Admiral Togo Read online

  Tōgō would get new orders in the spring. He and the rest of the crew of the Kasuga were to head north once more, to rendezvous with a fleet of four armoured transports and three other battleships to prepare for an assault on Ezo. The Kasuga, however, was no longer the star of the Imperial fleet. In February 1869, the Emperor’s faction had taken delivery of a new vessel, bought from the American government. The new flagship was an ugly metal beast, two-masted but with a tall funnel amidships as an exhaust for her twin steam engines and a prow dominated by an ominous ram. She was armour-plated all over. Built in France, she had been purchased by the Confederate States during the American Civil War, which was all but over by the time she arrived. The USA had been all too happy to offload the unwanted vessel on the Japanese, who renamed her from css Stonewall Jackson to the altogether more descriptive Kōtetsu: ‘Ironclad’.3

  The name alone was enough to worry the Republic’s officers. The French hatched a plan to deal a double blow to the Imperial forces, planning to steal her and turn her against her Imperial masters. Henri Nicol, a native of Bordeaux, revealed that he had actually seen the Kōtetsu being built. He felt that he knew the ship’s lines rather well, and found it ludicrous that the Japanese were discussing her as if she were a doomsday device, when to him she had been yet another vessel in a dry dock. The Kōtetsu, argued Nicol, was merely a military tool, and one that the Republic of Ezo could regain for its own uses.

  ‘After many reports,’ wrote his fellow plotter Eugène Collache, ‘and considering what we know of the usual negligence of the Japanese, we could hope that our enemies would drop their guard. We discussed the fact that if we did not maintain the element of surprise – that is to say, to go on the offensive – then all that would be left to us would be a defensive role.’4

  Nicol told the assembled officers about the ironclad, which was something of a sore point with the Tokugawa men, as the Kōtetsu had originally been ordered and paid for by the Shōgun, but had fallen into Imperial hands on her delivery. Fellow Frenchmen Jean Marlin and Arthur Fortant also agreed that the time to strike was now, before the Imperial vessels reached Hakodate. The most vital support, however, had come from Arai Ikunosuke, the Navy Minister of the Republic, who was eager for action and had found willing accomplices in the form of the Shinsengumi, a body of hardline samurai who had left many dead on the battlefields of 1868.

  ‘It was decided,’ wrote Collache, ‘to embark upon each ship a certain number of soldiers from the land army, who, with their terrible sabres, would make excellent boarders. We were counting largely on boarding, for which our men had been actively practising, in the hope that we could acquire enemy vessels.’5

  Jules Brunet enthusiastically gave his blessing to the enterprise, ‘but we had not counted on the immense arrogance of the Admiral [Enomoto]. Affronted at not having been consulted, he searched for every sort of pretext to delay our departure’, and was only talked around by a grave conference with Brunet himself.6

  If the French had their way, they would have attacked the Imperial vessels a day earlier, but bad weather and broken machinery delayed their progress. Collache’s vessel, the Takao, developed engine trouble en route and the Ezo flotilla was forced to drop anchor for repairs. It was there, in a secluded bay north of Miyako, that the Ezo men first used a false flag, running up American and Russian colours in an attempt to hide their true identity from observers. Instead, the sight of ‘barbarian’ vessels soon attracted a number of local Japanese, keen to get their first sight of white men.

  The locals were open-mouthed with surprise when they neared the Ezo vessels and realised what they really were. Believing themselves to have found kindred spirits, the Ezo crew explained their mission. Collache was already nervous at the risk of discovery, and demanded hostages be put aboard the Kaiten in order to prevent the locals selling news of his plans to his enemies.

  The Ezo fleet got underway again, armed with new intelligence that the Imperial fleet was indeed in nearby Miyako Bay. However, the Takao’s engines continued to give trouble, causing Collache to drop further behind the Kaiten until the lead vessel was barely a speck on the horizon. Reduced to a crawl of three knots, Collache was forced to chug slowly towards Miyako, even as the first signs of battle erupted in the distance.

