Service Life
Completed after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, Mogami was used initially for training and coastal patrol duties. Mogami was re-classified as a 1st-class gunboat on 12 October 1912.
Mogami was part of the Japanese fleet at the Battle of Tsingtao in World War I, and assisted in the sinking of the German torpedo boat S90, which had torpedoed and sank the cruiser Takachiho earlier in the battle. The German ship ran out of fuel while trying to escape Tsingtao, and was intercepted by Mogami. From 1917-1921, Mogami was assigned to patrol duties in the Caroline Islands and Mariana Islands after Japan's capture of those island groups from Germany.
From 1921-1928, Mogami was assigned to patrols off of the Siberian coast, and to fishery patrol duties, during the period of Japan’s Siberian Intervention against the Bolshevik Red Army during the Russian Civil War.
Mogami was scrapped on 1 April 1928. Although Mogami was considered the more modern and advanced in design, with her higher speed and turbine engine, she was retired much earlier than her sister ship, Yodo, largely due to performance and maintenance issues with her engines.
While being dismantled at Osaka, a spark from a welding torch ignited the remaining oil in Mogami's bunkers, causing an explosion and fire which destroyed the hulk of the vessel in two hours. The mainmast of Mogami was preserved at the Nakanoshima Park in downtown Osaka as a memorial until 9 February 2009 when it was removed to the Kure Maritime Museum.
Read more about this topic: Japanese Cruiser Mogami (1908)
Famous quotes containing the words service and/or life:
“In the service of Caesar, everything is legitimate.”
—Pierre Corneille (1606–1684)
“When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)