Chinese torpedo boat Fulong

She left for China in June 1886, sailing from Germany to Fuzhou, China, under her own power and was assigned to the Beiyang Fleet.[3] Fulong was involved in two battles of the First Sino-Japanese War. At the Battle of the Yalu River on 17 September 1894, Fulong arrived as part of a relief force for the Chinese forces, alongside the gunboats Pingyuan and Guangbing, and fellow torpedo boat Zuo 1. They approached to the north of the engaged Chinese and Japanese fleets, preventing a flying wing of Japanese ships from encircling the opposition fleet. The group remained together, with the Japanese forces attempting to avoid them, instead targeting the ships of the main force.[5]

The group engaged the rear of the Japanese fleet, with Fulong firing three torpedoes at the converted merchantman Saikyo Maru, including one which passed under the ship. Saikyo Maru was carrying the Chief of Navy General Staff, Vice Admiral Kabayama Sukenori. After several hours of battle, with dusk approaching, the Japanese fleet turned their main attention to Pingyuan and her escorts, but as darkness fell, the Japanese withdrew due to the risk of torpedo attack from Fulong and Zuo 1 with no torpedo boats of their own able to act in defence. The combined Chinese fleet sailed into Port Arthur to assess the damage inflicted.[6]

At the start of the following year,[7] Fulong under the command of Captain Zai Tingan,[8] was among several ships at Weihai in the Battle of Weihaiwei. The Chinese fleet was blockaded in the harbour by the Japanese Combined Fleet, with night time raids by Japanese torpedo boats sinking and damaging Chinese vessels.[7] No retaliatory attacks were ordered using the several Chinese torpedo boats in the harbour,[9] and their first involvement in the battle was when they attempted to flee en masse through the Japanese blockade on 7 February.[9][8]

Several were sunk or captured with a total of 13 torpedo boats lost by China in this single engagement;[8][1] Fulong is thought to have been one of two boats which were pursued by the Japanese cruisers Yoshino and Takachicho.[9] It managed to beach itself at Yantai, with the crew abandoning ship.[10] Fulong was captured and towed by to the Japanese fleet by one of their torpedo boats during the following day.[9] It remains in doubt whether the Chinese torpedo boats were ordered to flee by Admiral Ding Ruchang, the commanding officer of the ships at Weihaiwei. A memorial following the battle stated that those on the torpedo boats had run away from battle, and if any members of their crews were found, they should be summary decapitated. However, this command must not have been fully carried out, since Captain Zai was promoted several years later to Vice-Admiral.[8]

Fulong was renamed Fukuryū in Japanese service,[11] and was one of several vessels captured during the First Sino-Japanese War inducted into the Imperial Japanese Navy.[12] Prior to the Russo-Japanese War, she was included in the fifth torpedo boat division alongside three numbered boats.[13] She was stricken from the Navy List in 1908, and subsequently broken up.[11]