Name Pingyuan Completed 1890 Construction started 1 January 1883 Length 60 m | Laid down 1 January 1883 Acquired 27 July 1894 Launched 1888 | |
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Fate Captured by Japan, 1895 Name Ping Yuen Go (1895)Heien (1900) Builders Foochow Arsenal, Mawei District | ||
Heien, originally known as Pingyuan (平遠), built by the Mawei Navy Yard near Foochow (Fuzhou), was an ironclad coastal battleship serving with the Imperial Chinese Beiyang Fleet and later the Imperial Japanese Navy. Previous transliterations of its Chinese name include Ping Yuen and Ping Yuan, also of its Japanese name Heiyen.
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Beiyang Fleet
As part of the Beiyang Fleet, Pingyuan was at the Battle of the Yellow Sea/Yalu River during the First Sino-Japanese War. It was a Chinese armored cruiser built by the Mawei Navy Yard, modelled on the French Acheron-class gunboat. Pingyuan was firstly named Longwei (Chinese:龙威), and was the first Chinese-built ironclad, though some of its components were imported from abroad. Pingyuan was part of the Beiyang Fleet.
Pingyuan fought in the Battle of the Yalu River, damaging the Japanese flagship Matsushima, and was later captured as a prize of war in the siege of Weihaiwei.
Imperial Japanese Navy
After its capture in February 1895, by the Imperial Japanese Navy, Pingyuan was placed into active combat service as the Pingyuan-go on 16 March 1895 and served with the Japanese fleet through the remainder of the First Sino-Japanese War. On 21 March 1898, she was re-designated as a first-class gunboat and was officially renamed Heien in 1900 based on the Japanese language pronunciation of its original Chinese name.
During the Russo-Japanese War, Heien was assigned to the 3rd Squadron and was part of the blockading force against the Imperial Russian Navy at the Battle of Port Arthur. Heien was disabled by a naval mine at Pigeon Bay (Piegen Bay), located to the west of Port Arthur on 18 September 1904 and foundered in heavy weather later that day. It was struck from the navy list on 21 May 1905.