"In Search of the Chinese Battleship Cemetery" series
01 Zhuang River, the mystery of the sinking of the long ship
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On September 21, 2018, Xinhuanet and other media released the news that the Underwater Cultural Heritage Protection Center of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, and the Dalian Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology jointly formed a team to carry out underwater archaeological investigation in the waters of the Dalian Zhuang River in Liaoning Province, searched, found and confirmed the sinking ship of the Beiyang Fleet in the Sino-Japanese War - "Jingyuan Ship".
The ship fought the Japanese ship to the death in the Battle of Dadonggou on September 17, 1894, and sank heroically, and it has been 124 years since then.
The news came and caused great concern. What kind of sacredness was the Jingyuan Ship that could still make Chinese so unable to put it down after more than a hundred years?
Archives of the armored cruiser Jingyuan
▲ Jingyuan armored cruiser
Jingyuan was one of two armored cruisers ordered by the Qing court to Germany in 1886 and was completed in 1887. The ship was characterized by armored belts mounted on both sides, so its protection was higher than that of the popular dome cruisers of the time. However, because its tonnage was less than 3,000 tons, its protective range was limited, and no main gun was installed in the tail to reduce weight. This is also its biggest weakness.
In the Battle of Dadonggou on September 17, 1894, the Jingyuan ship inflicted heavy casualties on the Japanese ship, severely damaged the Japanese ship Akagi, and tried to send a marine team to jump to capture the Japanese ship Fuso. After the completion of the construction of the ship, there was only one pipe belt, that is, Lin Yongsheng, who graduated from the Greenwich Naval Academy. Lin Yongsheng was martyred in the Battle of Dadonggou after being shot in the head.
▲ Western art works: The moment when the Jingyuan ship exploded and caught fire in the Battle of Dadonggou
Ending: In the Battle of Dadonggou, the Jingyuan ship was besieged by four warships of the first guerrilla group of the Japanese army, and the ship stubbornly resisted for an hour with one enemy and four enemies, which made the enemy sigh and finally sank.
Parameters: standard displacement 2900 tons, power 4400 hp, speed 15.5 knots, equipped with German Krupp 210 mm guns, 150 mm guns 2, 47 mm multi-barrel rapid-fire guns 2, 37 mm single-barrel rapid-fire guns 5, 457 mm torpedo tubes 2
The situation of the surviving relics -
Lushun Lushun Museum of the Former Site of the Japanese-Russian Prison in Lushun, China: a lifebuoy of the ship is stored
Lushun Wanzhong Tomb Exhibition Hall: Cunjingyuan soldier uniform
Zhuanghehai District, Liaoning Province, China: The underwater wreckage of the Jingyuan ship has been found and salvaged including copper casings, steel plates, gun emplacements, tools, shells and other debris
Chinese folk collector: A letter from Cun Jingyuan to Mr. Ye Guanting in Shanghai
▲ Suspected fragments of the voyage were salvaged in the Zhuanghe Sea Area
The discovery of the remains of the Jingyuan ship this time undoubtedly provides excellent evidence for the study of historical events such as the Sino-Japanese War and the Battle of Dadonggou, and can also allow us to re-enter the world of those heroic and martyred naval officers and men more than a hundred years later.
However, few people know that the discovery of the long-distance ship actually underwent a long and tortuous process. The sea area where the remains of the Jingyuan ship was found, located in the waters near the Black Rock Reef in Zhuanghe County, Liaoning Province, was initially not believed that the last traces of the Jingyuan warship could be found here — and I was one of them.
Because of participating in the exploration and salvage of the Zhiyuan ship project that began in 2013, the author learned at that time that when the local cultural relics department was investigating, he received an important news - the Cruiser Jingyuan of the Beiyang Fleet did not sink in the Dadonggou sea area, but near the old man's stone on the Black Island, and even some people said that they had dived to the ship to catch shell casings when they were young.
Why was this ship considered to be a long-distance ship? According to locals, this was because a group of sailors were rescued near the Old Man's Stone when the ship sank, and they passed down the information that the ship sank here.
▲ The Warships ordered in Germany have two slender armor belts, which are the battleships in the Beiyang Fleet that are second only to Dingyuan and Zhenyuan in combat effectiveness
For scholars who study the Battle of Jia-Wu, the location of the sinking of the Jingyuan has always been a mystery.
After the war, the Japanese side released the location of the sinking far away from the war, which is 123 degrees 40 minutes and 7 seconds east longitude and 38 degrees 58 minutes north latitude, in the center of the Yellow Sea south of Ocean Island, far away from the main battlefield, completely unreasonable. Another set of earlier data simply marked the site of the sinking of the ship on land.
Although the location of the sinking is not confirmed, many experts have expressed their disagreement with the sinking of the Ship at The Old Man's Stone. This was because there was a long distance from Dadonggou, the main battlefield of the Battle of Jiawu, to the Old Man's Stone of Zhuanghe, and if the naval battle reached this place, the Japanese warships besieging the long-distance ships would not have time to rush back to meet the team before the end of the naval battle at 5:30 p.m.
