Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun by Harry Collingwood

I happened upon the book during a downloading spree from Project Gutenburg last

year. It appealed to my interest in modern Chinese history and especially events

after the Opium Wars as one thing led to another and finally to my ancestors and

thereby became personal. The 1905 Russo-Japanese war was the first win to an

Asian power, and it was fought at Port Arthur, the Liaodong Peninsula, and the

Yellow Sea. As I only read ebooks on the train, it took months to finish.

 

Midshipman Paul Swinburne, wrongfully dismissed from the battleship H.M.S.

Terrible, joined the Japanese navy on their way to fight the Russians. First

they tried to engage the Russian battleships and then blockade Port Arthur, 

which was protected by batteries on the headlands. The navy (and Swinburne

personally) later aided the army in storming the strategic Nanshan Heights. Port 

Arthur fell after the its fleet and the Vladivostock fleet were crushed at the

Yellow Sea. The story ended with Russian Baltic fleet which came half a globe

destroyed at the Korean Strait.

 

As the captain of the destroyer Kasanumi and later the armored cruiser Yakumo,

Swinburne distinguished himself by a series of brave and successful ventures in

major battles and recovered from two near fatal injuries.

 

Swinburne was impressed by the courage and intense patriotism of the Japanese.

He observed "To die for his Emperor, indeed, who is to him as a god, is the very

highest honour, the greatest glory, that the male Japanese can look forward to.

He faces such a death with the same pure joy, the same exaltation, that the 

early Christian martyrs displayed when they were led forth to die for their 

faith. It was this spirit, this eagerness, this enthusiasm to die in battle,

that caused the enormous losses suffered by the Japanese during the war; but it

made them invincible!" (p82)

 

Apparently, there were foreigners in the Japanese navy as both the Engineer

Commanders of the cruisers Yakumo and Asama were Scots(p336). It sounds possible

but I would imagine they were techies. On the other hand, I very much doubt

at the turn of the 20th century, a 19-year-old English sailor could, after a

couple of months of dabbling in the language, just show up in Tokyo and be given

command of a Japanese destroyer.

 

The plot is straightforward and in line with the historical events and

Collingwood's narrative charms with a rich nautical lingo. Here is a taste of

his writing: "Meanwhile, the glass was falling, great masses of cloud came 

driving up from the eastward, and a little breeze from the same quarter sprang

up, rapidly freshening and knocking up a sea which soon set even our battleships

rolling and pitching ponderously." (p327)