Home > Japanese battleship Kotetsu

Kotetsu (Japanese: 甲鉄, literally "Ironclad") was the first ironclad warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Built in France in 1864, and acquired from the United States in 1869, she was an ironclad ram warship. She had a decisive role in the Naval Battle of Hakodate in May–June 1869, which marked the end of the Boshin War, and the complete establishement of the Meiji RestorationThe Meiji Restoration (; Meiji Ishin , also known as the Meiji Ishin Meiji Revolution or Renewal describes a chain of events that led to a change in Japan's political and social structure; it occurred from 1866 to 1869, a period of 4 years that transverse.

Kotetsu was well-armed with casemated rotating turret guns and well-amoured, and considered a "formidable" and "unsinkable" ship in her time. She could sustain direct hits without her armour being pierced, and prevail against any wooden warship.

In effect, JapanJapan (, Nippon/Nihon literally "the origin of the sun") is a country in East Asia situated on a chain of islands east of the Asian continent on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. The largest of these islands are, from north to south, Hokkaido , Honsh was thus equipped with advanced ironclad warships only ten years after the launch of the first ocean-going ironclad warship in history, the French Navy's La Gloire ("Glory", launched in 1859).

1 Origins

Kotetsu was originally CSS Stonewall, built in Bordeaux, France, for the Confederate Navy. The French government prohibited the ship from being sold to the Confederacy, and instead arranged for it to be sold to Denmark. The deal never happened, and the manufacturer of Stonewall eventually secretly resold her to the Confederacy.

After an eventful crossing of the Atlantic, she eventually arrived in the United States after the end of the American Civil War, and sold two years later to the Japanese Tokugawa Shogunate.