According to the records of this war between China and foreign countries, the Battle of Dadonggou was carried out in the afternoon, the ships Zhiyuan, Chaoyong, and Yangwei sank one after another, the Jiyuan and Guangjia ships fled, the strength of the Beiyang Fleet was sharply reduced, and the cruiser Jingyuan, commanded by Lin Yongsheng, was besieged by four main warships of the First Guerrilla Group of the Japanese Combined Fleet, and after fierce fighting, it sank heroically.
The Japanese recorded that at the time of the siege, the four Japanese ships fought and retreated from the waters of the Great East Valley to the west, and the four Japanese ships, with the Yoshino as the pilot ship, followed closely behind.
▲ The so-called sunken photo taken by the Japanese army, this photo was taken at a long distance, which is believed to be afraid of the stubborn resistance of the Japanese army before its sinking, and it was later analyzed that there was another mystery
Due to the certain flaws in the design of the Jingyuan ship, there was no large-caliber gun on its tail, so in this pursuit battle, the Jingyuan ship counterattacked with insufficient firepower, and finally ignited a fire under the continuous blows of the Yoshino ship. Four Japanese ships rushed to the scene to besiege the Jingyuan ships. The Japanese side even painted the moment when the ship exploded and sank, and it can be seen that its four-blade propeller was blown out of the water.
According to this account, the Japanese side should have sunk the ship after more than an hour of battle, and then left the battlefield, and rushed back to the battlefield of Dadonggou at five o'clock in the afternoon. This record is evidenced by communications between the Japanese Navy's flagship Matsushima during the naval battle and the returning Yoshino and other ships that pursued the ships.
If the battle had really hit the vicinity of the Old Man's Stone, the four warships of the First Guerrilla Group of the Japanese fleet, which had been pursuing too far, would not have had time to rush back to Dadonggou at all, and their return time should have been about one to two hours after the end of the naval battle, which was not in line with the battlefield situation seen by both China and Japan.
▲ The location of the far-sunken in the Japanese archives (marked with ホ) is still far from the surrounding islands
Because of this, when the exploration and salvage of the Shipwreck of the Zhiyuan Ship (which could not be identified initially) was carried out, the experts involved in the operation were mostly less active about the shipwreck near Black Island.
However, some people also have different views on this, and some local cultural relics department personnel have introduced this situation - a fisherman obtained a shipwreck relic with Chinese, English and German characters on it, which is very evidentiary.
Experts involved in the salvage operation translated the text on this nameplate and found that it was actually the nameplate of the gun emplacement on the Jingyuan ship, which proved that the wreckage of the Jingyuan ship should have been found and may have been damaged by some theft.
▲ The nameplate of the fort found near the Old Man's Stone comes from the Main Gun of Jingyuan
But is the wreckage of Jingyuan really on the Black Island? After many deductions of the course of the naval battle, no one can explain how the Japanese warships could return to the main battlefield of Dadonggou on time after sinking the Jingyuan here.
Some experts have put forward the view that it is not possible that the pirates destroyed the wreckage of the Jingyuan ship in the nearby sea area and used the area as a base for storing materials?
Because the place is remote, it is difficult for law enforcement officers to manage it. This view was once in the mainstream among the experts attending the meeting, but Zhou Chunshui, commander-in-chief of the investigation team of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, finally decided to conduct a more detailed exploration of the sea area near the old man's stone to determine whether the Jingyuan ship was here.
Chen Yue, president of the Chinese Naval History Research Association, expressed support for such an action, because they also found such a record in the 1934 edition of the "Chronicle of Zhuanghe County", which mentioned that the Jingyuan ship was indeed sunk near the old man's stone.
"At that time, the ship was in the east of the shrimp old stone (that is, the old man's stone), the soldiers and soldiers all asked Lin (Yongsheng) to be on the shore, Lin refused, bowed to the shells, supervised the battle, the left arm was shot, the ship was also shattered, The governor of Lin went, turned inside, flat locked the warehouse door, and was martyred."
▲ Lin Yongsheng, who was trained by the long-distance ship pipe belt, studied at the Naval Academy in Greenwich, England, and died in the Battle of Dadonggou
The description of Lin Yongsheng's death in the County Chronicle is inconsistent with the official report of the Beiyang Fleet, which lin Yongsheng died of a brain split by an enemy shell penetrating his command tower earlier before the end of the naval battle. The official recorded in the "Chronicle of Zhuanghe County" is more like Chen Jingying, the second deputy of the Jingyuan ship who finally commanded the battleship.
Support is supported, and experts are still puzzled as to how the Jingyuan ship appeared on the Black Island, and why the Jingyuan ship sank in the distant waters of the Zhuang River has become a new mystery.
In the face of the facts, the experts whose glasses were shattered and finally came to a relatively reasonable conclusion after repeated discussions, and although the four warships of the Japanese Combined Fleet engaged in a long-term artillery battle with the Jingyuan ship, they were not able to sink the 2900-ton Chinese armored cruiser on the spot.
