Cruiser Following Torpedo into Action.
The reduction by Congress of the U. S. naval force sent adrift Lieutenant McGiffin, a graduate of Annapolis in the class of ’82. As China was engaged in war in Asia, McGiffin straightway tendered his services to the Chinese Government. The result was eventually that China took one French gunboat in a war otherwise entirely disastrous to her. In 1887 McGiffin became the head of the Chinese Naval Academy at Wei-Hai-Wei. This was the reason for his command of one of China’s two most formidable warships in the battle which decided the outcome of the Chino-Japanese war.
The crews of the Chinese fleet had gone through their morning drill and dinner was nearly ready when smoke from the Japanese ships was sighted by the lookout. The appearance of Japan’s fleet had been expected for a week, but nevertheless the blood in every man’s veins throbbed quick as the call to action sounded throughout the fleet. The Chen-Yuen had already been stripped for action. The decks were cleared for the passage of ammunition and for the free movement of the crew and in order to secure unobstructed arcs of fire for the guns. The small boats had been abandoned, the ladders overboard or wrapped in wet canvas. These measures were taken to avoid the danger from fire and flying splinters, both of which are as much to be feared in a sea-fight as the enemy’s shot. The gun-shields, by order of Captain McGiffin, had been removed from the big guns as affording no protection from heavy shot and as serving to intercept and cause to explode shells that would otherwise pass over the heads of the gunners. The ship’s firehose had been connected and let out and bags of sand and coal placed on deck to form breastwork against small shot. Ammunition for immediate use was piled beside the guns. The suggestive hospital appliances, bandages, and cots and chairs rigged for lowering the wounded to the sick bay, were in position. Buckets of sand were placed about the decks and inside the superstructure; for when men are torn to pieces the flow of blood makes the deck slippery.
In less than an hour after the Japanese ships dotted the horizon the battle had begun. The Chinese sailors were brave and eager for the fight. They were prepared neither to give nor take quarter and expected either to win or go down with their ship.
McGiffin stood motionless on the bridge listening to the reports of the range announced by the sub-lieutenant in the foretop as the fleets rapidly neared each other. The ordeal before him and his men was more terrible than soldiers had been called upon to face in regular battle since the beginning of human wars. That McGiffin fully realized the situation was shown by a letter written to his brother upon starting to meet the Japanese ships. “You know,” he said, “it is four killed to one wounded since the new ammunition came in. It is better so. I don’t want to be wounded. I prefer to step down or up and out of this world.” Not extraordinary words, but splendidly expressive of a soldier-like way of facing fate.
The closing lines of this letter were sadly prophetic. McGiffin wrote: “I hate to think of being dreadfully mangled and then patched up, with half my limbs and senses gone.”
He came home in exactly the condition he had described. and, true to his determination, chose to step up and out of it all.
There was no sound but the panting of the ship under forced draught. The men, grouped quietly at their stations, did not venture to speak even in whispers. “Fifty-two hundred metres,” the range was called. Then the great yellow flag of China was raised to the main truck, the quick-firing guns opened fire, and the fight began.
The battle lasted for nearly five hours, with the two Chinese battleships as its centre.
It was estimated that McGiffin’s ship was hit 400 times and 120 times by large shot or shell. The rain of projectiles visited every exposed point of the vessel. Early in the fight a shell exploded in the fighting top, instantly killing every one of its inmates. Indeed, all such contrivances proved to be deathtraps. Five shells burst inside the shields of the bow six-inch gun, completely gutting the place. Though the carnage was frightful, the Chinese sailors, with their commander to encourage them, stuck to their posts. A chief gunner was aiming his gun when a shell took off his head. The man behind him caught the body, passed it back to his companions, calmly finished the sighting of the piece and fired it.