The Shirataka (”White hawk”) was a 1st class torpedo boat (suiraitei) of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

She was ordered under the Ten Year Naval Expansion Programme[1] passed in 1896 from the shipbuilder Schichau-Werke (as Yard No.

629) in Danzig, Germany, where she was built during 1897–98 in parts along Japanese specifications, and then re-assembled by Mitsubishi in Nagasaki, Japan.

[4] She also carried three 14-inch torpedo tubes (two abreast just abaft of the funnel, and one aft of the gun on the centreline).

Her machinery comprised two Schichau water-tube boilers, and two 3-cylinder VTE engines developing 2,600 ihp.