The Japanese, for their part, saw little reason to change the strategy that had worked so well at Port Arthur. Tōgō on the Naniwa, along with the Akitsushima and the Yoshino, was sent across the gulf ahead of Japan’s Third Army, a body of troops embarking at Dalian and obviously intended for a landing somewhere on the Shandong Peninsula.
On 18 January 1895, Tōgō steamed out of a snowstorm into range of Dengzhou, eighty-five miles west of Weihaiwei. Just to make sure that everyone was awake, he let off several blank charges before commencing a bombardment with live ammunition, unleashing salvo after salvo against whatever defenders Dengzhou might have assembled in its fort. The fort returned fire; and as each hurled shells at the other, a small boat put out to sea on the choppy waves, flying the Stars and Stripes and a white flag. To Tōgō’s great surprise, the boat contained an American missionary, who hoped to talk him out of any further hostilities. Unfortunately for the missionary, he need not have bothered – Tōgō’s mission was a bluff, intended to lure as many Chinese as possible away from Weihaiwei and west along the peninsula, in order to ensure better odds for the real landings, thirty-five miles east of Weihaiwei at the sheltered harbour of Yongzhong.1
The deception worked, up to a point. The Third Army, comprising fresh troops from north Japan and the Kumamoto Division of the Second Army, staggered ashore in the middle of a thick snowstorm on 20 January 1895 to find themselves under fire from Chinese positions. Some 300 Chinese riflemen were in the area, but fled soon after the Japanese began returning fire in force.
It was not long before the news reached the Chinese in Weihaiwei. Tōgō’s superior, Admiral Itō, did everything in his power to win over Admiral Ding by peaceful means, leaning on HMS Severn, a neutral British observer, to carry a message up the coast to the besieged Chinese. Itō had the deepest respect for Admiral Ding, and his offer of terms shows that, for the Japanese Navy at least, gallantry was not dead. Part of it read:
I have the honour to address you, Admiral Ding. Unfortunate circumstances have made us enemies, but wars in this world are wars between nations, and not hostilities between individuals, so my friendship for you remains unchanged and is as warm as it was in the old days. I beg that you will not consider this letter an attempt to persuade you to surrender …
The present condition of your country is not due to the fault of a few persons in power, but is really a result of the system of government. You select a man for a post solely on account of his literary attainments, which is a custom dating from thousands of years ago. Those who wield political power are all men of high literary accomplishments, and though I do not say that this system is absolutely bad … it is now obsolete …
You are well aware in what a painful position the Japanese Empire was placed thirty years ago, and how we managed to escape from the difficulties which beset us by throwing away the old system and adopting the new. Your country also must asdopt this new way of living. If your country does this, all will be well, but if it rejects it, it cannot but disappear sooner or later.2
Itō knew that Admiral Ding faced execution or suicide if he was defeated, but also knew that Ding was not to blame for the situation in which he found himself. Ding’s colleagues, the Viceroy who had supplied him with dud shells, the officers who had countermanded his orders, the sailors who had sabotaged their own vessels with hammers: all these had some part in his defeat, as did the administration in Beijing that sent him into battle against Japanese ironclads after the naval budget had been squandered on decorations for the palace garden. Itō still regarded Ding as a worthy opponent and as a friend with misguided priorities, and offered him sanctuary in Japan until, he implied, the political situation changed in China and Ding could return to his command under a better regime.
Admiral Ding’s fleet stayed huddled in the harbour, functioning, as Ding had ordered, as artillery positions to make life difficult for the soldiers, but still refusing to engage the Japanese warships at sea. Nor were Tōgō or any other commanders willing to make a suicidal run through Weihaiwei’s obstacles and minefields for the chance to fire at the Chinese fleet where it hid. Instead, the Japanese favoured night attacks by torpedo boats, while ships such as the Naniwa remained at a safe distance.
However, the Japanese siege was not without its miscalculations. The lack of communication between the Japanese army and navy began to cost lives. On 31 January, Japanese soldiers in a newly-occupied fort turned their captured artillery pieces on a shadowy flotilla of torpedo boats that turned out to be vessels from their own navy making a sneak attack on the Chinese.
