was the lead ship of her class of two protected cruisers built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the 1880s. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to construct such vessels, the ship was designed and built in the United Kingdom. She participated in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, playing a major role in the Battle of the Yalu River and lesser roles in the Battles of Port Arthur, Weihaiwei, the Pescadores Campaign and the invasion of Taiwan. Naniwa played a minor role in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 where she participated in the Battle of Chemulpo Bay, briefly helped to blockade Port Arthur at the beginning of the war, helped to sink a Russian armored cruiser during Battle off Ulsan and participated in the climactic defeat of the Imperial Russian Navy in the Battle of Tsushima.
After the war the ship was relegated to auxiliary roles and served as a survey and fisheries protection ship. Naniwa ran aground in the Kurile Islands north of the Japanese Home Islands in 1912 and could not be refloated before she was permanently wrecked a month later. Salvage rights to the wreck were sold a year later.
Design and description
The Naniwa-class cruisers were designed by Armstrong Mitchell's chief naval architect, William White, as improved versions of the pioneering Chilean protected cruiser (later purchased by the IJN and renamed Izumi) and the Royal Navy's equivalent ships. When completed, Naniwa and her sister ship, , were considered the most advanced and most powerful cruisers in the world. The cruisers displaced at normal load. The ships had a length between perpendiculars of and an overall length of , a beam of and a draft of at deep load. The cruisers were fitted with a plough-shaped naval ram of mild steel below the waterline and had a partial double bottom extending between the forward and aft magazines. They were powered by a pair of horizontal, two-cylinder double-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft using steam produced by six cylindrical boilers. The engines were designed to produce a total of with forced draught to give the ships a maximum speed of . During her speed trials, Naniwa reached a speed of from . The Naniwa-class cruisers carried enough coal to gave them a range of about at a speed of . The ship's crew consisted of 338 officers and men.
The main armament of the Naniwa-class ships initially consisted of two single Krupp cannon on pivot mounts in barbettes fore and aft of the superstructure. Each barbette was fitted with a fixed loading station in its rear and the guns had to return to this position to reload. The secondary armament was initially six Krupp cannon on pivot mounts in semi-circular sponsons on the main deck, three guns on each broadside. All of these guns were protected against the weather by gun shields. Defense against torpedo boats was provided by two quick-firing (QF) 6-pounder () Nordenfelt guns on the forward bridge, ten quadruple Nordenfelt guns positioned the length of the superstructure and four 10-barrel, Nordenfelt organ guns mounted in the fighting tops of the military masts. In addition, there were four above-water tubes in the hull for Schwartzkopff torpedoes, two on each broadside.
Naniwas armament frequently changed over her career and the first such was the replacement of her slow-firing 15-centimeter guns with Armstrong's QF guns in 1896 after the First Sino-Japanese War. At the same time four of the 1-inch Nordenfelt guns were replaced by four 3-pounders. The fighting tops and the 10-barrel organ guns were removed in 1898 and the main guns were replaced by a pair of Armstrong 6-inch guns in 1900. At the same time the 6-pounders and the remaining Nordenfelt guns were exchanged for more 3-pounders, giving the ship a total of ten 3-pounders and a pair of lighter Yamauchi QF 2.5-pounder (47-millimeter) guns.
The protection of the Esmeralda had been much criticized by the British Admiralty and White raised the height of the steel protective deck to a foot (30.5 centimeters) above the waterline. The sloped portion of the deck extended to a depth of below the waterline. Amidships, the highly-subdivided compartments formed by the sloped portion of the protective deck were filled with coal and the fore and aft areas were fitted with cofferdams to limit any flooding. The walls of the conning tower were three inches thick and the loading station was protected by two inches of steel armor.
Construction and career Naniwa was ordered from Armstrong Mitchell on 22 March 1884 as Japan lacked the ability to build the Naniwa-class ships itself. The ship was laid down at the company's Low Walker shipyard in Newcastle upon Tyne on 27 March as yard number 475 and launched on 18 March 1885. She was completed on 15 February 1886 and departed for Japan on 28 March with a Japanese crew under the command of Captain Itō Sukeyuki, the first warship purchased overseas to be brought to Japan with an entirely Japanese crew.
Naniwa arrived at Shinagawa, Tokyo, on 26 June and was assigned to the Standing Fleet in July as a second-class warship. The ship and her sister Takachiho hosted Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shōken, on 26 November as the ships conducted torpedo-firing exercises. Naniwa transported Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi, the Army Minister, Major General Ōyama Iwao, the Navy Minister, Lieutenant General Saigō Jūdō, and the Justice Minister from Yokohama to Kobe on 1 December and then to Pusan, Kingdom of Korea, before returning to Yokohama on 13 December. In early 1887 the sisters transported the Emperor and Empress from Yokohama to Kyoto and back again and then participated in the fleet maneuvers from 22 August to 5 September. Two months later they circumnavigated the Home Islands together with four other ships. On 17 June 1888 Naniwa became the flagship of the Standing Fleet and the sisters cruised to Okinawa, Taiwan, Wonsan, Korea, and Chifu, China later that year. The cruiser hosted the Emperor as he observed the launching of the protected cruiser in the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal on 15 October. By 1889, Naniwa was assigned to the Yokosuka Naval District. Together with her sister, she visited ports in the Russian Far East, Korea and China while also participating in fleet maneuvers in the last half of the year.