  It was daybreak on the morning of 6 May 1869. Some of the Imperial sailors were ashore at Miyako, but not Tōgō, who was aboard the Kasuga with his gun crew. He was, therefore, awake in time to see the approach of two unknown ships. The foremost was flying the Stars and Stripes. Some distance behind her, a second warship was flying the Russian ensign. The ‘American’ ship was actually the Kaiten, whose complement included Henri Nicol and the suicidally heroic samurai of the Shinsengumi. However, the Kaiten was not immediately recognisable, even to those such as Tōgō who had seen her before, as two of her three masts had been lost in a storm, radically changing the shape she presented to observers. After the choppy waters of the previous night, the sea was once again calm, and a bright spring sun turned the polished steel and brass of swords and machinery into dazzling sparkles of light.

  As the ‘American’ ship came perilously close to the Kōtetsu, she ran down her US flag and replaced it with the chrysanthemum and star of the Republic of Ezo. Before any of the Imperial sailors had time to register the implications, the Kaiten rammed into the Kōtetsu and discharged her guns right into the unsuspecting sailors on deck.

  Now was the time for the Shinsengumi to board the ship, swords in hand. However, Henri Nicol’s role as adviser and expert, while well intentioned, had failed to inform the would-be hijackers of the relative height differences between the two ships. The squat, low Kōtetsu only had a forecastle and stern at a height that matched that of the decks of the Kaiten. As a paddle steamer with bulky wheels at her sides, the Kaiten could not come directly alongside, but was instead forced to ram the Kōtetsu at an angle. At the single place where the prow of the Kaiten touched the hull of the Kōtetsu, the Kaiten loomed over her prey by a difference of three metres.

  This was a major flaw in Nicol’s plan, which required the samurai of the Shinsengumi to leap over the gunwhales like a swarm of old-fashioned pirates. Instead, their approach was considerably slowed. They had to queue to get into the limited platform afforded by the prow, and even then were only able to drop, roll and swing onto the ironclad in ones and twos.7

  This delay proved fatal. Crewmen on the Kōtetsu swiftly manned the ironclad’s deck-mounted Gatling gun, and opened fire on the samurai. Meanwhile, the other Imperial ships began to draw close, threatening to block off the Kaiten’s escape. Tōgō and his fellow sailors on the Kasuga did not dare fire the ship’s main guns. Instead, they snatched up rifles and pistols, taking aim at specific enemy officers on the Kaiten. Uniformed officers were particularly obvious targets, and the Kaiten’s Captain Kōga Kengo was hit in the right arm and left leg. Even as he tried to rally his men, a third bullet hit him in the throat, and he fell silent to the deck. The onslaught made similarly swift work of the swordsmen, leaving the Kōtetsu’s crewmen free to turn their machine gun on the Kaiten itself. Taking charge, Arai Ikunosuke successfully steered the Kaiten out of direct contact and steamed for safety.

  Out in the open sea, Eugène Collache was entirely in the dark. The smoke from the initial exchange had swiftly obscured his view of developments, and he was forced to listen to the booms and bangs for twenty minutes, with no clue of who was winning.

  ‘My men and I,’ he wrote, ‘were in a state of over-excitement that was easy to understand. The battle was on, barely a few hundred metres away, and we could not see a thing. The battle was on, and we were not even there!’8

  The first indication that Collache had of events came with the sudden appearance of the Kaiten, powering out of the smoke and running for the north at full speed. Collache frantically signalled for information, but the only clue he had was the thick, black cloud vomiting from the Kaiten’s smokestack. The Kaiten’s boilers were at full power, and she was r
unning away. When even a cannon shot failed to attract the Kaiten’s attention, Collache swung his ship to starboard and began to slowly steam after her, although the Kaiten was already travelling four times as fast as the jury-rigged Takao.

  The confused Collache had only just completed his turn when he saw why the Kaiten was running. Barely a minute behind the fleeing ship came the Imperial fleet, in full battle array, with the ironclad Kōtetsu in the lead. The Kasuga, with Tōgō aboard, was right behind her. The Kōtetsu rammed into Collache’s ship without even stopping, shoving the Takao aside in her pursuit of the Kaiten. While Collache frantically tried to regain control of his ship and stay on his feet, the Imperial vessels disdainfully ignored him in their eagerness to run down the great prize.

