Nanyang Fleet - Composition, 1884

Composition, 1884

Before 1885 the Southern Seas (Nanyang) Fleet, based at Shanghai, was the largest of China's four regional fleets. In the early 1880s its best ships were the modern composite cruiser Kaiji, completed in 1884 at the Foochow Navy Yard, the composite sloops Kangji and Chengching, also recent products of the Foochow Navy Yard (1878 and 1880), and the 2,630-ton wooden steam frigate Yuyuan, built at the Kiangnan Arsenal in 1873. The fleet was originally to have had the four steel Rendel gunboats Zhendong, Zhenxi, Zhennan and Zhenbei, completed in 1879, but Li Hongzhang was so impressed by them that he took them over for the Beiyang Fleet, compensating the Nanyang Fleet with Longxiang, Huwei, Feiting and Cedian, four iron Rendel 'alphabetical' gunboats that had been in service at Tianjin since 1876.

Besides these relatively modern gunboats the fleet also included the elderly wooden gunboats Caojiang, Zehai, Weijing and Jingyuan, the first three products of the Kiangnan Arsenal (1869 and 1870) and the fourth built at the Foochow Navy Yard in 1872. Other vessels with the fleet or operating on the Yangzi River in 1884 included the composite sloops Chaowu and Chengqing, both built at the Foochow Navy Yard (1878 and 1880); the 2,630-ton wooden steam frigate Haian, built at the Kiangnan Arsenal in 1872; the wooden transports Yuankai and Dengyingzhou, both built at the Foochow Navy Yard (1875 and 1876); and the tiny ironclad Jinou, an experimental product of the Kiangnan Arsenal (1876) nicknamed derisively by Europeans 'the terror of the Western world'.

In July 1884, on the eve of the Sino-French War, the Nanyang fleet was reinforced by the German-built steel cruisers Nanrui and Nanchen, which sailed from Germany in March 1884.

Table 1: Composition of the Nanyang fleet, August 1884