Menghean ironclad Ko Rang

Ko Rang in 1871, as delivered in Sunju.
History
Namyang Government
Name:	Ko Rang
Laid down:	20 February 1869
Launched:	1 December 1869
Commissioned:	18 May 1871
Decommissioned:	12 November 1902
General characteristics
Tons burthen:	3,314 t
Length:	62 m pp
Beam:	10 m
Draught:	5.4 m
Propulsion:	1 × single-expansion steam engine 1 × propeller
Sail plan:	Barque rig
Complement:	361
Armament:	14 × 48-pounder gun 14 × 24-pounder gun 7 × swivel gun

Ko Rang (Menghean: 고랑 / 高浪), also transliterated Gorang, was a broadside ironclad built for the Namyang Government in the late 1860s and delivered in 1871. Because the required technology was too advanced for the Menghean shipyards of the time, she was built in Ostland. During the 1870s and 1880s, she saw action against Sinyi forces and pirates around the coast of what is today Unsan province in the southeast of Menghe. By the time the Sinyi-Namyang conflict flared up again in the 1890s, Ko Rang was severely obsolete, and she saw no combat. She was decommissioned in 1902 and hulked for use as a storage ship, and in 1921 she was sold for scrap.

Background

On 9 April 1868, less than a year after General Kim Ryung-sŏng's forces captured the old imperial capital of Junggyŏng, the National Protection Society convened at the Namyang Palace in Sunju to proclaim the formation of the Emergency Provisional Government of Menghe. Supported by the provincial governors of Chŏllo, Ryangnam, and Hwangjŏn, the resulting Namyang Government eagerly solicited modern weapons from the Casaterran powers in the hopes of driving back the rebel forces, who had established a new dynasty in the north.

Among their first purchases were a series of modern steam and sail warships to drive back the East Sea Fleet, which had sided with the rebels and was raiding shipping in the Ryongsan region. Most of the warships purchased by the Namyang Government were last-generation screw and paddle frigates purchased secondhand from other navies, but the governor of Ryangnam Province desired a more advanced vessel to serve as the new fleet flagship. Because Menghe's shipbuilding and steelworking industries were still immature, the new ship was designed and built in Ostland, though the Namyang Government contributed design requirements.

Description

The Ko Rang was 62 meters long between perpendiculars, or 75.2 meters long overall. She had a beam of 10 meters at the waterline, and a full-load draft of 5.4 meters, for a displacement of 3,314 tonnes. She had a crew of 361. Her sails followed a barque rig plan, with two square sails on the fore mast, three square sails on the main mast, and one gaff rig on the mizzen mast at the stern. Because South Menghe produced no coal domestically in 1870, these sails were the ship's primary means of propulsion in peacetime and out of battle. Her steam powerplant consisted of a single-expansion steam engine, fed by steam from eight boilers, driving a screw propeller. On steam power alone, she could reach a speed of 12 knots and cruise at 10 knots for 1,400 nautical miles (2,600 kilometers).

Because she was mainly intended to combat legacy war junks with wooden hulls and small-caliber cannons, the new ship was built around a main armament of 28 cannons in broadside mounts, consisting of a 50/50 mix of 48-pounder guns concentrated around the center and 24-pounder guns at the ends. Seven swivel guns were typically arranged around the upper deck to provide protection against smaller vessels. The designers decided against the use of turrets, which were a new and unreliable technology at the time, and against casemate mounts, preferring the tried-and-true broadside cannon approach to maximize the number of guns per broadside. As a result, she was unable to fight effectively against modern armored ships, a drawback which motivated the building of the Young Choung-class ironclads in 1872.

The ship's hull was constructed from wood, and the sides were covered in cast iron plates, which were bolted to the wooden frame. These plates varied in thickness from 10 to 15 centimeters, likewise on the assumption that the ship would primarily encounter small-caliber cannon fire from obsolete sailing junks, and they extended up into armored bulwarks to protect the crew and any riflemen on the deck. A reinforced ram bow forward provided the means to engage large or disabled vessels.

Construction and career

The Ko Rang was laid down on 20 February 1869 at a shipyard in Kopanes, Ostland. She was launched on the 1st of December of the same year, and completed her fitting-out in September 1870. After a few months of working-up trials and training, she set sail on 10 January under the command of an Ostlandian crew. The voyage to Menghe followed the coast of Hallia and West Hemithea due to her poor seakeeping and short steaming range, and took four months. She arrived in the city of Sunju, the interim capital of the Emergency Provisional Government, on 14 May 1871, and four days later she was handed over to her new crew in a commissioning ceremony.

Over the summer of 1871, with a Menghean commander and crew, the Ko Rang took part in the Namyang Government's campaign to take the city of Chanam, whose governor had tried to set up an independent domain amidst the political chaos. Her appearance proved decisive in routing the Hadong provincial fleet and securing the governor's surrender. In the years that followed, Ko Rang took part in repeated anti-piracy operations around Unsan province, but rarely encountered the Sinyi fleet, which avoided pitched engagements against Namyang's few ironclads.

In 1883, when the Namyang Government's Ryongsan Army began a limited campaign into warlord-controlled Unsan, the Ko Rang led a force of ships up the coast from the Pungsu, supporting the land force's march on the cities of Gungye and Sanbon. After the fall of Sanbon, the main body of the Ryongsan Army marched inland toward Daegok, and the Ko Rang's naval force accompanied a small detachment to take Rigu. She returned to Pungsu for the winter, then supported a larger Southeastern Campaign in the Spring of 1884, taking the strategic harbor cities of Musan, Buryŏng, and Wihae. The following year, when the State of Sinyi launched its own campaign into the Southeast, a combined fleet led by the Ko Rang trapped and destroyed the main Sinyi force in the Battle of Ŭnhang and led a brief raid on the city of Gyŏngsan, only to turn back over a lack of supplies.

In the late 1880s, as the fighting between Namyang and Sinyi lulled, the Ko Rang mostly remained in the port of Wihae. By this point, the State of Sinyi had launched its own naval modernization campaign, and the Ko Rang's cannons and armament were inadequate to deal with newer warships operating in the area. As a reserve ship, Ko Rang did take part in Namyang's intervention in the Uzeri Sultanate in 1891-1894, though she saw no surface action during this campaign. She was also withheld from front-line duties during the last five years of fighting, during which she was seriously obsolete.

After the 8 July 1899 ceasefire between the Namyang and Sinyi governments, and the 1 August 1901 treaty which formed the Federative Republic of Menghe, the Ko Rang was one of many obsolete warships marked for retirement. She was formally decommissioned from active service on 12 November 1902, and by the following year, she had been converted to a hulk, with her masts cut off and her cannons removed. In this condition, she was used as an ammunition storage ship in Sunju for two decades. On 23 March 1921, after an inspection found extensive rotting damage, the Navy officially wrote off the barge and had it towed further up the Ro river to be scrapped.

See also

• Young Choung-class ironclad