Towards the end of 1893 a violent agitation against the Navy filled the Japanese newspapers. The existing types of ships—particularly the Chiyoda and Itsukushima class—were unfavourably criticised. The personnel was not free from these attacks; it was in some quarters demonstrated useless and inefficient. In the midst of these attacks the war with China loomed and broke out. After that war nothing further was heard on the subject of the personnel’s “defects.”
The primary result of the agitation was a new shipbuilding programme. The only ships actually under construction at that time were the Suma, building at Yokosuka, and laid down in March, 1893, and the Tatsuta, ordered to replace the lost Tschishima, building at Elswick. The new programme embodied “two first-class battleships of the most powerful type,” a cruiser at Yokosuka of the Suma type, and a sloop Miyako, laid down at Kuré in 1894. This programme was also a subject of attack in a portion of the Japanese press.
Before, however, anything could be done, the battle of Asan and the affair of the Kow-shing precipitated the war with China. Consequently, on the outbreak of war, the Tatsuta, launched at Elswick on April 6, 1894, and hastily completed in August of the same year, was stopped as contraband on her way out at Aden.
The Tatsuta is a torpedo gunboat. Particulars as follows:—
| Displacement | 875 tons. |
| Material of hull | Steel. |
| Length | 240 ft. |
| Beam | 27½ ft. |
| Draught (mean) | 9½ ft. |
| Armament | Two 4.7-in. Q.F. |
| Four 3-pdr. Q.F. | |
| Five torpedo tubes (one fixed in bow, the | |
| others in pairs—a pair on each quarter). | |
| Horse-power (forced draught) | 5500. |
| Trial speed | 21 knots. |
| Engines (Hawthorn, Leslie & Co.) | Vertical triple expansion. |
| Screws | Two. |
| Coal supply (normal) | 188 tons. |
| ”” ( maximum capacity) | 200 tons. |
| Complement | 100 men. |
CHAPTER V
THE WAR WITH CHINA
Japan was not long in finding uses for her navy.
The massacre of some shipwrecked Japanese in Formosa led to the despatch of a punitive expedition, the expense of which was paid by China, the suzerain, without any too much goodwill.