Yesterday (1 May), the mainland's newest aircraft carrier, the Fujian, departed for sea trials, and the people of the whole country rejoiced.
As a Weihai native, I especially wanted to go to Liugong Island immediately to pay tribute to Deng Shichang and China's first modern navy, the Beiyang Naval Division.
It's just that I don't have to guess that I also know, Liu Gongdao must have been crowded yesterday, so wait a few days, I must go to see it, the last time I saw it should be 2008, it's been too long.
Yesterday I made a foreign netizen's evaluation video of the 003 sea trial, but I found that our own people are actually ignorant of the navy, for example, a friend in the comment area said that the Japanese could build an aircraft carrier a hundred years ago, but what surprised me the most was that there were friends who thought that the Beiyang Naval Division was the first in the world.
Then I will briefly tell you today how many Beiyang sailors can rank.
First of all, let me ask you a question, who is the ninth or tenth largest navy in the world at the moment, or in terms of strength? You certainly don't know, and I don't know if I don't look it up, because no one cares about a third-tier navy.
And the Beiyang Naval Division belonged to the third tier navy in the world at that time.
The original intention of the Qing court to establish the Beiyang Naval Division was also very simple, in 1874 Japan invaded the Taiwan region, and everyone only remembers that the humiliated Qing government compensated Japan 500,000 taels of silver for this. I won't talk about other reasons, at least in terms of the navy, except for a few small-tonnage steamships used for transportation at that time, there was not a single modern warship at all, and the Japanese navy was already equipped with the ironclad ship Jiatetsu at this time, and this warship was enough to cut off the connection between the mainland and the Taiwan region.
Therefore, the Qing government, which was still in the so-called "Tongzhi Zhongxing" period, hurriedly built its own modern naval force. The representative achievement is the Beiyang Naval Division. When the Beiyang Naval Division was first formed, the total tonnage of the entire Chinese Navy (including the Beiyang, Nanyang, and Guangdong Naval Divisions) could indeed rank ninth or eighth in the world. Note that it is the sum of the three naval divisions, and the total tonnage of the Beiyang naval division at that time was about 30,000 tons.
Which countries have a stronger navy than us?
Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Austria (Hungary), Austria (Turkey), Spain, the United States, etc. (this is already nine countries, the only controversial is the United States, which will be discussed later), without considering industrial strength and other factors, if you consider purely from the tonnage of the navy and the level of capital ships, it can be divided into the following grades.
The Royal Navy of the United Kingdom, which is not what it used to be
Super first gear: Britain has more than 100 ironclad ships, and has begun to manufacture former dreadnought battleships, whose strength is equivalent to the sum of two to six, does that mean that the British Navy can be compared with seven or eighty-nine? No, because the scale after seven or eighty-nine is too small to be worth mentioning.
In the years when the Beiyang Navy was formed, the Royal Navy's military expenditure was as high as 12 million pounds sterling, or about 50 million taels of silver, but during the First Sino-Japanese War, Britain's annual naval military expenditure was about 13,000 to 150 million taels of silver, which was equivalent to nearly twice the total revenue of the Qing government.
First gear: France, Russia, Germany. When France formed the Beiyang Naval Division, the tonnage of the navy reached 500,000, and there were more than 60 ironclad ships, and the tonnage of ironclad ships alone was more than ten times that of the entire Beiyang Naval Division. The naval strength of the Tsarist Russian Empire was close to that of France, and the details will not be detailed.
The German navy, which had just completed the reunification of Germany, developed very rapidly, but if you look at the tonnage of the navy and the number of capital ships, there is still a gap between it and France and Tsarist Russia, but Germany's terrifying industrial capacity soon made its naval strength send chills down the spine of Britain.
The second gear: Italy, Austria-Hungary, Austria-Turkey, West. Italy will not go into details, when the Beiyang Naval Division was established, they had already started to build 13,000 tons of former dreadnought battleships, and Italy's imaginary enemy was Austria-Hungary, and Austria-Hungary, as one of the great powers, had a navy scale far beyond the reach of the Qing government.
However, I would like to explain that there is a historical passage, that is, after the First Sino-Japanese War, Italy once asked the Qing government for Sanmen Bay, and three warships showed off their might, but they were frightened back by the Beiyang Naval Division. In fact, the Qing government really rejected Italy's blackmail, but the main reason was that Italy did not have any colonies and naval bases in Asia at that time, and it was really cost-effective to pull the Italian navy over for a small port in the Far East.
Then there is the Ottoman Turkish Empire, although it is nicknamed the sick man of West Asia or the sick man of Europe, but after all, the Ottoman navy often fights with European powers, and it also has a certain industrial capacity, so the scale of the navy is far from comparable to the Beiyang naval division, for example, Beiyang has Dingyuan and Zhenyuan, which are known as the largest ships in Asia, and there are as many as 16 ironclad ships of the same class in the Ottoman Empire during the same period, as well as first-class ironclad ships with a tonnage of more than 9,000 tons.
