|
The Nanyang Fleet () was one of the four modernised Chinese naval fleets in the late Qing Dynasty. Established in the 1870s, the fleet suffered losses in the Sino-French War, escaped intact in the Sino-Japanese War, and was formally abolished in 1909. ==Composition, 1884== Before 1885 the Southern Seas (Nanyang) Fleet, based at Shanghai, was the largest of China's four regional fleets. In the early 1880s its best ships were the modern composite cruiser ''Kaiji'', completed in 1884 at the Foochow Navy Yard, the composite sloops ''Kangji'' and ''Chengching'', also recent products of the Foochow Navy Yard (1878 and 1880), and the 2,630-ton wooden steam frigate ''Yuyuan'', built at the Kiangnan Arsenal in 1873. The fleet was originally to have had the four steel Rendel gunboats ''Zhendong'', ''Zhenxi'', ''Zhennan'' and ''Zhenbei'', completed in 1879, but Li Hongzhang was so impressed by them that he took them over for the Beiyang Fleet, compensating the Nanyang Fleet with ''Longxiang'', ''Huwei'', ''Feiting'' and ''Cedian'', four iron Rendel 'alphabetical' gunboats that had been in service at Tianjin since 1876.〔Wright, 43–6〕 Besides these relatively modern gunboats the fleet also included the elderly wooden gunboats ''Caojiang'', ''Zehai'', ''Weijing'' and ''Jingyuan'', the first three products of the Kiangnan Arsenal (1869 and 1870) and the fourth built at the Foochow Navy Yard in 1872. Other vessels with the fleet or operating on the Yangzi River in 1884 included the composite sloops ''Chaowu'' and ''Chengqing'', both built at the Foochow Navy Yard (1878 and 1880); the 2,630-ton wooden steam frigate ''Haian'', built at the Kiangnan Arsenal in 1872; the wooden transports ''Yuankai'' and ''Dengyingzhou'', both built at the Foochow Navy Yard (1875 and 1876); and the tiny ironclad ''Jinou'', an experimental product of the Kiangnan Arsenal (1876) nicknamed derisively by Europeans 'the terror of the Western world'. In July 1884, on the eve of the Sino-French War, the Nanyang fleet was reinforced by the German-built steel cruisers ''Nanrui'' and ''Nanchen'', which sailed from Germany in March 1884. ''Table 1: Composition of the Nanyang fleet, August 1884'' 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Nanyang Fleet」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|