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Description
After the French-built cruiser HIJMS Unebi (畝傍) was lost in 1886 during her voyage from the Gironde shipyard to Japan, France had to pay Japan some insurance, so the Imperial Japanese Navy used the money to order a new cruiser from J & G Thomson's Clydebank shipyard in Scotland. HIJMS Chiyoda (千代田), perhaps named for the area of Tokyo that contains the imperial palace, was commissioned in 1891 with Prince Arisugawa Takehito as her first captain. She was loosely based on the British Royal Navy's Nelson-class cruisers, but was much smaller at only 2439 tons, and was rated a "third-class cruiser" (三等巡洋艦) after her 1898 refit. To prevent her from being too top-heavy and therefore unseaworthy, she was armed not with a massive Canet gun like the "Three Scenic Views" cruisers but with ten Elswick-designed quick-firing 4.7-inch guns, fourteen 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns, three 10-barrel Nordenfeldt guns, and three Robert Whitehead torpedo tubes. This armament served her well in the first Sino-Japanese War, the invasion of Taiwan, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War, and the First World War. She was also involved in the Spanish-American War, not as a combatant but as a sentinel in Manila to protect Japanese people and interests in the Philippines. In 1927, she was decommissioned and sunk by the heavy cruiser HIJMS Furutaka as a target ship during an exercise observed by the Showa Emperor (Hirohito), though her bridge was saved and converted to the parade reviewing stand at the Etajima naval academy. This waterline model of HIJMS Chiyoda aboard the museum battleship HIJMS Mikasa (三笠) in Yokosuka shows the design of this small but effective ship that served at a time when Asian and American challenges to European dominance of the world began to shift the centers of power.

Description
After the French-built cruiser HIJMS Unebi (畝傍) was lost in 1886 during her voyage from the Gironde shipyard to Japan, France had to pay Japan some insurance, so the Imperial Japanese Navy used the money to order a new cruiser from J & G Thomson's Clydebank shipyard in Scotland. HIJMS Chiyoda (千代田), perhaps named for the area of Tokyo that contains the imperial palace, was commissioned in 1891 with Prince Arisugawa Takehito as her first captain. She was loosely based on the British Royal Navy's Nelson-class cruisers, but was much smaller at only 2439 tons, and was rated a "third-class cruiser" (三等巡洋艦) after her 1898 refit. To prevent her from being too top-heavy and therefore unseaworthy, she was armed not with a massive Canet gun like the "Three Scenic Views" cruisers but with ten Elswick-designed quick-firing 4.7-inch guns, fourteen 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns, three 10-barrel Nordenfeldt guns, and three Robert Whitehead torpedo tubes. This armament served her well in the first Sino-Japanese War, the invasion of Taiwan, the Boxer Rebellion, the Russo-Japanese War, and the First World War. She was also involved in the Spanish-American War, not as a combatant but as a sentinel in Manila to protect Japanese people and interests in the Philippines. In 1927, she was decommissioned and sunk by the heavy cruiser HIJMS Furutaka as a target ship during an exercise observed by the Showa Emperor (Hirohito), though her bridge was saved and converted to the parade reviewing stand at the Etajima naval academy. This waterline model of HIJMS Chiyoda aboard the museum battleship HIJMS Mikasa (三笠) in Yokosuka shows the design of this small but effective ship that served at a time when Asian and American challenges to European dominance of the world began to shift the centers of power.