  The Kaiten, however, her boilers at full power, successfully made it out to sea and out of range. With her fires fully stoked, she was easily able to reach her top speed, while the Imperial ships, who seem to have had to raise steam while under attack, were still relatively slow. Within half an hour, it was clear that the Kaiten would get away. The Imperial ships broke off pursuit and turned back towards Miyako, intent on dealing with the Takao.

  Realising that he had no chance of getting away, Collache resolved to run his ship aground and blow her up. He beached the Takao in shallow waters and tried to organise an orderly abandonment that moved essential supplies off the ship. ‘Unfortunately,’ he observed, ‘the Japanese didn’t have any biscuits.’9 This bizarre comment, in the midst of a chaotic evacuation, was based on the realisation that the only food aboard ship came in the form of large sacks of rice, which were nowhere near as portable as standard naval provisions. In the midst of unloading, the beached Takao suddenly listed dangerously to one side, pitching men and materials into the water and causing Collache’s inexperienced men to panic.

  It took Collache 30 minutes to evacuate the Takao. Collache himself was the last to leave, and lit a fuse that ran into all the remaining powder in the ship’s magazine. As he and his men picked their way across the rocks towards the shore, they suddenly heard the sound of guns. The Kasuga and the Kōtetsu had returned. As Collache and his seventy men scrambled for safety under fire, the Takao exploded in a massive column of fire and smoke.

  The Battle of Miyako Bay was a relatively minor incident in the Boshin War, but left a deep impression on its participants. ‘The fight at Miyako,’ observed one sailor from the Kaiten, ‘deserved special mention in the history of naval warfare on account of the fine abordage, by which the two forces fought at close quarters as if they were on land. Such fighting was resorted to in Nelson’s time; but nowadays with the navies so highly developed, such fighting never takes place, and this fight at Miyako has probably never since had a parallel.’10

  Tōgō himself was left in awe at the audacity of his enemies, in the pragmatism that led them to attack a vessel with swords instead of cannon and the suicidal bravery of the samurai on the decks of the ironclad. However, he regarded swordsmanship as a doomed art; he remained sure that gunnery was the future. ‘The days of boarding are over,’ he observed, ‘and in the future naval actions must be fought at distant ranges.’11 None of the sixteen enemy swordsmen who reached the deck of the Kōtetsu left it alive, but were it not for the Gatling gun and the bad luck that kept Collache out of action, the battle might have swiftly turned in the Republic’s favour. Collache later voiced his suspicion that news of his plot had already reached the Imperial vessels and that they were effectively planning a surprise attack of their own. But surely the Imperial vessels would not have allowed the Kaiten to get close enough to ram the Kōtetsu if they already knew of the plot. Instead, it seems more likely that the Imperial forces gained the upper hand through a simpler means. Whereas Collache had scoffed days earlier at the ‘usual negligence of the Japanese’, the men of the Imperial fleet had remained calm under fire and had been diligently able to repel boarders and initiate a counter-attack, despite the surprise assault. Collache would later speculate that the Imperial forces had been forewarned, but if that were the case, surely the Kōtetsu and Kasuga could have easily matched speeds with the fleeing Kaiten. Instead, it seems that the Imperial forces had staved off disaster through the priceless virtue of remaining calm under fire. Such an achievement makes the Battle of Miyako Bay another first for the Japanese navy – a skirmish won by discipline and training.

  Tōgō next saw action in late May.12 The war was now taken to the Republic of Ezo itself, and the main function of the Imperial fleet was to guard and transport the soldiers required for a land-based assault. The Kasuga and Kōtetsu were charged with testing the resolve of the coastal forts at the southern tip of Ezo. After supervising the landing of several thousand Imperial troops, the Kasuga experimentally fired upon the coastal fort at Esashi, but found it to be deserted. Instead, the rebels had fled to the nearby town of Matsumae, upon which the Imperial forces closed from two sides. Tōgō played an active part in the battle that ensued, ordered by Captain Akatsuka to fire upon the rebel forces as they came out of Matsumae Castle and during their eventual retreat. As the light faded, Captain Akatsuka peered through his binoculars and announced that he was unable to tell whose troops were where. Accordingly, he called off the bombardment, unwilling to order the Kasuga’s gunners to fire on what might be friendly forces.

