Japanese warship Kasuga (1862)
From MedBib.com - Medicine & Nature
 |
|
| Career |  |
|---|---|
| Name: | Kasuga |
| Builder: | J. Samuel White of Cowes, Isle of Wight |
| Launched: | 1860 |
| Acquired: | January 1868 |
| Decommissioned: | 1894 |
| Fate: | Scrapped 1902 |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 1,269 long tons (1,289 t) |
| Length: | 73 m (239 ft 6 in) |
| Beam: | 9 m (29 ft 6 in) |
| Propulsion: | Coal-fired steam engine, 300 ihp (220 kW) by Day & Co. of Southampton |
| Speed: | 17 knots (20 mph; 31 km/h) |
| Complement: | 134 |
| Armament: | 6 guns |
The Japanese warship Kasuga (JPN: 春日) was built in 1860 in Great Britain by J. Samuel White of Cowes, Isle of Wight under the name Keang Soo (after the area of Jiangsu in China). The Keang Soo was purchased by Matsukata Masayoshi a leading Satsuma samurai on November 3, 1867, for the amount of 160,000 ryō (approx $250,000 at then current exchange rates), whence she was renamed Kasuga. Matsukata intended the ship as a warship but was overruled by the Satsuma elders, she was intended to be used as a cargo ship and in disgust he gave up command of the ship he had bought. Just a few months later she was converted to a warship.
Kasuga was a wooden boat with paddle wheels. She weighed 1269t, her engine had a power of 300 ihp (220 kW), she did 17 knots (31 km/h) and she had 6 guns.
The ship entered Hyōgo harbour on January 1868, where she was blockaded by three ships of the navy of the Bakufu; Kaiyō Maru, Banryū and Shōkaku. Tōgō Heihachirō, future Admiral of the Fleet, joined the ship on January 3 as a third-class officer and a gunner.
The night of January 3, Kasuga escaped from Hyōgo harbour with two other ships. She was spotted by the Kaiyō, which chased her into the strait of Awa. The two ships exchanged fire at a distance of 1,200-2,500 meters, without any actual hits. The exchange was named the Naval Battle of Awa and was the first naval battle in Japan between two modern fleets. Kasuga returned to Kagoshima after that exchange.
.JPG)
In March 1869, Kasuga participated in the expedition against the last Bakufu forces in Hokkaidō, where they had formed the Republic of Ezo with the support of a few French military advisors such as Jules Brunet.
Stationed in the northern bay of Miyako the expedition suffered a surprise attack by the Bakufu ship Kaiten. Kaiten attacked the state-of-the art ironclad ship Kōtetsu, but she was repulsed by Gatling guns onboard the Kōtetsu and cannon response by Kasuga. The encounter has been named the Naval Battle of Miyako Bay.
After these events Kasuga participated in the Naval Battle of Hakodate Bay in May 1869, until the surrender of the last forces of the Bakufu.
In April 1870, the ship was transferred from the Satsuma fief to the newly formed Meiji Imperial government.
She was demobilized in 1894 and then assigned to the mine-laying group in Tsushima.
She was scrapped in 1902.
References
Reischauer, Haru Matsukata. Samurai and Silk: A Japanese and American Heritage. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Havard University Press, 1986. ISBN 0674788001.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
First ships of the 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
All material adapted used from Wikipedia is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
Seeking health information online: does Wikipedia matter?