Esmeralda (ship, 1883)
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|---|---|
 The Esmeralda |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Protected cruiser |
| Shipyard |
Armstrong, Mitchel & Co , |
| Keel laying | April 5, 1881 |
| Launch | June 6, 1883 |
| delivery | July 15, 1884 |
| Commissioning | October 16, 1884 |
| Whereabouts | Sold to Japan on November 15, 1894 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
2,930 ts |
| length |
82.3 m waterline, |
| width |
12.8 m |
| Draft |
5.6 m |
| crew |
300 men |
| drive |
12 boilers |
| speed |
18.25 kn |
| Range |
2200 nm at 10 kn |
| Armament |
• 2 × 254-mm guns |
| Armored deck |
12-25 mm |
| renamed |
Izumi |
| accepted |
February 5, 1895 |
| cancellation |
April 1, 1912 |
| similar |
Giovanni Bausan |
The Esmeralda was the first so-called Elswick cruiser that the British shipyard Armstrong, Mitchell & Company had developed for export. She was delivered to the Chilean Navy .
At the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War , Chile sold the cruiser to Japan in 1894. There he remained in service as Izumi until 1907 and was scrapped in 1912.
Building history
The Esmeralda was built for the Chilean Navy at the British shipyard Armstrong, Mitchell & Company in Low Walker near Newcastle-upon-Tyne according to plans by co-owner George Rendel (1833-1902) and came into service in 1884 as the fastest cruiser in the world. William George Armstrong's armaments company had partnered with Charles Mitchell's Low Walker shipyard to also build warships. At the same time, a second shipyard, mainly for warships, was built directly at the company's headquarters in Elswick . The first so-called Elswick cruiser, however, was still built in Low Walker, as were others later, even if this shipyard mainly dealt with the construction of merchant ships and especially with tankers.
The name Esmeralda was used with her for the third time for a ship in the Chilean Navy. The first Esmeralda was a Spanish frigate of 950 ts captured by Admiral Cochrane in November 1820 , which was renamed Valdivia that same year . The second Esmeralda was a corvette of 854 ts built in 1854, which was sunk by the Huáscar on May 21, 1879 in the naval battle of Iquique by three rams.
The Esmeralda is considered the first protected cruiser in the world, was initially referred to as an armored deck ship and was the lead ship of the ships initially called Armstrong-Rendel cruisers . A large number of similar cruisers were created based on their model, which were later named "Elswick cruisers" after Armstrong's new warship yard built from 1883 onwards. Until shortly after the turn of the century Armstrong built 23 similar ships in 19 variants for Italy, Japan, China, Argentina, Brazil, the USA and Turkey, as well as other ships for Chile. In Italy and the USA, similar ships were also built according to Armstrong's plans. Other shipyards developed comparable cruisers.
The design had an arched armored deck that ran from bow to stern slightly below the waterline, under which all vital parts of the ship were. In addition, it had closed, cork-filled compartments on the side that were supposed to increase buoyancy. Instead of raised deck shapes fore and aft and the usual wood-covered parts, the Esmeralda was given a flat steel deck, with its low freeboard rated negatively by the Chilean Navy. The displacement of the Esmeralda was just under 3000 ts and she could reach 18 knots. Even an auxiliary occupation was no longer planned. The armament of the Esmeralda , supplied by the Armstrong subsidiary Elswick Ordnance , consisted of a 10 "254 mm L / 30 cannon each at the bow and stern as well as six 6" -152 mm L / 26 cannons in swallow nests at the Pages. As light weapons were two 57-mm - Hotchkiss -Geschütze, five 37 mm Hotchkiss machine guns , both built by Elswick under license, and two machine guns of the types Gardner and Gatling installed. There were also three 380 mm torpedo tubes .
Mission history
In 1885 the Chilean government sent the Esmeralda to Panama , where trade across the isthmus was threatened by a civil war.
During the civil war in Chile in 1891, the Esmeralda served with the majority of the Navy on the side of the insurgent Congress. On January 6, 1891, the leaders of Congress boarded the Blanco Encalada armored frigate , the flagship of the Commander of the Congress Fleet, Jorge Montt , in Valparaíso . On January 7th, the Blanco Encalada ran with the Esmeralda , the corvette O'Higgins and other ships from Valparaiso northwards to Tarapacá to organize the military resistance against President José Manuel Balmaceda . The armored frigate Almirante Cochrane towed the Huáscar , whose machines were not operational, from Valparaiso south to Las Salinas near Talcahuano , where the tower ship was made operational.
The only significant naval units on the President's side were the torpedo cannon boats of the Sharpshooter class Almirante Lynch (713 t) and Almirante Condell, which arrived in Chile in January and February 1891, respectively . On April 22, 1891, they attacked the flagship of the Congress Navy Blanco Encalada in the bay in front of the Caldera . Of six torpedoes, one of the Almirante Lynch hit the battleship, which sank in less than ten minutes, killing 182 sailors. This was the first sinking of a larger warship with a self-propelled torpedo.
