Chinese battleship Zhaoyuan
Zhaoyuan (Chinese: 平远; also romanized as Zhao Yuan) was a Chinese Beiyang Fleet dreadnaught battleship of the German Kaiser class. Laid down in 1910, the Zhaoyuan was launched in 1912 and completed in 1913. It was the first battleship of the Imperial Chinese Navy that was constructed in a Chinese shipyard, although not the first battleship of a Chinese design (the Weihai, completed in 1937, would hold that honor).
Background
The Zhaoyuan was, like its sister ships, ordered as the culmination of the Four Seas plan designed to give Imperial China a modern and unified navy to match her likely Russian and Japanese foes.
Zhaoyuan displaced 27,724 tons loaded and had a speed of 21 knots (39 km/h). At 12 knots (22 km/h), she had a range of around 8,000 nautical miles (14,816 km). Her armament consisted of ten 12 in (30.5 cm) guns mounted in five twin turrets (one fore, two amidships and two aft), fourteen 5.9 in (15 cm) quick-firing guns and eight 3.5 in (8.8 cm) flak guns, as well as five 19.7 in (50 cm) submerged torpedo tubes (one mounted in the bow and four placed on the broadside). Her total crew was 1,084 officers and men.
Zhaoyuan was built by the Tanggu Arsenal in Tianjin, China. The hull was laid down in April 1910, she was launched on 29 February 1913 and started her sea trials in October 1914.
Service Life
Completed just before the outbreak of the Manchurian War, the Zhaoyuan fought at the Battle of the Bohai Sea between the Beiyang Fleet and Russia's Pacific Fleet. Under the command of Admiral Zhang Zhuowen, the Zhaoyuan survived the battle and retreated to Tianjin, where it sat in harbour for the duration of the conflict, pinned in by the Russian blockade force. After the Treaty of Harbin, the officers and crew of the Zhaoyuan were instrumental in crushing the Jinse Shu (Golden Dawn) uprising lead by cadets at the Dagang Naval Academy, and then transferred their loyalty to the forces of then-General Yuan Shikai's fledgling Yu dynasty, bringing the rest of the Beiyang Fleet along in a move that proved crucial to Emperor Weitíng's eventual success over Qing loyalist forces.
At the outbreak of the Third Sino-Japanese War (or Shandong War) in the summer of 1923, the Zhaoyuan was, along with the rest of the Tianjin Squadron, heavily damaged by the Japanese attack on Tianjin. It survived the July 15 attack only to be scuttled three days later, and its flag transfered to the cruiser Gaocheng.
In 1927, the ship was raised and towed to the Shanghai Naval Museum where it currently sits as the centerpiece of the Yu Dynasty floating exhibit.
References
* Chenault, Gabrielle. Empereur Weiting et la cinquante année dynastie, Durant & Maingain, Brussels, 2008.
* Spence, David S., The Imperial Chinese Navy 1862-1966, Rutherford Publishing, London, 1969 reprinted 1998.
* Bao, Wenkai, Manzhou Zhanzheng 滿洲戰爭 (The Manchurian War), Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, 2002.
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What's the story here?
Empress Dowager Cixi is murdered in 1891, which allows the Hundred-Days Reforms to proceed. They don't bring about an immediate Meiji-scale transformation in China, but do push events down a different track. The Boxer Rebellion is dealt with earlier and with greater firmness (there's no siege of the legations and Western intervention). In 1903, there's a short Second Sino-Japanese War that ends inconclusively. This TL's WWI analogue takes place several years earlier, and doesn't end in a spasm of revolutions in Europe. The Russian and Chinese Empires go to war over Manchuria, a long and bloody conflict that ends in a Russian victory. This defeat leads to numerous provincial and religious uprisings in China. Yuan Shikai, ever the opportunist, sides with the Qing just long enough to crush his most likely rivals, and then turns on the Xuantong Emperor. The good ship Zhaoyuan, and its sisters in the Beiyang Fleet, play a major part in Yuan's victory by transporting thousands of Yuan's best troops to Tianjin, destoying Qing-held forts there, and landing the army that eventually takes Beijing.
Yuan establishes a new dynasty with an elected parliament and, briefly, Kang Youwei as Prime Minister. Yu China mirrors Warlord China of OTL, with a weak and constantly shifting central government beset and ignored by provincial warlords. The Third Sino-Japanese War is the result of a Japanese attempt to extend their influence into North China, and leads to five years of war in North China and Manchuria. Eventually, Japan withdraws in the face of domestic disapproval over the financial and human cost of a war with no clearly defined aims.
The Yu Dynasty, bolstered by the patriotic response to the Japanese invasion, gradually coopts or defeats the warlords, and limps along for another forty years. When Emperor Yuntai (OTL's Yuan Keding) dies, another revolution overthrows his ATL son and heir, ending the Yu Dynasty. Today's China is a constitutional monarchy under yet another dynasty, the name and origins of which I haven't really pondered.
Whaddaya think, sirs?