Battle of the Yalu River

The two fleets met on 17 September 1894 while covering troop movements near the Korean border, in the first fleet action fought between squadrons of modern steel warships. The Beiyang Fleet had the two heaviest ships present and almost nothing else: its quick-firing guns were few, its shells were in short supply and some were reportedly filled with cement, and its line broke apart under the Japanese cruisers' rate of fire. The two battleships absorbed hundreds of hits and could not be sunk, which was the one Chinese success of the day. Five Chinese ships were lost and the fleet withdrew to Weihaiwei, where it was destroyed at anchor the following February. Navies everywhere read the result as proof that rate of fire mattered more than armour, and rebuilt accordingly.

The battle was studied around the world within months and is the origin of the quick-firing gun's dominance in pre-dreadnought design, so its influence on naval architecture is out of all proportion to its scale. Chinese accounts long explained the defeat through Qing corruption, the diverted naval budget and the defective ammunition, and while the shortage of shells is well evidenced, recent work has moderated the more lurid claims and put more weight on gunnery training and on a formation that played to Japanese strengths. Deng Shichang, who commanded the Zhiyuan and went down with her, became and remains a national martyr, with the details of his death partly traditional. Underwater survey of the Yellow Sea battle sites from 2014 onward has located and partly excavated several of the lost ships, which is turning a heavily mythologised battle into an archaeological one.