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Updated: May 8, 2025
It was accordingly so arranged; and he spent the intervening time in looking round the port, arsenal, and dockyard of Wei-hai-wei, picking up all the information he could with regard to Chinese Naval matters, and also managing incidentally to acquire a small very small smattering of the Chinese language, which was afterwards of considerable use to him.
The Japanese lost altogether 90 killed and 204 wounded, chiefly on the Matsushima and Hiyei. Though China saved her best ships from the battle, her fighting spirit was done for. The battleships were later destroyed by Japanese torpedo operations after the fall of Wei-hai-wei. Her crews had on the whole fought bravely, handicapped as they were by their poor materials and lack of skill.
A glance at the map shows its position, at the southern extremity of the Liaotung Peninsula, commanding, with the formidable forts of Wei-hai-wei on the opposite tongue of land, near Chefoo, the entrance to the Gulf of Pechili.
But that craft might as well have hoped to catch a streak of lightning as the Satsuma, when once she was well into her stride; and two days later the destroyer, now flying the Chinese flag, steamed proudly into Wei-hai-wei. But, alas! pride soon had a fall, for the harbour was full of Japanese war-ships!
This sort of thing, I have said, went on for more than a month. The gunboat's cruising-ground was chiefly about the mouth of the Pechili Gulf, now under the frowning forts of Wei-hai-wei, and now opposite Port Arthur on the other side. There did not seem to be any regular blockade of the Gulf, though Japanese warships were constantly hovering about.
Russia immediately hurried a fleet to Port Arthur and obtained from China a lease of that port for twenty-five years. England and France now put in a claim for their share of the good things going. England obtained Wei-hai-Wei, France a lease of Kwang-tschau and Hainan.
The Chinese fleet, I believe, confined itself to the modest seclusion of Wei-hai-wei harbour, and was not to be tempted outside. Once I asked Hishidi when they meant to assail Wei-hai-wei and Port Arthur? "Oh," said he, "we are waiting our time; it has not come yet."
Then the war-ships and the transports kept company until they reached Wei-hai-wei, where they found the little Hat-yen, but recently arrived in a sinking condition, so that it had been necessary to beach her immediately to save her from sinking at her anchors.
The latter, with only one boiler available, and a very low pressure of steam in that, most of her guns disabled, her captain killed, and all her officers wounded, could do no more; and when the Chen Yuen came up and drew the Matsushima's fire upon herself, a quartermaster, one of the few surviving petty officers, steered her slowly and painfully, like a crippled-animal, out of the press, when, unpursued being too small fry to trouble about she turned her bows in the direction of Wei-hai-wei, and hobbled into port some twenty hours later, the dismal forerunner of the shattered and broken remnant that was so soon to follow her.
It may be said in conclusion that the Chinese fleet was annihilated in the later attack on the port of Wei-hai-wei, many of the vessels being destroyed by torpedo-boats, and the remainder, unable to escape from the harbor, being forced to surrender to the Japanese. Thus ended in utter disaster to China the naval war.
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