Name Kotaka Laid down 1887 Commissioned 19 August 1890 Length 50 m Draft 1.7 m | Ordered 1885 Completed 10 October 1888 Decommissioned 1 April 1908 Construction started 1887 Builder Yarrow Shipbuilders | |
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Kotaka was a torpedo boat of the Imperial Japanese Navy. She was ordered in 1885 from the shipbuilder Yarrows in London, Great Britain, where she was built in parts along Japanese specifications, and then assembled in Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, Japan.
She participated in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905). She was decommissioned on 1 April 1908, to become a training ship. She was retired on 1 March 1916, but again reactivated in 1917, ending her career in January 1927.
When launched in 1888, Kotaka, at 203 tons, was the largest torpedo boat in the world, and "was the forerunner of torpedo-boat destroyers that appeared a decade later". She was armed with four 1-pounder (37 mm) quick-firing guns and six torpedo tubes. In the following years, the Imperial Japanese Navy equipped itself with much smaller torpedo boats of French design, but in her trials in 1899, Kotaka demonstrated that she could go beyond a role of coastal defense, and was capable of following larger ships on the high seas. The British shipbuilder Yarrow "considered Japan to have effectively invented the destroyer".
In 1904, Kotaka was experimentally refitted with a mixed oil and coal engine, instead of her original coal-only propulsion.