st ships from the battle, her fighting
spirit was done for. The battleships were later destroyed by Japanese
torpedo operations after the fall of Wei-hai-wei. Her crews had on
the whole fought bravely, handicapped as they were by their poor
materials and lack of skill. For instance, when McGiffin called
for volunteers to extinguish a fire on the _Chen-yuen's_ forecastle,
swept by enemy shells, "men responded heartily and went to what
seemed to them certain death." It was at this time that the commander
himself, leading the party, was knocked over by a shell explosion
and then barely escaped the blast of one of his own 12-inch guns
by rolling through an open hatch and falling 8 feet to a pile of
debris below.

In the way of lessons, aside from the obvious ones as to the value
of training and expert leadership and the necessity of eliminating
inflammables in ship construction, the battle revealed on the one
hand the great resisting qualities of the armored ship, and on
the other hand the offensive value of superior gunfire. Admiral
Mahan said at the time that "The rapid fire gun has just now fairly
established its position as the greatest offensive weapon in naval
warfare."[1] Another authority has noted that, both at Lissa and
the Yalu, "The winning fleet was worked in divisions, as was the
British fleet in the Dutch wars and at Trafalgar, and the Japanese
fleet afterwards at Tsushima." Remarking that experiments with
this method were made by the British Channel Fleet in 1904, the
writer continues: "The conception grew out of a study of Nelson's
Memorandum. Its essence was to make the fleet flexible in the hands
of the admiral, and to enable any part to be moved by the shortest
line to the position where it was most required."[2]

[Footnote 1: LESSONS FROM THE YALU FIGHT, _Century Magazine_, August,
1895, p. 630.]

[Footnote 2: Custance, THE SHIP OF THE LINE IN BATTLE, p. 103.]

By the Treaty of Shimonoseki (April 17, 1895) which closed the war,
Japan won Port Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula, the Pescadores
Islands and Formosa, and China's withdrawal from Korea. But just as
she was about to lay hands on these generous fruits of victory,
they were snatched out of her grasp by the European powers, which
began exploiting China for themselves. Japan had to acquiesce and
bide her time, using her war indemnity and foreign loans to build
up her fleet. The Yalu thus not only marks the rise of Japan as
a formidable force