The Japanese flagship, Matsushima, went through the battle without
any particular harm for a considerable while, when one of the
Chinese ironclads fired a 12-in. common shell at her, which hit her,
making a big hole. It went in and wiped out practically the entire
battery, disabled two or three guns completely, and exploded some
spare ammunition. Altogether 100 men were killed or wounded by that
one shell, and she had to be hauled out of action. When that 12-in.
shell hit, the majority of the men were in working dresses, in cotton
things and so on, and a great many of them were men with beards, and
a Japanese officer who was on board the ship at the time tells me
that every single one of these men with cotton dresses was set on
fire, and all the men with beards and long hair also had their beards
and hair set on fire, and were rushing all over the ship, whereas
several officers, who happened to be in serge uniform near by, were
comparatively little hurt. The ship was set on fire to a certain
extent, but a few buckets of water very easily put the fire out.
This ship was also hit by a 10.2-in. shell a little earlier in the
action. It hit her torpedo-room, glanced up, and knocked up against the
barbette; but as the shell was loaded with cement its burst did not do
very much harm.
The second ship in the Japanese line was the Chiyoda. She was also hit
by a 12-in. shell, but that was another cement or coal-dust shell, so
did not burst. It went through just above the belt. Had it hit the belt
it ought to have sunk her; above, it simply made a large hole through
and went out again, and the ship was none the worse; there was not a
single man killed or wounded.
The Naniwa was hit by an 8.2-in. on the water-line, which went into
the coal bunkers, but it did no particular harm there. The shell was
afterwards picked up and pieced together, and a photograph taken of
such sections as were got. Twenty-seven pieces were recovered, and they
say there must have been a great many more. But that 8.2-in. shell
practically did no harm whatever to the ship. The coal bunkers acted
very efficiently.
In the Itsukushima there were shells in the torpedo-room, but none of
the torpedoes exploded—if there were any there with war-heads, which
is rather uncertain. There was also a shell in the engine-room, which,
curiously enough, did no harm.
The Hashidate had a 6-in. shell burst right up against the barbette of
a big gun, which was not hurt at all by it.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF YALU: THIRD STAGE.]
The Hi Yei, an oldish ship, was raked by a 12-in. common shell, and
also by some smaller shells, which set her on fire and practically blew
the ship to pieces.
The Sakio-maru was quite a small vessel. She was hit first of all
by a 12-in. common shell, which, in theory, ought to have blown her
to atoms. It disabled her steering-gear and wounded one man. She
altogether got eleven hits from pieces of 4.7-in. or over. Of these,
four were 12-in. shell, of which two burst inside; and the net result
of those eleven hits was to wound eleven men, to kill nobody, but to
make the ship leak a bit. The torpedoes fired at her missed, as has
already been stated. The reason was that the boat fired as she turned,
and the torpedo went under. Two others fired at longer ranges missed
badly. The torpedo boat was not hit. The Chinese version of the affair
runs to the effect that the Japanese on board the Saikio deserted their
guns in panic at the attack. This statement rests, of course, only on
the Chinese assertion.
The Akagi was hit by a 12-in. common shell, which struck the mainmast
and sent it overboard, and killed the captain. The peculiar thing
about it was that all the hits took her about that part; there was
not a single hit forward, but the bridge, which stands somewhere aft,
was continually swept, and the second in command was wounded almost
immediately after he went on the bridge. The third officer, Lieut.
Sato, then went up, and was hit by a fragment of shell that scraped
the top of his head off, and he went down below. A fourth man went up;
he got wounded, and the third man went up again and carried on. She was
able to steam and go home quite comfortably after the battle.
A gun shield, about two inches thick, was struck, and the shell that
hit it is supposed to have been a 6-in. common. It simply scooped out
the shield about an inch or so, and did no harm to the men inside, who
were just round the corner, and did no harm whatever to the gun.
One shell burst on the upper deck, wrecked everything, made a
tremendous mess, and riddled the deck all over, but the harm was
practically _nil_.
The old battleship Fuso was hit more than any other Japanese ship, but
every hit upon her has been kept confidential. Still, so far as can be
guessed, the Japanese opinion of the result of the fire on this ship
was that armour under the peculiar circumstances of the Yalu tended to
aggravate hits rather than the reverse, and it is certainly interesting
that this ship, with an armoured battery, completely armoured belt, and
fairly thick armour which could not be penetrated by any of the Chinese
6-in. shell, should have been one of the most damaged ship of any.
[Illustration: A JAPANESE PICTURE OF YALU.]