The second point is the astonishing amount of hitting that all these ships seem to have been able to stand. There are many cases of quite little ships that in theory one single shell would finish, but it has taken five or six shells to disable them at all, and in a week or two they have been fit to go out fighting again. The Saikio-maru, and the way she was hammered and still managed to go on fighting and remain in a fairly good condition, is a particular case in point. Although the upper works may be knocked about and splintered, and so on, it does not seem much good splintering the upper works and making a mess of the ship unless there is a gun near it, and somebody to be disabled. Now, this conclusion is dead against the “moral effect” theory. It is almost a gospel that if the upper works are shelled enough the crew somewhere else will get demoralised. I do not believe it; they will not in a modern war be aware of it. I think this point should be laid to heart and thought over by those who have 6-in. guns to attack ships with. To do harm, they must fire those guns with all the intelligence they can bring to bear.

On the other hand, it is well to remember, as in the case of the King Yuen and Chih Yuen, that hits in the upper works caused the loss of these ships by affecting stability, so far as can be gathered in the absence of the hulls now at the bottom of the Yellow Sea.

[Official photo.

ON BOARD THE TING YUEN AFTER
THE SURRENDER AT WEI-HAI-WEI.

A third point is, that the danger from fire in action is grossly exaggerated. As to the Japanese, they one and all say that they had no trouble with fire at Yalu. They have not entirely done away with woodwork in their ships. Following the fashion set by the Germans, they have done away with a fair amount, but their ships are by no means without wood, like German ships and others which have not been in action—though even Germans are now reverting to a certain amount of wood. The Japanese say that they had buckets of water standing round; the men ran to the buckets of water, and the fire was under. The Chinese had exactly the same system, and they had no trouble till about the end of the action, when they got demoralised, and then the fire began to get headway. Hose pipes seem to have always been untrustworthy, too liable to be holed by splinters. Wet sand proved excellent. It may be noted that hits on the sea near the ships deluged all the exposed parts of ships at Yalu with water. The loss of life was returned as follows:—

Details (official) of the losses are:—

JAPANESE.
Killed. Wounded.
Officers. Men. Officers. Men.
Matsushima 2 33 5 71
Chiyoda 0  0 0  0
Itsukushima 0 13 1 17
Hashidate 2  1 0  9
Hi-yei 3 16 3 34
Fusoo 0  2 2 10
Yoshino 0  1 2  9
Takachiho 0  1 0  2
Akitsusu 1  4 0 10
Naniwa 0  0 0  1
Akagi 2  9 2 15
Saikio 0  0 1 10
Total 10 80 16 188