  On the night of 28 May, Tōgō was given his first brief and rather humble independent command, sent in a rowing boat with his friend Ijichi to assess the progress of the land battle. Tōgō and Ijichi stealthily approached the shoreline in the twilight, wary of any Ezo soldiers that might be lurking in the trees near the shoreline. Instead, they found the coastal road deserted, and the first men they encountered were fellow Imperial troops. Tōgō returned to the Kasuga and reported that the quiet ashore was not a sign of trouble, but a sign of victory. Matsumae was in Imperial hands and the Ezo rebels had fled further up the coast.13

  With 7,000 Imperial troops safely landed near Hakodate, the Emperor’s forces were closing in on the Republic of Ezo. The last battle would be fought, as both sides had known all along, over the town of Hakodate and its massive star-shaped fortress of Goryōkaku – ‘The Pentagon’. The Kasuga was one of four Imperial ships that approached Hakodate harbour. Before the harbour was even clearly in view, Tōgō saw the columns of smoke from vessels sent to hold them off. The Republic’s fleet had once comprised more ships, but the steady attrition of fighting had worn them down. Several had been sunk by storms and enemy action, and others had fallen into enemy hands. The ‘fleet’ of the Republic, such as it was, now comprised three ships. The lead vessel was the same Kaiten that had rammed the Imperial ironclad at Miyako. She immediately opened fire, perhaps in the hope of a lucky shot. Tōgō was ordered to reply in kind, and the ships’ guns were soon booming across Hakodate bay, with little obvious success. Suddenly, the three Ezo ships turned and ran back for the harbour. Presuming that they feared to engage any closer with forces that clearly outnumbered them, the Imperial ships chased after them, into the harbour of Hakodate itself.

  But the Republicans’ apparent retreat was a trap. Older maps of the Hakodate area would have shown a shrine to Benten, the goddess of fortune, on top of the hill that guarded the entrance to Hakodate harbour. However, the shrine had been repurposed in 1866, and was now Benten Fort. The fort’s soldiers had obediently bided their time while the three Republic vessels lured the Imperial ships towards Hakodate harbour. As soon as the Imperial ships were bunched together at the harbour entrance, the guns of Benten Fort opened up. Only luck saved the Imperial forces, which were forced to turn and run out of harm’s way. In successive days, however, the Imperial fleet wore away at the Republic’s last remaining ships. The Chiyoda ran aground and was captured. The Kaiten was heavily damaged by Imperial gunners and put out of action. The last stand came from the Banryū, ‘Restrained Dragon’, which charged directly into the fray in a doomed assault. A lucky shot from the Banryū blew up the magazine of one of the Imperial ships, sinking her with
the loss of seventy-six lives. But the Banryū was so badly damaged by her efforts that she, too, was sinking.14

  With the last remnants of the fleet gone, both land and sea belonged to the Imperial forces. Goryōkaku held out for a few more days, but was cut off from all supplies. Even the Shinsengumi fanatics in Benten Fort, sworn to commit suicide rather than face surrender, largely submitted to the Imperial forces. Jules Brunet, the Frenchman who had enjoyed such a high position, found a way out of trouble by surrendering not to the Imperial forces, but to the crew of a foreign ship that had been observing the action. His ‘surrender’, such as it was, was hence accepted onboard the French warship Coëtlogon, which spirited him home.

  The fall of Hakodate spelled the end of the short-lived Republic of Ezo and the final destruction of the old order. A handful of the Republic’s men, including its president Admiral Enomoto, would be co-opted into the new Imperial order. But most were marginalised and forgotten, stripped of their status and left to fend for themselves as commoners in the new, modernised Japanese state. With the Meiji Emperor now the head of state, his supporters got the rewards for which they had been waiting. The Shōgun’s old alliances and favourites were swept away, and the new government was dominated by cliques of men from the southern domains that had resisted the Shōgun all along. Men of Chōshū gained a head start in the new Imperial Army. As for the Navy, it was staffed chiefly with Satsuma men, including Tōgō Heihachirō.