was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the late 1890s. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to build such warships, the ship was designed and built in the United Kingdom. She participated in the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, including the Battle of Port Arthur on the second day of the war, as the flagship of the 1st Division. Hatsuse was involved in the subsequent operations until she struck two mines off Port Arthur in May 1904. The second mine detonated one of her magazines and Hatsuse sank almost immediately afterwards with the loss of over half her crew. Description The Shikishima class was an improved version of the s of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. At this time, Japan lacked the technology and capability to construct its own battleships and they had to be built abroad. Hatsuse was long overall and had a beam of and a draught of at deep load. She displaced at normal load and had a crew of 849 officers and ratings when serving as a flagship. The ship was powered by two Humphrys Tennant vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, using steam provided by 25 Belleville boilers. The engines were rated at using forced draught and were designed to reach a top speed of . Hatsuse, however, reached a maximum speed of from on her sea trials. She carried enough coal to give her a range of at a speed of . The ships' main battery consisted of four guns mounted in two twin gun turrets, one forward and one aft of the superstructure. Their secondary armament consisted of fourteen quick-firing (QF) guns, mounted in casemates on the sides of the hull and in the superstructure. A suite of smaller guns were carried for defence against torpedo boats. These included twenty QF 12-pounder () 12 cwt guns, eight 3-pounders and four 2.5-pounder Hotchkiss guns of the same calibre, all of which were in single mounts. They was also armed with four submerged 18-inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes, two on each broadside. The waterline armour belt of the Shikishima-class ships consisted of Harvey armour thick. The armour of their gun turrets had a maximum thickness of and their decks ranged from in thickness. Construction and career Hatsuse, named after the Hase-dera temple, which was famous for its maple trees, was ordered as part of a