The following is a list of destroyers and 1st class (steam) torpedo boats of Japan grouped by class or design. Each ship's name is followed by its launch date in brackets. In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers. The Japanese torpedo boat Kotaka of 1885 was "the forerunner of torpedo boat destroyers that appeared a decade later". They were designed to Japanese specifications and ordered from the London Yarrow shipyards in 1885. The Yarrow shipyards, builder of the parts for the Kotaka, "considered Japan to have effectively invented the destroyer".