February began with a hellish, icy storm. Much of the Japanese fleet was pulled back into sheltered harbour, with only a handful of ships left to ride the rough waves on guard duty. Tōgō was one of the unlucky commanders given that difficult responsibility – effectively running the Naniwa on the spot to maintain her position against treacherous tides and winter waves. Tōgō had to keep the Naniwa within sight of the entrance to Weihaiwei harbour, which was dangerous enough with reduced visibility, but all the more risky when every surge threatened to pitch his ship against the cliffs, onto a beach or into the Chinese minefield.
On 3 February, the storm finally died down. Tōgō resumed the attack as one of a constant shift of ships, maintaining a steady shelling of Weihaiwei that lasted for nine days and nights. Tōgō and his fellow captain kept up a relentless bombardment from offshore. Although the Japanese vessels were able to peel away from the fleet for rest and recuperation, there was always at least one close to Weihaiwei, blasting through the night, ensuring that the Chinese never had a moment’s respite. One by one, the outlying forts fell to the Japanese land forces, each becoming a new bridgehead for the assault on the next.
Among the foreign officers in Chinese service, William Tyler noted that Admiral Ding was actively courting his own demise:
That fine old man had already been degraded by Imperial Decree – stripped of his rank and honours. He had wished so much to be killed in action; when we bombarded forts he stood exposed, praying for relief …3
When confronted, Admiral Ding revealed to his men the awful burden of command within the Chinese military machine. Pending an unlikely miracle, Ding was a dead man walking, sure to be executed for his inevitable defeat. With little remaining authority over his fractious troops, he pleaded with them to stay at their posts, not for victory, but in order to assure their good treatment in defeat.
If you wish me to live, fight on. Fight on even though your swords be broken and your ammunition exhausted. If you surrender after fighting in this way, your enemies, who place bushidō above all things, will treat you with the respect due to you. You will then not only save your lives, but your honour.4
Torpedo boats from the Japanese came in fast whenever the storm let up. On 4 February, some vessels from the Chinese fleet mounted what would have been a last-ditch effort to prolong the siege, planning to engage the Japanese and break out of Weihaiwei – not for a true naval battle, but to destroy some nearby forts in order to make it harder for the Japanese to bombard Weihaiwei itself. At the last moment, the expedition was cancelled due to technical trouble in some of the ships. The Japanese, however, did not sleep. At 2 o’clock that night, the Chinese sailors were woken by warning flares from outlying patrol boats. The Japanese torpedo boats were dangerously close. One scored a hit on the Dingyuan itself, from suicidally close quarters. The Japanese crew were wiped out by the great jet of steam that erupted from the side of the holed Dingyuan. Aboard Dingyuan, Tyler heard the whoosh of the escaping steam and then ‘a dull thud and a quivering shock’. Something had exploded deep within the Dingyuan and the ship’s bugler was already sounding the signal to close all watertight doors.5 But the damage was too great. Tyler sadly advised his Admiral that the best they could do was deliberately run the Dingyuan aground while she was still level in the water, thereby ensuring her guns might still be turned on any new attackers. Accordingly, the Chinese fleet’s pride and joy was rammed unceremon
iously into a beach.
The next day, her crew fussed miserably over the wreckage, with Tyler waist deep in freezing water on the lower decks. Admiral Ding transferred his flag to the Zhenyuan, which was almost as impotent as her sister-ship. The following night, at 4 a.m., another Japanese torpedo attack cost the Chinese four more vessels.
The demoralising effect on the Chinese was palpable. Tyler noted that the sailors were now openly disobedient. Even those who understood the plan to use the hulk of the Dingyuan as a gun platform could see how little use it was likely to be. A single night, huddled together for warmth, frostbitten by the cold wind whistling through the half-flooded wreck, was enough to convince many of the men that it was all over. For some, a kind of claustrophobia set in when they realised that they were little more than captives aboard the beached Dingyuan. At knife-and gun-point, Tyler was obliged to promise the men that they would be taken off the wreck and brought ashore, but this was not enough.
