Taku Forts May-June 1900



May 1900


The Allied naval forces were off Tsientsin
Senior naval commander was Admiral Sir Edward Seymour (British)
17 warships off the Taku Bar (sandbank I presume) -
including U.S. light cruiser Newark
plus British , French , German , Japanese , Austrian , Italian and Russian vessels

The international squadron appears to have been formed of the following ships :-

Russian
    Sissoi Veliki (battleship)
    Rossiya (armoured cruiser) - Flag
    Giliak (gunboat)
    Bobr (gunboat)
    Korietz (gunboat)
    ?? Gaidamak (small cruiser)
Bobr Giliak Korietz

British
German
French Japanese American Italian Austrian ( ? )
Note - other warships were coming and going in later weeks ; these included the British cruiser Terrible which arrived from Hong Kong carrying soldiers of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and Royal Engineers.

June 1900


The international fleet anchored off Tsientsin was cut off from the landing parties they had despatched inland .

A diagram showing the disposition of the international warships off Taku in June 1900

Admiral Seymour's force (on land) was bottled up at Yangtsun
A 30 mile stretch of railroad separated the mouth of the Pei Ho (guarded by the Taku Forts) and Tsientsin where 2400 troops were protecting the Foreign Settlement .

Thus , Chinese forces were intersposed
- at Taku
- around Tsientsin
- around Yangtsun
between the warships and their auxilaries ashore


June 16th

A conference was held on the Russian flagship (this appears to have been the armoured cruiser Rossiya , although the battleship Sissoi Veliki was also with the international fleet. It is not clear whether Rossiya was flagship of the entire Russian force in the Far East or just of the ships forming part of the Allied squadron , nor do I know why the conference was held on board the Russian flagship rather than any other ~ was she somehow seen as the international flagship ? This seems unlikely ...)
This was attended by all the allied commanders except the American (presumably , therefore , present were the British , French , German , Japanese , Italian and of course the Russian commanders)

Re the Americans , it appears that the only vessel there at this time was
the U.S.S. Monocacy -
a side-wheeler gunboat (paddle-steamer I suppose)
built during the Civil War (i.e. 1860s)
resembled a Staten Island ferry (not that I've seen one !)

The ranking officer on the scene was Rear Admiral Louis Kempff .
He had his hands tied by a U.S. government directive stating that he was not authorised to engage in hostile acts against the Chinese .
Indeed , several days earlier , he had been criticised for co-operating with Allied commanders at Tsientsin by his superior , Admiral George C. Remey , commander of the Asiatic Station , then on his flagship (what ?) at Manila .

The allied commanders discussed seizing the Taku forts .
They decided to present the Chinese authorities with an ultimatum demanding the surrender of the Taku Forts .

The allied force that could be assembled to attack and land troops consisted of a mixed-bag of 9 shallow-draft warships , viz -
British sloop Algerine
British destroyers Fame and Whiting
German sloop Iltis
Russian gunboats Gilyak , Bobr and Korietz
French gunboat Lion
Japanese ironclad (?armourclad) Atago

The bombarding ships move into the PeiHo river

There were 4 Taku Forts :-
These were low-profiled
They were flat-topped against the tidal flats (mud flats I guess)
There were two on each bank of the mouth of the Pei Ho
Foreign engineers had supervised reconstruction in recent years
They had been outfitted with new rapid-fire Krupp cannon of heavy calibre

Most of the allied ships were lightly armoured and equipped with obselete guns
but they were the only elements of the fleet capable of approaching that close to the Taku Forts ; the heavier warships could not negotiate the Taku Bar .
(This point is made with relation to the fact that they were going to put down landing parties to seize the forts , but here and in what happened on the next day it would seem that they were the only ships engaged against the forts .
There certainly does not seem to have been any bombardment at a time prior to this , and there is no mention of heavier warships bombarding the forts from a distance whilst the nine shallow-draft vessels went close up to do so...)

The allied ultimatum was ignored
The nine-ship flotilla moved in for the assault 50 minutes after Midnight , June 17th

Six hours of desultory bombardment followed
It began when the Gilyak switched on her new searchlight and made herself a splendid target for the shore batteries (!)

BUT The Chinese gunners had been inadequately trained and did little damage to the warships

Damage to the bombarding light ships

1. Bobr. Hits received - 1 (a fragment) No casualties
2. Korietz. Hits received - 6. Killed: 2 officers, 8 men, wounded: 21
3. Giliak. Hits received - 3. Killed: 8 men.Wounded: 2 officers, 45 men
4. Lion. Hits received - 3. Wounded: 3 men
5. Algerine. Hits received - 5. Wounded: 2 officers, 7 men
6. Iltis. Hits received - 16. Killed: 2 officers (incl. commander), 4 men. Wounded: 14 men
7. Whiting . Hits received - 1 (no casualties)

The Japanese armourclad Atago off the Taku Forts

At 3 a.m. the warships were close-in enough to put landing parties ashore
Sailors from the various nations with fixed bayonets poured across the mudflats

The bombardment continued
Dawn's light improved allied accuracy
The powder magazines of two of the forts were blown up

Two forts were stormed and taken (it doesn't say whether it was these two , the other two or one of each)
The others ran up the white flag (literally ?)

A view of the Taku forts

By breakfast time the fleet had secured a resounding victory at the relatively minor cost of 172 casualties (presumably this figure conflates the killed and the wounded)

Alternatively (as in all historical research I have differing statistics !)
TOTAL LOSS OF LIFE OF THE ALLIES (including landing forces)
: Wounded and killed - 9 officers and 129 men.
Chinese losses: no exact figure available, c.- 600 - 800 men.

Results



The Taku Forts were the key to the strategic operation
- they had to be annihilated before the large-scale operations required to rescue the foreign colonies of Tientsin and Peking could be undertaken .

Now the international fleet had the necessary beach head over which reinforcements and supplies coming from all quarters of the globe could be pumped in
(Note ; 'all quarters' would include Australia where the Royal Victoria Navy sent a naval detachment ; Australia was yet to become the Commonwealth of Australia (I think !))

Now operations to lift the siege of Tsientsin could begin . . .


Main source - 'The Boxer Rebellion' by Richard O'Connor
Additional information from Igor Sarmentov