On October 29, 1885, the Beiyang Navy of the Qing Dynasty ushered in two "Big Mac" warships. One is the Dingyuan iron-clad ship, and the other is the Zhenyuan iron-clad ship. They all belong to the Dingyuan-class battleships and are first-class warships. The Beiyang Navy designated the Dingyuan iron-clad ship as its flagship, flying the Qing Long Banner and the general flag of the fleet commander.
Why did the Qing Dynasty purchase the Dingyuan and Zhenyuan ironclad ships?
It turned out that after the Peony Society incident occurred in 1874, the Qing Dynasty saw the important role of the modern navy in the construction of national defense, and decided to send Li Hongzhang, the governor of Zhili and the Minister of Commerce and Industry, to form the Beiyang Navy. Li Hongzhang originally purchased 6 "mosquito ships" and 2 cruisers Chaoyong and Yangwei from the United Kingdom, but the "mosquito ships" did not have ocean-going combat capabilities, and the cruisers could not be used as the main warships of the Beiyang Navy. The idea of a more powerful battleship.
Looking at the entire 19th century, the world's most powerful naval power is the United Kingdom. Britain’s shipbuilding level and capabilities are second to none. However, after Li Hongzhang sent people to visit the British and German shipyards, he decided to purchase the Yuan and Zhenyuan ironclad ships from the German Vulcan shipyard.
This is because Germany’s shipbuilding level and capabilities are not bad, and in order to win the Qing Dynasty Beiyang Navy’s order and expand Germany’s influence in the Far East, Germany proposed a very favorable price, with a cost of 6.2 million marks per ship. (370 thousand pounds), equivalent to about 1.4 million taels of silver. This is a very cheap price in the ironclad ship. After all, the Dingyuan armored ship is an improvement from the Saxon-class armored ship, and the cost of the Saxon-class armored ship is as high as 420,000 pounds.
There is no doubt that the ironclad ship Dingyuan is the most advanced warship of the Beiyang Navy. How about its performance data?
Dingyuan is 94.5 meters long, 18 meters wide, 6 meters draft, and 7670 tons full load displacement. In terms of power, it uses two horizontal three-cylinder reciprocating steam engines and 8 round coal-fired boilers with a power of 6,200 horsepower. The speed is 14.5 knots, the maximum armor thickness is 365 mm, and the main guns are 4 German Krupp 305 mm breech guns. What kind of existence did performance data like
look like in the world at that time? If
is placed in Asia, it is a well-deserved number one. There is no warship comparable to the Japanese combined fleet. In 1886, when the four warships of the Beiyang Navy, Dingyuan, Zhenyuan, Weiyuan, and Jiyuan paid a friendly visit to Japan, the Chinese sailors clashed with the Japanese police while shopping in Nagasaki. When the Beiyang Navy Dingyuan ironclad warship aimed the 305mm cannon at the city of Nagasaki, Japan succumbed.
Japanese naval expert and president of Naval University Yuhenli Ito said with frustration when he was in charge of developing the navy: "As long as the two ships of Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, all (Japan) standing fleets can be sent to the seabed." Around 1886, Such sentences are not exaggerated.
is to put the Dingyuan ironclad ship in the British fleet of the same period, and it does not appear to be behind.
When the Beiyang Navy purchased the Dingyuan Ironclad Ship and the Zhenyuan Ironclad Ship, the ironclad ships hadn't been out for long. In 1873, Britain built the world's first purely steam-powered iron-clad ship Rattle as the main warship of the Royal Navy. The Ravaged iron-clad ship is 87 meters long, 20 meters wide, and has a draft of 8 meters, which is roughly equivalent to that of the Dingyuan iron-clad ship; the displacement is 9448 tons, slightly higher than the Dingyuan iron-clad ship; the main guns are 4 304 mm guns, slightly lower in caliber The ironclad ship Yu Dingyuan.
Similarly, before and after the formation of the Beiyang Navy in 1888, the overall strength of the Beiyang Navy also ranked first in Asia and ninth in the world.
However, the manufacturing technology of warships is changing with each passing day, and it must be constantly updated to keep up with the development of the times. After the Beiyang Navy became an army, due to the financial difficulties of the country, it did not purchase new warships for many years. The funds provided by the Qing Dynasty were not even sufficient for maintenance and daily training. The ironclad ship Dingyuan, the flagship of the Beiyang Navy, is out of date.
On the contrary, Japan worked together to pursue the Beiyang Navy and manufactured and purchased a number of new warships. Before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, it had surpassed the Beiyang Navy in terms of tonnage and speed. Therefore, after the naval battle started, the Beiyang Navy was always passive, coupled with repeated mistakes in strategy and tactics, failure was inevitable.
