SS Kowshing was a British merchant steamship chartered by the Qing government to transport Chinese troops to Korea in 1894 . On 25 July 1894, before the official start of the First Sino-Japanese War, she was intercepted and sunk by the Japanese cruiser Naniwa in the Fengdao Sea . Over 870 Chinese soldiers died, making the sinking the opening incident that triggered the full-scale war