Russia held out one hope for turning the tide of the war against Japan -- that a mighty armada, under Adm. Zinovii Rozhestvensky, would relieve the siege of Port Arthur and wrest command of Far Eastern waters from Adm. Heihachiro Togo's fleet.
The Second Pacific Fleet -- now popularly termed the Baltic Fleet -- set sail from Reval on the Gulf of Finland on Oct. 15, 1904, amid rumors of Japanese spies and torpedo boats. On the evening of the 21st, crews were ordered to battle stations in response to a reported sighting of torpedo boats. Guns fired salvos into the darkness . . . and then searchlights disclosed English trawlers, one of which was sinking.
Later, the equatorial heat off the African coast drove men mad or sickened them and sent them to watery graves. Crews threatened mutiny. After the fleet was battered by a storm while rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Rozhestvensky received an order to lie at anchor for several months at Madagascar, awaiting the arrival of the Third Pacific Fleet, comprised of rust-buckets the admiral had rejected. While his ships baked under the blistering sun there, more men went insane and more died. Some, fired by grog, ransacked the town of Hellville, off which the ships lay. Mutinies were rife. Fourteen mutineers were shot. At Madagascar, news arrived that Port Arthur had fallen. So the admiral's goal became Vladivostok.
Rozhestvensky passed the time by having the ships conduct gunnery practice. Together they scored a single hit -- against the ship towing the target. It proved the last gunnery exercise. Rozhestvensky could spare no more ammunition; a supply ship carried boots and sheepskin coats rather than the ammunition it was supposed to hold.
In mid-March the Third Pacific Fleet was approaching the Suez Canal. Rozhestvensky calculated that if he set sail, he could reach Far Eastern waters by the time Vladivostok was ice-free. So, in defiance of the Czar's order, he got the Second Pacific Fleet underway.
After lying at anchor several weeks off the coast of French Indo-China, the Second Pacific Fleet was joined by the third, under the command of Adm. Nebogatoff. The combined fleet, 50 ships strong, steamed to its fate in the cold, mist-shrouded waters of the north.
While the Russian ships were lumbering to the Far East, Adm. Togo was preparing to meet them. His gunners trained daily at a fevered pitch. In one 10-day interval they shot a year's worth of practice shells. Beside the advantage of better-trained gunners, Togo also possessed ships that on average were newer and faster than the enemy's vessels.
The Russians, undertrained and demoralized after a 220-day voyage of nearly 32,000 km, might have met a different fate if led by a brilliant tactician with pluck. This Rozhestvensky was not, in spite of his reputation -- in St. Petersburg -- as a naval strategist.
The Russian armada, on a course of NE 23 degrees, encountered the Japanese fleet east of Tsushima Island on May 27. Togo famously "crossed the T" of the Russian column and then ported to assume a southwesterly course.
Rozhestvensky ordered his four best battlewagons, starboard of the column, to reform in a single battle line. It was a terrible mistake, for the maneuver forced the Oslyabya, at the head of the column, to stop its engines to avoid ramming the Oryol, the fourth battleship.
At 01:50 the Mikasa, Togo's flagship, ported -- in what was to become the famous "Togo turn" -- such that it was steaming parallel to the Russian column. Other ships followed in the Mikasa's wake.
Oslyabya, making nearly no headway, was a sitting duck. Japanese gunners immediately sized up its range. The third shell pierced the port bow. As each enemy battlewagon put about, it poured a broadside into the hapless Russian vessel. By the time the Oslyabya could get up speed, it was listing to port.
Rozhestvensky, on board the 13,500-ton Suvoroff, ordered trial shots fired at the Mikasa. They landed long. Then other Russian ships opened fire. The shells raised water spouts near the Mikasa, but with the sole result that no Russian gunner could adjust for range since none could identify where his own rounds fell. The Japanese showed their superior training two minutes later with trial shots from a single ship. The range determined, the ship informed the others.
The Mikasa fired broadsides at the Suvoroff, and as each of the five succeeding Japanese ships wheeled, it joined the onslaught against Rozhestvensky's flagship.
Shells rained down on the Suvoroff. They burst into countless fragments that set afire everything combustible. Shrapnel penetrated the conning-tower through the loopholes, damaging instruments and wounding officers and ratings. Just as the ship began a three-degree turn to starboard to escape the withering fire, a large-caliber shell burst near the conning-tower. The admiral's forehead was lacerated by shrapnel. The helmsman was killed in mid-course change, causing the vessel to begin turning in a circle.
The Russians could not flee, for the sleek Japanese ships were faster. They could not hide, for they were in the open sea. They could hardly fight back, for the Japanese had turned most of the Russian big guns into heaps of scrap. They could but endure -- and die.
The battle scenes as recounted by survivors might tax the imaginations of our most graphically violent film directors -- torpedo-hand Vasya Drozd, his legs blown away at the knees, staggering in his death agonies on bloodied stumps; a sailor stuffing his entrails into the gaping hole in his belly; the shrieks and groans and the thud of limbs dropping from operating tables to floors in overcrowded candlelit sickbays; Captain Ber, Ahab-like, clinging to the upright of an awning, yelling for men to get clear of the ship lest they be drawn into the suck, just before the Oslyabya turned keel-up and its stern rose high, the starboard engine's screw still revolving as the huge warship plunged into the abyss.
That night Japanese torpedo boats delivered the coup de grace to many crippled Russian vessels. Altogether the Russians lost 34 ships and 4,830 men, with 5,917 (including Rozhestvensky) taken prisoner. The Japanese lost three torpedo boats and 110 men.
Japan, until 1945, celebrated May 27 as Navy Day . . . but Russia still remembers: Russian ships transiting the Korean Strait to this day honor the dead with wreaths cast into the sea.
