was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in the 1890s. As Japan lacked the industrial capacity to construct such vessels, 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. Yashima was involved in subsequent operations until she struck two mines off Port Arthur in May 1904. The ship did not sink immediately, but capsized while under tow later that day. The Japanese were able to keep her loss a secret from the Russians for over a year. As a result, the Russians were unable to take advantage of the ship's loss. Background and description The two Fuji-class ships were the IJN's first battleships, ordered from Britain in response to two new German-built Chinese ironclad warships. At this time, Japan lacked the technology and capability to construct its own battleships and they had to be built abroad. The ships were designed by Philip Watts as smaller versions of the British Royal Sovereign class, although they were slightly faster and had a better type of armour. The ships were long overall and had a beam of and a draught of at deep load. They normally displaced and had a crew of 650 officers and ratings. Unlike her sister ship , Yashima was fitted as an admiral's flagship. The ship was powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one shaft, using steam generated by ten cylindrical boilers. The engines were rated at using forced draught and were designed to reach a top speed of , though Yashima reached a top speed of from on her sea trials. The sisters carried enough coal to allow them to steam for at a speed of . The main battery of the Fuji-class ships consisted of four guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one each fore and aft of the superstructure. Their secondary armament consisted of ten quick-firing (QF) guns, four mounted in casemates on the sides of the hull and six mounted on the upper deck, protected by gun shields. Smaller guns were carried for defence against torpedo boats. These included fourteen QF 3-pounder () guns and ten 2.5-pounder Hotchkiss guns of the same calibre, all of which were in single mounts. The ships were also armed with five 18-inch (450 mm) torpedo tubes,