuan. When Tyler tried to get Liu to turn four points to starboard, all the better to bring his big guns into firing range, Liu at first pretended not to hear him, then gave the order and immediately countermanded it. Incensed, Tyler rushed down to complain to Admiral Ding, who was standing on a temporary platform built above the Dingyuan’s huge 12-inch guns. Even as Tyler told Ding of Liu’s bizarre behaviour, Liu gave the order to open fire, in the full knowledge
that the first discharge of the guns would blow the wooden viewing platform to pieces. The first casualties of the Battle of the Yalu were hence Admiral Ding himself, who was badly burned, and Tyler, who was blown thirty feet away by the force of the explosion and gradually regained consciousness, his ears ringing, with a stabbing pain in his left eyeball.4
Aboard the Naniwa, Captain Tōgō saw the puff of smoke from the distant Chinese ships, followed shortly by the distant rumble of the Dingyuan’s gun. At the time, the Dingyuan was some 6,000 metres away from the Naniwa, and the shell splashed harmlessly into the sea some distance from the Japanese. While Tōgō and his fellow captains looked on in bafflement, the other Chinese ships similarly commenced firing. On the foremost ship of the Japanese, the Yoshino, the fastest warship in the world, the signal flag still flew for the Japanese to hold their fire.5 This they did for fifteen minutes, while the Chinese guns threw hundreds of shells in their direction. Vast plumes of water erupted from the sea, but the Chinese fleet was hitting nothing.
It was not until the range between the fleets had closed to 3,000 metres that the order came for the Japanese to open fire. The Naniwa’s guns targeted three Chinese vessels in swift succession, seeing several bright explosions light up on each as shells found their target. The Chinese returned fire, with one shell landing in the water so close to the Naniwa that Captain Tōgō was drenched by the splash. James Allan, a British observer on the shore, commented:
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