THE CHINO-JAPANESE WAR, 1894—95. 614 too great to be remedied by such means. Admiral Ting, in no way dismayed by the injury to his ship, was thinking only of fighting the Japanese torpedo boats. He had ordered the cable to be slipped, and the Ting- Yuen, propelled by her starboard engine, was steering for tlae comparatively deep water south of I-tao, heedless of the fight in progress between the enemy'sboats and the other ships. Ting's idea was to get between the enemy and the gapby which they had come in,cut off their retreat, anddestroy them with his machine-guns. The officer's narrative continues :— " Shortly after the ship was got under wayIreported toTing and Commodore Liu thatIbelieved the damage inflicted to be so great that it was doubtful whether the ship could be kept afloat, andI advised that she should be beached in such a way that, should repairs be found impossible, she would still be able to use her guns in defence of the harbour. This was, after some hesitation,decidedupon, the state of thetide (it being high water) making this plan the more favourable. The ship was accordingly beached on the island inside the east boom(about 1,000 yards distant),and wasplaced in such a manner as to enable her to use her heavy guns to protect the east entrance."

yards off, she turnedhard-a-port. As she turned, I saw that wehad hit her badly,as alotof steam was to be seen. A few seconds after she turned we werehit on the quarter. The shock was a heavy quivering one, such as Ishould imagine an earthquake to be like. The sound of the explosion was a loud dull thud. A column 01 water dashed on board, and there was a faint sickly smell from the explosion. . . . The effect of the torpedo explosion was not very severe to the person. Isaw no one thrown downon deck,butit was severeenough to make that possible. One Chinese officer was asleepin his bunk at the time. This was about 25 feet further forward,and on the same side as the hit. He was thrown out of his bunk and bruised, but not damaged otherwise. No heavy weights weredisplaced,but furniture was thrown about. On deck the only damagevisible was tlae tearing away of the moulding on the ship's side in the vicinity of the hit. The effect of the shock was not demoralising. There wasnopanic, the men going to their stations as orderedin the usual manner."

Tlae ship's bugle sounded the order to" close watertight doors," and those left open were at once secured. The officer went below to see that this had been properly done, and at once perceived that the ship had been very seriously injured. "I sound," he says, "the water bubblingup through a store-roomhatch. There was then about a foot of water in my cabin, which was near this hatch. The ship had already listed slightly. Iwent to the engineroom. There Iwas shocked to find the port engine-roomfillingquickly. From the engineers Iheard that the port engine, after moving a portion of a turn, had stuck. The wedge doors of the tunnel [for the screw shaft] and side passages were leakingbadly,but apparently not nearly enough to account for the rise of the water. The door between the two enginerooms also began to leak, as well as that between the engine-room and stokehold on the port side. . . . Seeing the engine-room filling, and knowing that damage existed a considerable distance further aft (say thirty feet), T came to the conclusion that the damage inflicted was very extensive."

Before following further the story of what occurred on board the Ting- Yuen, let us see how the Japanese flotillas of torpedo boats had faredduring the attack. As might be expected, the existing accounts of what happened are confused, and in some respects contradictory. Considering what discrepancies are to be found in even the best reports of battles fought in broad daylight,it is not to be wonderedatif it is noeasy matter to piece together a clear and consistentnarrative from the stories toldby the commanders and crews of a number of torpedo boats that have made a rush into a harbourin the dark, and had a confused fight with ships that could only be distinguished as dull black or grey masseslooming up in the night. When a torpedo was discharged it was generally impossible to say what it had hit, and at least two boats claimed to have torpedoed the flagship, though she was certainly only hit once. The following account is basedchiefly on that given byMr. H. W. Wilson in his work,"Ironclads in Action." He has used chiefly Japanesereports, summarised by the French naval review. Le Yacht.

The idea occurred to him ot making some effort to stop the leak, but it was dismissed at once, because there were no collision mats in the equipment of the Ting-Yuen. There were no sails or awnings on board;and,evenif there had been,it looked as if the damage done was The Third Flotilla (5, 6, 10, 22) led the in, followed by the Second (8, 9, 14, 18, 19, and