Postwar Development
The loss of Yuyuan and Chengqing in February 1885 eroded the Nanyang Fleet's advantage over the Northern Seas Fleet (Beiyang Fleet). During the following decade the Nanyang fleet gradually lost its primacy, as Li Hongzhang invested heavily in the Beiyang Fleet. By 1894, on the eve of the Sino-Japanese War, the Beiyang Fleet had a comfortable superiority over the Nanyang Fleet both in numbers of ships and quality.
Nevertheless, the Nanyang fleet continued to acquire new ships after the Sino-French War, some of reasonable quality. The first of the new ships was the steel cruiser Baomin, completed at the Kiangnan Arsenal in 1885. The next additions were the composite cruisers Jingqing and Huantai, both products of the Foochow Navy Yard (1886 and 1887).
Table 2: Additions to the Nanyang fleet, 1885–94
| Name (pinyin) | Name (Wade Giles) |
Characters | Description | Construction | Specifications |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Baomin | Pao-min | 保民 | steel cruiser | 1885, Kiangnan Dockyard | 1,477 tons, 16 knots, two 200-lb and six 70-lb guns |
| Jingqing | Ching-ch'ing | 靖清 | composite cruiser | 1886, Foochow Navy Yard | 1,477 tons, 15 knots, two 15-cm and five 12-cm Krupp cannon |
| Huantai | Huan-t'ai | 寰泰 | composite cruiser | 1887, Foochow Navy Yard | 1,477 tons, 15 knots, two 15-cm and five 12-cm Krupp cannon |
Read more about this topic: Nanyang Fleet
Famous quotes containing the words postwar and/or development:
“Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as the special responsibility of mothers ... any shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.”
—Sylvia Ann Hewitt (20th century)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)