The heavily wounded warship was still able to escape the Japanese pursuit and sail off to the coast. The last photograph taken by the Japanese side of the Jingyuan ship, which showed a distance of about 5 kilometers between the warship and the wounded Jingyuan ship, shows that it is likely that after the heavy damage to the Jingyuan ship, it felt that the ship had been fatally injured and could not be recovered, and the Japanese fleet was worried that it would not be able to return in time and did not continue to pursue, returning from the battlefield, which was able to meet the team before the end of the naval battle.
▲ The Japanese Navy Captain Wakabayashi Chin painted the imminent sinking of Jingyuan, judging from the current situation, it is probably only an imaginary work, and the Jingyuan ship should have been killed in the bitter battle with the four Japanese ships
After that, the wounded Jingyuan ship with a ship full of fire actually struggled to sail dozens of nautical miles in the direction of the home port of Lushun, and finally sank near the old man's stone because the warship was no longer able to control. This can also be seen in the promotion of personnel in the Japanese Navy after the war.
After this naval battle, the commander of the First Guerrilla Group, Major General Hangsan Hirai, and Captain Yoshino, Kawahara, who played a key role in this victory of the Japanese Navy, were not very prosperous, but the captain of the Wave Speed Ship, Heihachiro Higashigo, and the captain of Takachiho, Umemura Hikyuki, rose to become the commander-in-chief and important general of the combined fleet in the Russo-Japanese War.
The difference between them is that both Hirai and Kawahara insist on claiming to have sunk the Jingyuan in the report, while Higashigo Hirabhiro is vague. Could it be that the upper echelons of the Japanese Navy discovered that Hirai and Kawahara were boasting about their achievements and lying in the war reports? This can only be used as a guess for us.
▲ The machine gun shells of the jingyuan ship were found on the shipwreck near the old man's stone
The Japanese report after the naval war also indirectly proves this view.
▲ The original English report of the Japanese Navy after the Battle of Dadonggou can only see the names of the three ships of Zhiyuan, Chaoyong and Yangwei, and the sinking of Jingyuan has not been clearly recorded
If you carefully study this report, I am afraid that you can conclude that the Japanese Navy did not know the fate of the Jingyuan ship at the end of the naval battle, rather than confirming the sinking of the Chinese warship as later announced. An important lesson can be drawn from the discovery process of the trans-yuan, that is, the survey of the site can make an excellent supplement to the documentary material, and sometimes even rewrite the history.
The first guerrilla unit of the Japanese Combined Fleet, including four high-speed cruisers of Yoshino, Nagaso, Akitsushu, and Takachiho, of which the smallest tonnage was 3,150 tons, and the largest was Yoshino 4,216 tons, all equipped with rapid-fire guns, which were the essence of the Japanese Navy during the Sino-Japanese War.
Thinking back to that year, there were only less than three thousand tons of Jingyuan ships, the lone ship desperately and unyieldingly, with a full ship of fire and anger to fight four Large Japanese ships, the captain killed the first deputy commander, the first mate killed the second deputy commander, until the last enemy army could not sink it, can only watch this seriously injured Chinese warship protrude from the siege, the tenacity and heroism of that generation of the Chinese Navy, still lamentable.
The discovery of the Jingyuan ship makes us deeply expect that the cultural relics protection department can do a good job in order to make its archaeological discoveries show the best results.
According to the clues already available, the wreckage of the cruiser Pingyuan, which sank in the waters off Dalian, may have been destroyed by the pirates, and the once fierce ship, which was once fierce, but eventually sank outside the mouth of Lushun, could not escape their smashing.
The main purpose of these quick-to-make criminals is to sell old steel, and I am afraid that it is impossible to know what kind of treasure they have destroyed - a piece of steel plate dismantled on such a battleship with historical information in the international cultural relics market can be sold for a sky-high price, and it is really difficult to evaluate it at the price of scrap steel.
Of course, according to China's cultural relics policy, the wreckage of the long-distance ship cannot be sold as cultural relics, but for a country with an awakened sense of sea power, there are a large number of corresponding museums and memorials that are eager for the stationing of related cultural relics.
When the remains of the Jiyuan were recovered in 1986, there was a competition between the original German artillery factory and the China Jiawu Memorial For the main gun salvaged by the Jiyuan.
In the end, out of patriotic enthusiasm, the salvage company sold the weapons and cultural relics to the Chinese museum at a price much lower than the German quotation. Nevertheless, its price was astronomical at the time.
The discovery of the jingyuan ship has mixed people with a little worry in joy, calling for more effective protection and more effective legislative supervision of underwater cultural relics in China. We look forward to bringing more surprises, more memories and contemplation to the ship.
▲ The Beiyang Marine Division will exercise photos, from left to right, jingyuan, Weiyuan and Kangji - the photos are like this, but can the boats in the photos still be reproduced in front of us?
We sincerely look forward to it.
【End】