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Conflict17 September 1894

Battle of the Yalu River

Also called: Battle of the Yellow Sea

On 17 September 1894, off the mouth of the Yalu, the Japanese Combined Fleet fought the Beiyang Fleet and sank five of its ships. Japan lost none and won command of the Yellow Sea.

The Battle of the Yalu (Yellow Sea) — woodblock print by Korechika, 1894
The Battle of the Yalu (Yellow Sea) — woodblock print by Korechika, 1894

Public domain · Source

On 17 September 1894, the day after the Qing army collapsed at Pyongyang, Ding Ruchang’s Beiyang Fleet, returning from landing troops at the mouth of the Yalu, met Itō Sukeyuki’s Japanese Combined Fleet.

The Beiyang Fleet had big, heavily armoured ironclads, but the Japanese, with faster ships and quick-firing guns, circled it and poured in shells. After nearly five hours five Chinese ships had gone down, among them the Zhiyuan, whose captain Deng Shichang tried to ram an enemy cruiser and went down with his ship. Dingyuan and Zhenyuan survived hundreds of hits, but Japan lost not a single ship.

The surviving fleet withdrew via Lüshun to Weihaiwei and never sailed out to fight again, leaving Japan free to use the sea lanes of the Yellow Sea.

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States and rulers at the time
Japan · victor — Emperor Meiji
Qing · defeated — Guangxu Emperor

People

  • Ding Ruchang1836 – 1895

    commander · Admiral of the Beiyang Fleet who fought the Japanese at the Yalu in 1894 and, besieged at Weihaiwei in 1895, accepted surrender and took his own life

Before and after

Later
1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki and Triple Intervention

Themes that include this event

  • The Last Half-Century of the Qing1861 – 1901

    From the Self-Strengthening Movement to the Boxer Protocol — forty years in which a Qing China trying to learn Western technology lost to France and Japan, was carved up by the powers and saddled with indemnities it could not pay