Although the Spanish Navy has long since declined, its strength on paper, including tonnage, still surpasses that of the Beiyang Naval Division, and it also has first-class ironclad ships of more than 9,000 tons.
The third tranche, the United States, the Qing Dynasty, the Netherlands, Japan, Greece, Chile, Brazil, etc. For example, although the total tonnage and tonnage of the capital ships of the Greek Navy are not as good as those of the Beiyang Naval Division, its three ironclad ships with a displacement of about 5,000 tons have surpassed the two flagships of Zhenyuan and Dingyuan in terms of performance.
Because the Dutch Navy has colonies all over the world, its naval tonnage and scale are very large, which surpasses the Beiyang Naval Division in these two aspects, but the Netherlands will not participate in the competition for hegemony among the great powers, so the tonnage of the capital ships is smaller, which is not as good as the Beiyang Naval Division.
The Chilean Navy is inferior in size and tonnage to Beiyang, but it has the Pratt Captain ironclad that makes Li Hongzhang covetous, similar to the tonnage of Zhenyuan and Dingyuan, but the performance is a whole generation ahead. It is necessary to dispel a rumor that the Qing government was preparing to buy the Yoshino from the British, but the Japanese did not have the money to rob it. In fact, the Yoshino was a warship tailor-made by Britain for the Japanese Navy, and the Qing court never wanted to buy it, and what the Qing government really wanted to buy was the Pratt Trowel, but Japan got in the way, and Chile declared neutrality, and finally did not sell the warship.
Brazil and Chile have been vying for maritime supremacy in South America, but the overall strength is indeed slightly lost to the Beiyang Naval Division.
And then we talk about the United States. The United States is in the third tier is a pure exception, if at the moment when the Beiyang Naval Division was formed, the tonnage of the capital ships of the Beiyang Naval Division would indeed exceed that of the United States at the same time, so some scholars claim that the Beiyang Naval Division is stronger than the US Navy.
But the example of the United States at that time was too special, the United States pursued isolationism, believing that there was no need to maintain a strong navy, so after the end of the Civil War, the United States, which had the world's earliest and most advanced ironclad ships, almost eliminated its navy, but its industrial capacity was already able to wrestle with Britain and Germany, and it could build a huge navy at any time as long as it wanted.
In fact, at the same time as the completion of the Beiyang Naval Division, the United States began to restore the size of the fleet with Mahan's "theory of sea power" as the guiding ideology, and by the time of the First Sino-Japanese War, the United States Navy quickly ranked first in the world, with as many as six former dreadnought battleships and dozens of cruisers, and it took only a few years for the United States to achieve this, so before the First Sino-Japanese War, the US Navy had already surpassed the Beiyang Naval Division, and we could not even see the tail lights.
Finally, let's talk about Japan, the Beiyang Naval Division is indeed stronger than the Japanese Navy after it is formed. However, from then until the outbreak of the First Sino-Japanese Naval War, Japan added six ironclad cruisers at a rate of almost one per year, although the tonnage of the capital ships was not as good as that of the Beiyang Naval Division, but it surpassed the Chinese Navy, including the Beiyang, in terms of speed, rate of fire, firepower projection, and naval tonnage.
In other words, the First Sino-Japanese War was not about us being strong and they were weak, but just the opposite.
Therefore, the reasons for the defeat of the naval battle are not so complicated, purely because the strength of the Beiyang Naval Division is relatively backward. In the case of a division behind the Japanese army, the naval battle of the Yellow Sea can be said to be the super-level performance of the Beiyang naval division, because the Japanese army expanded too fast, and the training could not keep up, and many Japanese gunners had just fired their first shells after the naval battle began - yes, many gunners had not yet completed the shelling training between them.
The fact that the combined fleet can win is purely because the warships are stronger: the speed is faster, it can chase the Beiyang naval division, the number of artillery is larger, the rate of fire is faster, the Beiyang naval division suffers more shells, and the gunpowder is better, which makes the Japanese artillery shells more flammable and difficult to extinguish......
If the First Sino-Japanese War had been before 1892, or during the period when the Beiyang Navy Division was in Nagasaki, the Japanese Navy would not have been an opponent at all, and history might have been rewritten. However, after 1892, the strength of the Chinese and Japanese navies has been transposed, and if it comes to 1897, the gap between the Chinese and Japanese navies will be even greater, because the two 12,000-ton former dreadnought battleships ordered by the Japanese army will be put into service.
A hundred years later, the Chinese Navy has finally become the top power in the world, the picture shows the 003 Fujian ship
Therefore, there are two conclusions: If you are backward, you will be beaten, and you will not be able to spend money to buy national defense.
Of course, everyone also knows that when the Beiyang Naval Division was built, the Qing government navy was indeed barely the ninth in the world, but before the First Sino-Japanese War, the Beiyang Naval Division or the Qing government's navy could not even enter the top ten in the world.