On April 30, the Esmeralda left Arica with the Chilean steamer Itata , which was supposed to bring weapons to Chile from the USA. After adding coal to the Galápagos Islands , the steamer ran to San Diego to take over the purchased weapons, supplies and coal for the cruiser. The Esmeralda entered the Mexican port of Acapulco on May 16 , where it met the American cruiser Charleston , which was supposed to stop the Itata at the request of the Chilean government. Both cruisers had missed the Itata , whose commander was aware of the efforts of the US government to stop him, and went straight to Chile. It was not until June 4 that an association of the US Navy forced the rebels to renounce the freighter and its cargo off Iquique . Esmeralda had not been able to follow the Charleston in Acapulco immediately for lack of coal. In the further course of the war, it transported troops and gave them artillery support. An important mission was the support in the Battle of Concón on August 21, 1891 when crossing the Río Aconcagua on the advance of the congress troops to Valparaiso, whose landing in the Bay of Quintero they had previously supported. In the following skirmishes she took part with the Almirante Cochrane . Both ships were hit several times by the artillery of the presidential troops. At the end of the month, Admiral Montt, the commander of the insurgent fleet, received the presidency of Chile on a temporary basis and, elected at the end of 1891, remained until 1896.
On November 15, 1894, the Imperial Japanese Navy bought the Esmeralda during the First Sino-Japanese War as part of a reinforcement program. In fact, the ship was first acquired by Ecuador in Chile for £ 220,000 and then resold to Japan to circumvent Chilean concerns about the violation of neutrality during the war. She ran under the Chilean flag to the Galápagos Islands , from where she sailed on to Japan under the flag of Ecuador. She became the second ship of the Japanese Navy with a Chilean origin, which had had the gunboat Tsukushi , also built by Armstrong, since 1883 , which was launched as Arturo Prat and bought unfinished after Chile had canceled its order placed in 1879 due to a lack of budget .
Service in the Japanese Navy
On February 5, 1895, the Esmeralda arrived in Yokosuka , Japan and was taken into service with the Imperial Japanese Navy as the cruiser IJN Izumi ( Japanese 和 泉 巡洋艦 , Izumi jun'yōkan ) . The name of an ancient province of Japan, which is now part of the Osaka prefecture , was temporarily transferred as Iduzmi .
It was used to secure the sea routes between Japan , Pusan and Taiwan . On March 31, 1898, the Izumi was reclassified as a 3rd Class Protected Cruiser. She was re-armed during overhauls in 1899 and 1901. First, the guns on the sides were replaced by 120 mm L / 40 Armstrong rapid-fire guns, like those used on other Japanese cruisers. Then the heavy bow and stern guns were exchanged for 152 mm L / 40 rapid-fire guns. The lighter armament improved the seaworthiness of the Izumi . During the Boxer Rebellion in China, it secured the transport of troops and supplies for the landing troops. During the overhaul in 1901, the old cylinder boilers were replaced by modern Niclausse type water-tube boilers .
The Izumi was still in service during the Russo-Japanese War from 1904-1905, but served mostly in subordinate tasks, as its armor was no longer considered sufficient. It was stationed in Tsushima on the island of the same name in the Koreastrasse and secured maritime traffic between Japan and Korea. Despite the low combat value, she was involved as a cruiser in the naval battle of Tsushima within the 3rd Fleet. Under its commander Ichiro Ishida, the Izumi discovered the Russian fleet at 6:55 a.m. on May 27 and informed the fleet chief, Admiral Togo on the Mikasa , of all movements. The ship was recognized for these important messages. At the beginning of the sea battle, she was the only Japanese ship on the starboard side of the Russian squadron parallel to it. There the old cruiser Vladimir Monomakh secured some transport ships, with which there was a violent gun battle at 1:45 p.m. Izumi took several hits and continued to withdraw.
The Izumi was decommissioned in 1907 and sold for scrapping on April 1, 1912. Her bow ornament in the form of an imperial seal is exhibited in the museum on the ship of the line Mikasa .
literature
- Peter Brooke: Warships for Export: Armstrong Warships 1867-1927. World Ship Society, Gravesend 1999, ISBN 0-905617-89-4 .
- David Evans: Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. US Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1979, ISBN 0-87021-192-7 .
- Hansgeorg Jentsura: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy 1869-1945. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1976, ISBN 0-87021-893-X .
- John Roberts, HC Timewell, Roger Chesneau (Ed.), Eugene M. Kolesnik (Ed.): Warships of the World 1860 to 1905 - Volume 2: USA, Japan and Russia. Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Koblenz 1983, ISBN 3-7637-5403-2 .
- J. Charles Schencking: Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, And The Emergence Of The Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1922. Stanford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8047-4977-9 .
Web links
- Image of the Esmeralda
- Image of the Esmeralda
- Hiroshi Nishida: Materials of IJN . In: Imperial Japanese Navy . Retrieved August 23, 2020.
- The protected cruiser Izumi data, picture and side elevation (Russian)
Individual evidence
- ^ Carlos López Urrutia: Historia de la Marina de Chile. Editorial Andrés Bello, Santiago de Chile 1969, p. 415 ( preview ).
- ^ History of the Gardner machine guns ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Frigate Blanco Encalada , built at Earle's in 1873/75, 3,540 t, 64-14-6 m, 3,000 hp, 12 kn, sister ship Almirante Cochrane
- ^ Corvette O'Higgins (1866) 1,670 tons
- ^ Charleston (1888) 3,730 t, built according to an Armstrong plan in the USA
- ^ "Waiting for the Itata," NYT May 17, 1891
- ^ Mario Barros Van Buren, "Historia Diplomatica de Chile, 1541-1938" , Editorial Andres Bello, 2nd edition 1958, pp. 547f., Gbooks
- ^ Gunboat Tsukushi , 1880, 1,350 tons, 16.5 knots, 2 × 254 mm, 4 × 120 mm cannons