Japanese cruiser Chishima

The IJN Chishima (千島 通報艦, Chishima tsūhōkan^?) was a 3rd class protected cruiser of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The name Chishima (lit. "Thousand Islands") is the Japanese name for the Kurile Islands.

Background

The Chishima was designed by French military advisor Emile Bertin, and built in the Chantiers de la Loire shipyards in France. It was part of the 1882 pre-First Sino-Japanese War expansion program of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In keeping with the Jeune Ecole philosophy of naval warfare advocated by Bertin, the Chishima was small and lightly armed, so much so that sometimes the Chishima has been referred to as a torpedo gunboat or destroyer. The IJN itself rated the Chishima as a tsūhōkan, meaning dispatch boat or aviso.

The commissioning of the Chishima was delayed by over a year, as the ship could achieve only 19 knots (35 km/h), instead of the promised 22 knots (41 km/h); the French government agreed to pay the Japanese government some financial compensation for the issue.

Service record

The shakedown cruise of the Chishima was made on its voyage to Japan, with a crew of 79 French and eleven Japanese sailors, via Alexandria, the Suez Canal and Singapore. The ship suffered from numerous problems on this voyage, including boiler failure, leaks, and ruptured steam lines, before finally arriving at Nagasaki.

However, the Chishima was lost only one week after its formal commissioning into the Japanese navy, in a night collision on 30 November 1892 with the British P&O merchant vessel Ravenna, off Matsuyama, Ehime prefecture, in poor weather. Her captain and all 90 sailors onboard drowned. This incident led to the establishment of the Japanese "Maritime Anti-Collision Regulations".

One of the cannons of the Chishima is preserved in a memorial at the Aoyama Cemetery in Tokyo, and a memorial to the Chishima disaster with calligraphy by Togo Heihachiro is at the Buddhist temple of Jofuku-ji in Matsuyama.

Litigation following sinking

Afterwards, in a maritime tribunal held by the British consular court in Yokohama, P&O was cleared. The Japanese Government then brought action against P&O in the British Court for Japan. P&O sought to file a counterclaim which the judge in the Court for Japan, Robert Mowat, rejected as not being within the jurisdiction of the court. P&O appealed to the British Supreme Court for China and Japan in Shanghai (Hannen CJ and Jamieson J) which allowed the counterclaim. The Japanese Government then appealed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council who allowed the appeal and held P&O was not allowed to counterclaim^[1].

The case was remitted to the Court for Japan for trial. P&O then settled the case by paying the Japanese government 10,000 pounds sterling in compensation, which corresponded roughly to the purchase cost of the ship, but provided for no compensation to the families of the lost officers and crew. The Japanese government had to bear its own legal costs. The British captain was not fined nor imprisoned for his responsibility in the incident. The settlement was regarded as highly unfair by the Japanese public, and was one issue cited in the drive for revision of the unequal treaties between Japan and the western nations to bring and to extraterritoriality.

References

• Evans, David. Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887-1941. US Naval Institute Press (1979). ISBN 0870211927
• Howarth, Stephen. The Fighting Ships of the Rising Sun: The Drama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1895-1945. Atheneum; (1983) ISBN 0689114028
• Jane, Fred T. The Imperial Japanese Navy. Thacker, Spink & Co (1904) ASIN: B00085LCZ4
• Jentsura, Hansgeorg. Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945. Naval Institute Press (1976). ISBN 087021893X
• Schencking, J. Charles. Making Waves: Politics, Propaganda, And The Emergence Of The Imperial Japanese Navy, 1868-1922. Stanford University Press (2005). ISBN 0804749779
• The Imperial Japanese Government v The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company 1895 UKPC 33