After taking part in the April 1890 Great Maneuvers with the Imperial Japanese Army, the cruiser was reviewed by the Emperor and then cruised off the eastern coast of Korea and visited Vladivostok in the Russian Far East during June and July. On 23 August Naniwa and Takachiho were reclassified as first-class warships. Naniwa spent the following year patrolling in home waters. On 2 February 1892, the sisters departed Shinagawa to cruise to Hong Kong before participating in the annual Great Maneuvers later that year. Naniwa steamed to Honolulu, Hawaii, in early 1893 to protect Japanese citizens and interests during the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy by American marines and colonists and returned home in May. The cruiser arrived back in Honolulu in December. Marines from Naniwa and the Royal Navy's cruiser were asked to land to defend their respective citizens during the "Black Week" hysteria of December 1893–January 1894, when the Provisional Government of Hawaii feared invasion by the United States to restore the legitimate government. During the confusion created by the revolution, a Japanese who had been convicted of murder escaped from prison in Honolulu, and sought refuge on Naniwa. Captain (later Fleet Admiral) Tōgō Heihachirō's refusal to hand the convict over to authorities from the Provisional Government nearly caused a diplomatic incident between Japan and the United States. Naniwa arrived back in Japan on 15 April and became the flagship of Rear Admiral Tsuboi Kōzō, commander of the First Flying Squadron, on 19 July.
First Sino-Japanese War During the Donghak Peasant Revolution, advancing rebel forces caused the Korean government request assistance from Qing China in May 1894 who began shipping troops to Asan the following month. The Japanese government, unwilling to let Korea fall under Chinese control, began to ship troops of their own to Chemulpo (modern Incheon) that same month and occupied Chemelpo and Seoul, the Korean capital. The subsequent arrival of more Chinese troops at the mouth of the Taedong River on 16 July angered the Japanese who issued an ultimatum threatening war if any further troops arrived in Korea. The Viceroy of Zhili, Li Hongzhang, believed that the Japanese were bluffing and ordered 2,500 more troops to be transported to Asan. In response, the Japanese ordered the Combined Fleet to Kunsan, Korea, in preparation for war on the 23rd and forced King Gojong of Korea to renounce Korea's tributary relationship with China that day. Two ships carrying some of the soldiers arrived on the night of 23/24 July with the third and last contingent scheduled to arrive on the morning of 25 July.
After the Japanese ships arrived at Kunsan, Tsuboi's First Flying Squadron with Naniwa, and the protected cruisers and , was detached from the Combined Fleet to rendezvous at Pungdo Island at the entrance to the Bay of Asan with the three Japanese warships from Chemulpo before blockading the west coast of Korea to prevent any reinforcements for Asan. The telegraph line to Chemulpo had been severed by the rebels and the Japanese ships there remained in port.
Battle of Pungdo
On the morning of 25 July, the protected cruiser and the torpedo gunboat of the Imperial Chinese Beiyang Fleet sortied from Asan, possibly to rendezvous with the chartered British steamer, , carrying the last of the Chinese troops. Jiyuan may have tried to pass too closely to Naniwa and Tōgō, fearing a torpedo attack, fired the first shots of the war. The Chinese cruiser was badly damaged, with her forward gun disabled, but managed to reach Weihaiwei (modern Weihai) despite being pursued by Yoshino. Naniwa and Akitsushima crippled the gunboat with heavy loss of life, which had to be beached to prevent her sinking.
At about 08:30 Jiyuan passed Kowshing, but the Chinese cruiser did not inform Kowshing of the battle and Kowshings crew misidentified the cruiser as a Japanese vesel. Tōgō ordered the British ship to heave to at 09:15 and Captain Galsworthy complied. He also consented to a search of his ship. Tōgō declared the ship seized as it was ferrying Chinese troops and ordered the crew and passengers to abandon ship. The Chinese troops took control of the ship and refused to comply with his orders. An attempt to negotiate a peaceful settlement by a German officer in Chinese service failed and Tōgō opened fire at 13:10 for fear of Chinese reinforcements. A torpedo launched at a range of went underneath the steamer's keel, but Naniwas guns did not, disabling the British ship's boiler room, possibly causing one boiler to explode, and hitting her below the waterline. This caused a panic aboard the Kowshing as the crew and passengers attempted to abandon ship. Naniwas heavy guns continued to fire at the sinking ship, while her light guns targeted the swimmers in the water. After the steamer sank at 13:47, the Japanese launched boats in an attempt to rescue the ship's European crew, ignoring the Chinese in the water, but only found Galsworthy and two other Europeans. Naniwa was hit once early in the battle, but the shell failed to detonate and it inflicted neither damage nor casualties. The cruiser only fired 36 shells from its heavy guns during the battle and 1,331 rounds from its light guns.