Tatsuta was ordered from Armstrong Whitworth in Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, England as a large torpedo boat under the 1891 Fiscal Year budget as a replacement for the ill-fated Chishima.

[1] Tatsuta had a steel hull and retained a full barque rigging with two masts for auxiliary sail propulsion in addition to her steam engine.

Rushed through production due to the impending First Sino-Japanese War, Tatsuta was en route to Japan when hostilities commenced, and she was impounded in the port of Aden on 28 August 1894 by British authorities, as the United Kingdom took an official position of neutrality in that conflict.

During the war, she assisted in the rescue of crewmen from the battleships Yashima and Hatsuse when those ships had been sunk by Russian naval mines, and Admiral Nashiba Tokioki transferred his flag to Tatsuta after this disaster.

[5] However, Tatsuta ran aground in the Elliot Islands outside the entrance to Port Arthur that day,[6] and had to be refloated and then repaired at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal from 16 July to 31 August 1904.