Japanese corvette Kaimon
Kaimon (Sea Gate) was a sail-and-steam corvette of the early Imperial Japanese Navy, named after Mount Kaimon in Kagoshima. She was laid down on 1 September 1877 at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal, launched on 28 August 1882, and commissioned on 13 March 1884. The build took over six years due to technical problems and funding, and her design was nearly the same as the later corvette Tenryū, both created by French advisors for the Meiji era.
Kaimon was a three-masted bark-rigged sloop with a coal-fired double-expansion steam engine, four boilers, and one propeller. She could sail or steam, reaching about 12 knots. Her armament included 1 × 170 mm Krupp gun, 6 × 120 mm Krupp guns, 1 × 80 mm gun, 4 × 25 mm quadruple Nordenfelt guns, and 1 × 11.5 mm quadruple Nordenfelt gun.
Her first captain was Tsuboi Kōzō. In the First Sino-Japanese War she took part in the Chemulpo landings and the Battle of the Yalu River, and she supported the 1895 invasion of Taiwan. On 21 March 1898 she was redesignated a third-class coastal defense ship and used for coastal survey and patrols.
During the Russo-Japanese War she patrolled the area between the Korean Peninsula and the Tsushima Strait and was used as a transport. On 5 July 1904 she struck a naval mine off Port Arthur and sank, with the loss of her captain and 22 crew members. Kaimon was struck from the navy list on 21 May 1905.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 13:19 (CET).