Japanese corvette Kongō (1877)

Kongō at anchor
History
Empire of Japan
Name:	Kongō
Namesake:	Mount Kongō
Ordered:	24 September 1875
Builder:	Earle's Shipbuilding & Engineering Co., Hull, England
Laid down:	24 September 1875?
Launched:	17 April 1877
Completed:	January 1878
Reclassified:	1887 as training ship 21 March 1898 as 3rd-class coast defense ship 1906 as survey ship
Struck:	20 July 1909
Fate:	Sold for scrap, 20 May 1910
General characteristics
Class and type:	Kongō-class ironclad corvette
Displacement:	2,248 long tons (2,284 t)
Length:	220 ft (67.1 m)
Beam:	41 ft (12.5 m)
Draft:	19 ft (5.8 m)
Installed power:	2,450 ihp (1,830 kW) 6 cylindrical boilers
Propulsion:	1 shaft, 1 horizontal return connecting-rod steam engine
Sail plan:	Barque rigged
Speed:	13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph)
Range:	3,100 nmi (5,700 km; 3,600 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:	234
Armament:	3 × 172 mm (6.8 in) Krupp guns 6 × 152 mm (6.0 in) Krupp guns 2 × short 75 mm (3.0 in) guns
Armor:	Belt: 3–4.5 in (76–114 mm)

Kongō (金剛, Kongō^?) was the lead ship of the Kongō-class ironclad corvettes built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the 1870s. The class was built in the United Kingdom because such ships could not yet be constructed in Japan. Completed in 1878, Kongō briefly served with the Small Standing Fleet before becoming a training ship in 1887, thereafter making training cruises to the Mediterranean and to countries on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The ship returned to active duty during the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 where she participated in the Battle of Weihaiwei. Kongō resumed her training duties after the war, though she also played a minor role in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05. The ship was reclassified as a survey ship in 1906 and was sold for scrap in 1910.

During the brief Japanese occupation of Taiwan in 1874, tensions heightened between China and Japan, and the possibility of war impressed on the Japanese government the need to reinforce its navy. The following year the government placed an order for the armored frigate Fusō and the Kongō-class corvettes Kongō and Hiei—with British shipyards as no Japanese shipyard was able to build ships of this size. All three ships were designed by British naval architect Sir Edward Reed,

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