She was the first ironclad warship China ever built, and she served two empires before the sea took her. Originally named Longwei, then Pingyuan, the coastal battleship was constructed at the Mawei Navy Yard near Fuzhou -- a ship born from China's urgent effort to modernize its navy in the late 19th century. Armed with a 263-millimeter Krupp main gun, two 15-centimeter secondary guns, eight quick-firing weapons, and four torpedo tubes, she was formidable by the standards of the 1880s. But the wars she fought would expose the limits of those standards.
The Mawei Navy Yard, also known as the Foochow Arsenal, had been established with French technical assistance in the 1860s as part of the Qing government's Self-Strengthening Movement. Pingyuan represented a milestone: she was the first ironclad built entirely at a Chinese shipyard, though some components were imported from abroad. Her design drew on French naval architecture, reflecting the international mentorship that shaped China's early industrial ambitions. Launched in 1888, she joined the Beiyang Fleet, the Qing dynasty's most powerful naval force, based in northern waters to guard the approaches to Beijing.
Pingyuan's moment of trial came on September 17, 1894, at the Battle of the Yalu River, the largest naval engagement of the First Sino-Japanese War. In the chaotic fighting, she managed to damage the Japanese flagship -- no small feat given the overall disarray of the Chinese fleet. But the broader battle was a disaster for the Beiyang Fleet, which lost five ships and saw its ability to contest the sea effectively destroyed. Pingyuan survived the engagement and retreated to Weihaiwei, the heavily fortified naval base on the Shandong Peninsula, where the fleet made its final stand.
When Japanese forces besieged Weihaiwei in January and February 1895, Pingyuan was among the ships captured as prizes of war. The Imperial Japanese Navy wasted no time: by March 16, 1895, she was in active combat service under the name Pingyuan-go. In 1898, the Japanese redesignated her as a first-class gunboat, and in 1900 she was officially renamed Heien -- the Japanese pronunciation of her original Chinese characters. A ship conceived to defend China's sovereignty now sailed under the flag of the nation that had shattered it.
Heien's final chapter played out during the Russo-Japanese War. Assigned to the 3rd Squadron, she joined the Japanese blockading force at Port Arthur, where the Imperial Russian Navy was bottled up. On September 18, 1904, while operating in Pigeon Bay west of Port Arthur, Heien struck a naval mine. The explosion disabled the vessel, and heavy weather finished what the mine had started. She foundered later that day, sinking into waters far from the Chinese shipyard that had built her sixteen years earlier. The Imperial Japanese Navy struck her from its rolls on May 21, 1905. Pingyuan had served two navies and fought in two wars, a compact warship that embodied the violent upheavals reshaping East Asia at the turn of the century.
Located near 38.95N, 120.93E in the waters between the Shandong and Liaodong peninsulas. The ship's operational area spanned from Weihaiwei (modern Weihai, ZSWH) on the Shandong coast to Port Arthur (modern Lushunkou) near Dalian (ZYTL). Visible landmarks include the Bohai Strait and the Changshan Archipelago chain of islands.