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While on land the outnumbered French columns fought desperate hand-to-hand battles with overwhelming numbers of Chinese and Black Flag troops, at sea the French struck again at Shaipoo on 14 February 1885. Two torpedo boats armed with spar torpedoes sank the Chinese cruiser Yu Yen and the despatch boat Chien Chiang.

The French squadron had been helped by diplomatic approaches which persuaded the German shipyards to delay delivery of two powerful ironclads under construction for China, and by the fatal rivalry between the northern and southern Chinese fleets, which meant that the French could concentrate on destroying the southern fleet without fear of intervention by the northern forces.

French torpedo boat № 143, showing the torpedo spar equipment at left. Note the commander’s face peering through the top vision port in the conning tower. (Photo from Development of a Modern Navy)

SINKING OF THE BLANCO ENCALADA

To return to the naval hotbed of Latin America, we can with certainty attribute the first sinking of a warship by a locomotive torpedo to the loyalist naval forces of the government of Chile. The victim was the 3560-ton central battery ironclad Blanco Encalada. Built by Earl’s Shipbuilding Company of Hull to the design of Edward Reed, Blanco Encalada was completed in 1875 as an armoured frigate. Four years later, she crossed swords with the notorious ironclad Huáscar, which she overwhelmed and captured at the Battle of Angamos on 8 October 1879.

During the Chilean civil war of 1891, between the presidential forces and those of the Congress party, Blanco Encalada’s crew joined the latter. On 23 April 1891 she was anchored at the port of Caldera, when she was attacked by the 713-ton torpedo gunboats Almirante Lynch and Almirante Condell which fired a total of six Whiteheads at the old ironclad. Just one from Almirante Lynch struck her, but it was enough to send her to the bottom in minutes, with the loss of eleven officers, 171 men and several rebel civilians. Her anti-torpedo nets had been left in harbour, and doors in her watertight bulkheads had been left open. One Junta member, Ramón Barros Luco, who could not swim, gained a certain notoriety when he saved himself by clinging to the neck of a cow which had formed part of the cargo of provisions for the rebels. For his part, the captain, Don Luis Goñi, who had been blown bodily up a ventilation shaft and into the water, gained the shore by clinging to the neck of a pet llama. It was evident that in Victorian times even officers did not learn to swim.

The age of the locomotive torpedo had well and truly dawned, for ‘El Blanco’ was the very first warship to be authenticated as being sunk in action by one. Her wreck lay in 18m (60ft) of water in Caldera Bay until 1954, when it was dynamited to make way for a new bridge, with not a thought for the fact that it was a war grave. Perhaps as rebels her lost crewmen were thought to deserve less consideration.

AQUIDABÃ

The next torpedo victim was also a breakaway ironclad, this time one taking part in the Brazilian civil war of 1893–94, on the side of the rebels led by Rear Admiral Custódio José de Mello. Built by Samuda Brothers and launched in January 1885, the Aquidabã (normally rendered in English as Aquidaban), was a turret ironclad armed with twin 9.2in guns in each of two turrets, placed en echelon fore and aft. She displaced 4950 tons and could reach a top speed of 18.8 knots.

Her crew had joined an earlier rebellion started by de Mello in November 1891, and in 1893, after visiting New York for the Colombian Exhibition fleet review, her crew once more joined de Mello when he started a second rebellion. In the early morning of 16 April 1894, Aquidabã was anchored off the coast at Santa Catarina, when she was attacked and torpedoed by the loyalist torpedo gunboat Gustavo Sampaio. She was hit in the bows by two Whiteheads, the surprised officer of the watch being thrown overboard by the shock of the explosions. As she did not immediately sink, the engines were started and she was grounded in 22ft (7m) of water. The crew were able to reach shore and nobody was lost in the sinking.

The torpedoing of Blanco Encalada.

This disaster was the start of the collapse of the rebellion. Fortunately — or perhaps unfortunately in light of her eventual fate — w Aquidabã was able to be salvaged by government forces in the following June. Sent to Germany and England, she was fully repaired and modernised.

To complete her story, in 1906 Aquidabã hosted no less than three admirals and navy officials who were accompanying the navy minister on board the cruiser Barroso, on an official visit to select the site for a new naval base. In Jacuacanga Bay on 21 January, her magazines suddenly exploded and she sank in less than three minutes, killing a total of 212 officers and men, including all three admirals.

JAPAN

As a young man, the future Admiral Togo had helped carry the stone cannonballs for the ancient cannons firing back at the British fleet under Admiral Kuper, which was in the process of destroying the city of Kagoshima in 1863. He learnt at first hand the need to rapidly acquire the technology to be able to defend his country against foreign invaders. The Japanese nation as a whole quickly adopted modern technologies: railways, steelworks, telegraph, electricity, shipbuilding, and warships.

By the time of the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, the IJN was ready to go head to head with the Chinese northern fleet. But torpedoes did not feature greatly in the conflict. Indeed, in chasing down and sinking a fugitive from the Battle of the Yalu, the Japanese resorted to the spar torpedo to destroy the Yang Wei the day after the Chinese retreat from the debacle. The Chinese did have a few Whiteheads, and went into battle with the tubes loaded and pistols in place, with spare torpedoes ready on trolleys close by. But when Japanese shells started landing aboard, the Chinese launched all their ready torpedoes, even though the Japanese ships were well out of range, and took the warheads off the spare torpedoes and stored them in the magazines. Whiteheads that ended up on a neighbouring beach were sold back to the Chinese navy by enterprising fishermen. It was believed that the loss of the Chinese ship Chih Yuen was caused by the explosion of one of her own torpedoes. Navies everywhere took note, and the general move to place torpedo launching tubes underwater began to gain momentum.

Aquidabã, acting the part of a small battleship.

The Japanese did not expend torpedoes during their capture of Port Arthur, nor during the blockade of Weihaiwei. A decade was to pass before the Japanese torpedo force went into serious action.

The Triple Intervention of 1895 had stolen from Japan the fruits of the war, and the Chinese had promptly leased Port Arthur to the Russians for use as an ice-free naval base for their Far Eastern fleet. The national humiliation served to accelerate the forging of the powerful Imperial Japanese navy, and in nine years the Japanese felt able to act. And they were no longer isolated internationally, since the signing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902.