| Career | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Kongō |
| Ordered: | 1874 Fiscal Year |
| Builder: | Arles shipyard, Hull, England |
| Laid down: | 24 September 1875 |
| Launched: | 17 April 1877 |
| Commissioned: | January 1878 |
| Struck: | 20 July 1909 |
| Fate: | Scrapped 1 April 1910 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Kongō-class corvette |
| Displacement: | 2,250 long tons (2,286 t) standard 3,718 long tons (3,778 t) full load |
| Length: | 67.1 m (220 ft 2 in) o/a |
| Beam: | 12.5 m (41 ft 0 in) |
| Draught: | 5.3 m (17 ft 5 in) |
| Propulsion: | horizontally-mounted reciprocating steam engine 6 boilers, 1-shaft 2,270 shp (1,690 kW) 340 tons coal |
| Sail plan: | Barque-rigged sloop (3 × masts) |
| Speed: | 13.7 knots (15.8 mph; 25.4 km/h) |
| Complement: | 308 |
| Armament: | • 3 × 170 mm (6.7 in) Krupp breech-loading guns • 6 × 150 mm (5.9 in) Krupp breech-loading guns • 2 × 75 mm (3 in) 1-pounder breech-loading guns • 4 × 25 mm quad-mount repeating guns • 2 × 11 mm dual-mount repeating guns • 1 × 360 mm (14 in) torpedo tubes |
| Armour: | Belt: 4.5 in (110 mm) at waterline |
Kongō (金剛 Kongō ) was the lead ship in the Kongō -class of armored sail-and-steam corvettes of the early Imperial Japanese Navy. Kongō was named after the Mount Kongō, in Nara Prefecture and the name was subsequently used for the World War II battleship Kongō, as well as the Kongō-class destroyers of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.
Kongō was designed by the British naval architect Sir Edward James Reed and was launched at the Arles shipyard at Hull, England on 17 April 1877. She was a three-masted bark-rigged sloop-of-war with a coal-fired double expansion reciprocating steam engine with six boilers driving a single screw. Completed in January 1878, she arrived in Yokosuka on 26 April 1878 after her shake-down cruise from the United Kingdom.
With heightened tensions between Japan and the Korean Joseon dynasty after the assassination of several members of the Japanese embassy in Seoul during the Imo Incident, Kongō was assigned to patrols off the Korean coast in the summer of 1882 in a show of force. It was again assigned to patrols off the Korean Peninsula during the instability following the Gapsin Coup of 1884.
From 1889-1890, Kongō made several long distance navigational training voyages, visiting Hawaii seven times during this period. From October 1890 to May 1891, together with its sister ship Hiei, Kongō visited Constantinople. Both ships were on a goodwill mission to Ottoman Empire, carrying the surviving crew members of the frigate Ertuğrul which sank off the coast of Wakayama in the Ertuğrul incident.
Kongō saw combat service in the First Sino-Japanese war, at the battles of Lushunkou, Weihaiwei and Yalu River.
On 21 March 1898, Kongō was re-designated as a third-class gunboat, and was used for coastal survey and patrol duties.
During the Russo-Japanese War, Kongō was based as a guard ship at Chinkai naval base, on the southern coast of Korea, and was subsequently relocated to Port Arthur after that naval base had fallen to the Japanese.
After the war, Kongō was assigned to surveying duties until 20 July 1909 when she was stricken from the navy lists. It was sold for scrap and broken up on 1 April 1910.
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