On 8 February, the Chinese soldiers in Weihaiwei were in open mutiny, demanding that Admiral Ding’s surviving ships be used to evacuate them ahead of the Japanese occupation. With rumours drifting in of a massacre at Port Arthur, the Chinese feared that a Japanese occupation would lead to a bloody massacre unless the Chinese surrendered. The foreign officers, also justifiably, fretted that news of their problems would be sure to reach the Japanese imminently and lead to a massed assault on Weihaiwei within 24 hours. ‘Ding declared at first,’ wrote Tyler, ‘that capitulation was impossible; but later he said he could arrange it by committing suicide, and hence save the lives of many.’6
Pure negligence was costing Chinese lives. Tyler prevented two stretcher-bearers taking a man straight to the morgue, even though he was demonstrably still alive and eventually recovered from his wounds. On 9 February, the Japanese vessel Itsukushima steamed perilously close to Weihaiwei, and the damaged Zhenyuan responded with a barrage of shellfire. The Zhenyuan scored a direct hit on the Ikutsushima, but the shell failed to explode, saving dozens of Japanese lives and plunging the Chinese deeper into despondency.7
On the evening of 11 February, Admiral Ding made a fateful decision, the nature of which has been heavily romanticised in Japanese sources. The first Tōgō knew of the change in circumstances came when a ceasefire signal went up from the Matsushima. Through his binoculars, Tōgō saw a small Chinese gunboat pulling out of Weihaiwei harbour, flying a white flag. An exhausted pair of Chinese captains were taken aboard and delivered a message from their Admiral to Admiral Itō:
It was my intention to fight it out to the last vessel and to the last man, but on second thought I can hardly bear the idea of killing so many of my men for nothing. I now put my vessels, ammunition and Liugong Island at your disposal and entreat you to stop fighting, and let my men and civilians go to their native places to enjoy the rest of their lives. If you will comply with my request, I will carry out my terms to the letter asking the Commander-in-Chief of the British Squadron to act as witness. I trust that you will kindly give consideration to the above.8
The Japanese were ecstatic, but Admiral Itō kept his reply graceful and honourable. He sent Admiral Ding a hamper of champagne and restated his offer for Admiral Ding to seek asylum with the Japanese.
The guns now silent on both sides, the ships and forts waited for a reply. After several hours, the gunboat returned. The Chinese captains brought back the hamper with them, unopened, and a short note from Admiral Ding:
I have just received your letter and thank you on behalf of my officers and men. I cannot, however, accept your present, owing to the state of war which still exists between our two countries. I nevertheless appreciate your motives in sending me the hamper, and I thank you.9
The Chinese captain who had delivered the message had one final thing to say to the Japanese. ‘Our Admiral wept at the thought of your kindness,’ he said. ‘After which, he bowed in the direction of Beijing and, swallowing poison, died immediately.’
Over on the Naniwa, Tōgō received a new signal from the flagship. All vessels of the Japanese fleet were to lower their flags to half-mast.
The suicide of Admiral Ding, facing impossible odds, caught the Japanese imagination, although even at the time the stories of it were muddled. One woodblock print, published at the time for a Japanese audience hungry for news, presented the sad Admiral sitting at his desk in a study bright with garish oriental colour, reading a brutal command from the Chinese Emperor instructing him to take his own life. A fat, cowering messenger hunches obsequiously nearby, while on a nearby table is a bottle of poison, and outside the window, flurries of the symbolic February snows lurk in a barren garden.
