Displacement 1387 tons.
Material of hull Iron.
Length 157 ft.
Beam 30 ft.
Draught (maximum) 13¼ ft.
Armament One 9-in. 12½ M.L. Armstrong.
Four 6½-in. Parrot M.L. rifled.
Horse-power (nominal) 700.
Screws Two.
Speed 9 knots.
[Illustration: FUJI YAMA.]
The armour was 4½ to 4¾ ins. thick, and distributed on a complete
water-line belt and over both of the raised batteries. Though a very
famous vessel as the Stonewall Jackson, her war services under that
name were not extensive. She was built in France, and at the end
of 1864, when ready for sea, carried one large 13-in. 300-pounder
(smooth bore) in the bow, and the two 70-pounders (rifled) in the main
battery. No ship like her had ever been constructed before, and the
Confederates, to whom she then belonged, spread alarming reports as
to her power. Putting to sea, she reached Corunna in February, 1865,
and was there blockaded by the unarmoured Federal ships Niagara and
Sacramento. The former was a famous vessel in her way, of 5013 tons,
345 ft. long, 12-knot speed, and armed with twelve 11-in. smooth bores,
throwing a 135-lb. shell each. These guns were not able to fire shot
apparently, and the Sacramento was a weaker vessel. The Stonewall
Jackson challenged these two to a duel _à la_ Kearsarge and Alabama,
but Craven, the Federal commodore, declined—wisely enough, for he could
not have done anything against the ironclad with his few heavy pieces,
while the ironclad would certainly have disabled and then rammed
him.[3] Consequently, the Stonewall Jackson did not smell powder on
that occasion, and the war ended very soon afterwards.
[3] He was, however, court-martialled and punished for refusing to
fight.
In 1866 a mysterious Japanese deputation came to America. Its object
was long unknown, but the curiosity it excited was sufficient to
cause telegraphic reports of its movements, and surmises as to its
intentions, to appear in the London _Times_ every now and again.
Finally came the news that “the Japanese deputation have come to buy
ironclads”—a statement at first treated as a joke.
The Japanese do not, however, appear to have been large bidders for the
forty odd ironclads that America then had to dispose of. Few of these
“on sale” craft were fit for a sea voyage—they were merely hastily
constructed monitors intended more often than not for river service.
The Stonewall Jackson, however, being a sea-going ship, was purchased
for the Shogun, and re-named Adsuma.
A gunboat or two changed hands at this period, and altogether
the various Japanese governors collected between them a small,
heterogeneous fleet, the very existence of which was scarcely known
outside their own country. Indeed, twenty years later comparatively few
people knew, and still fewer cared, that Japan possessed a navy at all.
The Adsuma has long been removed from the effective list and relegated
to hulk duty. On account of her enormous ram, she was somewhat of a
curio to naval visitors for many years, and the most vivid memory
retained by some of our people of the harbour in which the Adsuma lay
was the fashion in which the Japanese sailors used her ram. They walked
down over it into the water when bathing.
Of the smaller vessels previously referred to the following may be
mentioned:—
No. 1 Tébo was a swan-bow, three-masted, schooner-rigged screw steamer
of 250 tons only. Two or three other ships like her existed.
[Illustration: [_By a Japanese artist._