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Kongō-class ironclad
The were a pair of armored corvettes built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) by British shipyards in the 1870s. A British offer to purchase the two ships during the Russo-Turkish War in 1878 was refused. They became training ships in 1887 and made training cruises to the Mediterranean and to countries on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The ships returned to active duty during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 where one participated in the Battle of the Yalu River and both in the Battle of Weihaiwei. The ''Kongō''-class ships resumed their training duties after the war, although they played a minor role in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. They were reclassified as survey ships in 1906 and were sold for scrap in 1910 and 1912.
==Background==
Tensions between Japan and China heightened after the former launched its punitive expedition against Taiwan in May 1874 in retaliation of the murder of a number of shipwrecked sailors by the Paiwan aborigines. China inquired into the possibility of buying ironclad warships from Great Britain and Japan was already negotiating with the Brazilian government about the purchase of the ironclad ''Independencia'' then under construction in Britain. The Japanese terminated the negotiations with the Brazilians in October after the ship was badly damaged upon launching and the expeditionary force was about to withdraw from Taiwan. The crisis illustrated the need to reinforce the IJN and a budget request was submitted that same month by Acting Navy Minister Kawamura Sumiyoshi for ¥3.9–4.2 million to purchase three warships from abroad.〔Lengerer, Pt. I, pp. 40–41〕 No Japanese shipyard was able to build ships of this size so they were ordered from Great Britain.〔Evans & Peattie, pp. 13–14〕 This was rejected as too expensive and a revised request of ¥2.3 million was approved later that month. Nothing was done until March 1875 when Kawamura proposed to buy one ironclad for half of the money authorized and use the rest for shipbuilding and gun production at the Yokosuka Shipyard. No response was made by the Prime Minister's office before the proposal was revised to use all of the allocated money to buy three ships, one armored frigate and two armored corvettes of composite construction to be designed by the prominent British naval architect Sir Edward Reed, formerly the Chief Constructor of the Royal Navy. Reed would also supervise the construction of the ships for an honorarium of five percent of the construction cost. The Prime Minister's office approved the revised proposal on 2 May and notified the Japanese consul, Ueno Kagenori, that navy officers would be visiting to negotiate the contract with Reed.〔Lengerer, Pt. I, pp. 41–42〕
Commander Matsumura Junzō arrived in London on 21 July and gave Reed the specifications for the ships. Reed responded on 3 September with an offer, excluding armament, that exceeded the amount allocated in the budget. Ueno signed the contracts for all three ships on 24 September despite this problem because Reed was scheduled to depart for a trip to Russia and the matter had to be concluded before his departure. Ueno had informed the Navy Ministry about the costs before signing, but Kawamura's response to postpone the order for the armored frigate did not arrive until 8 October. The totals for all three contracts came to £433,850 or ¥2,231,563 and did not include the armament. These were ordered from Krupp with a 50 percent down payment of £24,978. The government struggled to provide the necessary money even though the additional expenses had been approved by the Prime Minister's office on 5 June 1876, especially as more money was necessary to fully equip the ships for sea and to provision them for the delivery voyage to Japan.〔Lengerer, Pt. I, pp. 43–46〕
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