The reality was nowhere near so poetic. Admiral Ding had commanded his captains to scuttle their ships, but his subordinates were already thinking of their own futures and did not want to anger the inevitable victors by willfully destroying ships that the Japanese were sure to want as the spoils of war. Meanwhile, Ding was surrounded by demands from his own side, both open and implied, for a surrender. That night, the insubordination of his own men had reached the stage when a number of them approached him with knives drawn. Politely, Admiral Ding begged their pardon, locked himself in his cabin and took a lethal late-night overdose of opium.10
Whatever the precise sequence of events surrounding the death of Admiral Ding, the Chinese fleet was gone. Most of it was at the bottom of the sea; some ships, like the Zhenyuan and the Qiyuan, were later repaired and incorporated into the Japanese fleet. In a final gesture of defiance, Yang Yongling, the newly appointed captain of the former, waited until the Japanese boarding party was clambering aboard and then shot himself in protest.11 The terms of the treaty between the two admirals allowed for Ding’s defeated men to return home ‘in civilian clothes’ – i.e., that their lives were to be spared so long as they left their equipment behind. However, despite the gallantry of Admiral Itō, the Chinese did not fare so well within their own service – many of those officers who did not take their own lives in defeat later had their lives taken from them by Imperial decree in Beijing.
Captain Tōgō was no more. As of 16 February 1895, he was Rear Admiral Tōgō, and soon dispatched south to make good on Japan’s northern victory.12 What passed for China’s modern army was defeated in the north, and Japanese troops were facing increasingly less experienced and less modern opponents as they advanced. It was almost as if the Japanese army was advancing backwards in time, first fighting uniformed riflemen supported by artillery, then scruffier local militia with irregular equipment, then musketeers and swordsmen. China had put the best of its fighting force first on the Yalu border, and the Japanese were finding each victory easier than the last.
It was only a matter of time before China would be forced to sue for peace. The Japanese hoped to retain the Liaodong Peninsula in the aftermath, and Japan’s suzerainty in Korea seemed guaranteed, but Rear Admiral Tōgō was sent on a new mission southwards with orders to take Taiwan. Strategically, Taiwan had little value in the Sino-Japanese War. The decision to invade it in the dying days of the conflict seemed to be a move by the Japanese to secure an all-new naval zone of influence. Taiwan offered an extension of Japanese waters, an addendum to the Ryūkyū Islands chain that stretched southwards from Tōgō’s home domain of Satsuma.13 Taiwan was also the famous last redoubt of Chinese sea power. The island had only become part of China in the 17th century, during a Qing dynasty expedition to quell offshore rebels. To the land-based minds of the Beijing authorities, Taiwan was beyond the horizon, out of sight and mind, but to the Japanese Admiralty there was a tantalising possibility of adding it to Japanese possessions. Mastery of Taiwan would present a naval power with a powerful base from which to launch further expansion, be it south to the Phillipines or west to China’s Fujian province.
On 15 March 1895, Li Hongzhang, Viceroy of the Chinese northern maritime region, left Tianjin for Shimonoseki, ready to begin negotiations over a possible armistice. By luck or by design, the same day marked a mass
ed departure of a Japanese fleet from Sasebo, heading south in a final dash for acquisitions before the navy might be ordered to cease hostilities.
Tōgō was tasked with capturing a seemingly insignificant dot on the map – the tiny archipelago known to the Chinese as the Penghu Islands and to the world at large as the Pescadores, which sat at the halfway point between China’s Fujian province and the island of Taiwan. The islands were named for the occasional groups of fisherman who used the islands as a staging post, temporary harbour or as a place to dry their catch. Storm-swept, largely barren and lacking in fresh water, the Pescadores had only one true asset – a massive natural harbour sufficient to act as a staging post for any fleet that hoped to invade either Taiwan or Fujian. Whoever controlled the Pescadores could, in times of war, be regarded as the master of the strait and hence prevent the large part of any Chinese reinforcements from coming to the aid of the garrison on Taiwan itself.
The fleet included the Naniwa, but Rear Admiral Tōgō had transfered his flag to the faster Yoshino. The other ships were largely veterans of the war in the north – the Ikutsushima that had had such a lucky escape, the Hashidate and Chiyoda, along with the 4th Torpedo Boat squadron and five other ships – transports for troops, artillery and munitions, and a surprising amount of ‘peaceful’ equipment. The Pescadores expedition was not merely a military venture; it had set out with the expectation of turning Taiwan into a fully operational Japanese colony, and was sailing with a ready-made administration aboard, including the putative Japanese ‘Governor of the Pescadores’, the retired Admiral Tanaka Tsunatsune.14
Admiral Togo Page 13