IJN Foo-so

[qprdave]

Launching of IJN Foo-so

Published in The Times on 16th April 1877

[John Odom]

Interesting how the romanization of the Japanese names has changed. Foo-so vs Fuso for the later ship. I am sure they are writen with the same Kanji.

[qprdave]

Whats Kanji, John? (Excuse my ignorance!)

[Tiornu]

The Hepburn system of transliteration (which we are most familiar with) was not formalized until about ten years after this article. Japan officially switched from Hepburn to Kunrei in 1937, but the Hepburn system became standard again after the war. This makes wartime intelligence reports a bit of a challenge since they refer to ships such as Mutu (Mutsu), Tokai (Chokai), and Huso (Fuso...or Foo-so). The Japanese script didn't change over this time (that I'm aware of), but the transliteration did. Even nowadays things are fluid, and experts disagree on when to insert hyphens, whether to use carets or tremas, and certain vowel renderings (which is why you may see the light cruiser referred to as either Oi or Ooi).

[John Odom]

The Kanji is the Japanese character for a word. There are thousands of them, but about 500 of them memorized will get the majority of needs. They were derived from Chinese characters, but are subtly different.

As Tiornu pointed out there are more than one system for representing the sounds of the Japanese word in Roman letters, called Romanji by the Japanese.

We see big changes in the way Chinese geographical names are given in roman letters from pre-war to post-war. Nanking vs Nanjing etc.

[astraltrader]

I think this is the Foo-so mentioned in Daves article.

[Don Boyer]

Our "newsman" is really finding the great articles lately.

Fuso, built by Samuda Brothers, Poplar, was the first armored ship built in England for the Japanese navy. Launched 14 April 1877 and completed in January of 1878, the ship was originally barque-rigged and was designed by Sir Edward Reed, being a smaller edition of the contemporary Iron Duke type at about 220 feet between perpendiculars with a beam of 48 feet. She had a 9" belt with 8" around the casemates, displacing around 3700 tons and originally carrying 4 9.4" Krupp breech-loaders and 2 6.7" breech loaders.

Around 1894 the ship was rebuilt in Japan, losing her barque rig and mainmast, replaced by the typical pair of "military masts" of the day. She was re-armed at this time with newer types of gun, in this case 8 6" 50 caliber quick-firers and several machine guns. She also had 2 18" above water torpedo mounts added. Her displacement had increased to about 3800 tons full load.

Fuso served in the Sino-Japanese war, being lightly damaged in the major battle of the Yalu River on 17 September 1894. She collided with the cruiser Matsushima in October of 1897 and ran aground on Shikoku but was refloated and repaired by 1900. At the same time her armament was again changed, the 9.4" guns being removed and replaced with 6" 50 caliber weapons, 4 4.7" and 11 3pdrs. Another above water torpedo tube was also added. By 1903 Fuso was way past being a first-line vessel, being relegated to the coast defense role until stricken in 1908. She was scrapped in 1910.

Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy gives her stats as having 3900 hp horizontal Penn trunk engines driving two screws at around 13 knots max. Just for fun, I checked the 1898 Jane's Fighting Ships, and found Fuso to be the only ship in the "Japon" section not graced with one of Fred Jane's sketches, apparently because she was wrecked in 1897 and it wasn't certain she'd be refloated and repaired.