The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 ended on a disastrous note for imperial Russia. At the Battle of Tsushima, 27–28 May 1905, the Second Pacific Squadron (formerly ships of the Baltic Sea Fleet) made its last dash to reach the relative safety of the Russian naval base at Vladivostok—the squadron’s destination after the fall of Port Arthur to the Japanese on 2 January 1905. The squadron had endured an ill-fated trip to the far side of the world only to suffer a combat debacle of historic proportions. The final tally of ships and men lost attested to the one-sided nature of the defeat. Of the 38 Russian combatants involved in the battle, only three eventually found their way to Vladivostok. The rest suffered a variety of fates: Some were sunk by Japanese gunfire or, in a few cases, scuttled by their own crews; others struck their flags and surrendered; a few managed to make neutral ports where they were seized by the local governments. In all, nearly 5,000 Russian officers and sailors died (vs. 110 Japanese deaths), 7,000 were taken as prisoners of war, and an additional 1,862 were interned in neutral countries.1
Much of the history of the Battle of Tsushima has focused on obvious Russian naval weaknesses that made the defeat predictable. For example, the long sea lines of communication between the Baltic and the Far East are often cited as a formidable shortcoming, especially when combined with the fact that Russia had no colonies to provide the fleet with repair, provisions, and coal during the long voyage. The qualitative differences between the Russian and Japanese fleets—the superior speed, armor, firing rates, and technologies of the Japanese ships and weaponry—also are often noted. However, most analyses fail to take into account, or give minimum attention to, other difficulties that bore directly on the Russian defeat at Tsushima, such as the overwhelming human fatigue and demoralization created by the journey that severely degraded overall fleet readiness. These problems were part of what Carl von Clausewitz termed “friction,” an idea he used to encompass a countless variety of “minor incidents—the kind you can never really foresee” but that “combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal.”2 In other words, friction involves a broad range of seemingly lesser problems that, when added together, sap the fighting spirit and efficiency of a military unit.
At Tsushima, it came in the form of failures in leadership (especially that of commander of the Second Pacific Squadron) as well as the living conditions of the officers and men on board the squadron’s ships. The problems that were manifested during, and exacerbated by, the long voyage to the East were important contributing factors to the Russian debacle.
Manchuria, Korea, and Imperial Ambitions
On 8 February 1904, after years of increasing tensions in Northeast Asia, Japan declared war on Russia—but Admiral Heihachiro Togo, commander of the Japanese fleet, had already opened hostilities. Three hours before the declaration, his warships conducted torpedo attacks against Russian naval forces anchored at the roadstead outside of Port Arthur. The port—St. Petersburg’s military outpost on the southern tip of Manchuria’s Liaodong Peninsula in the Yellow Sea, and the home of the Russian First Pacific Squadron—was but one source of contention between the two imperialist nations. Another was the construction of the Trans-Siberian railroad through Manchuria to the Russian settlement and naval base at Vladivostok on the Kamchatka Peninsula. Yet a third was Russia’s state-supported mining and forestry operations on the northern Korean Peninsula near the Manchurian border. Japan regarded both Manchuria and Korea as vital to its national security interests and, like Russia, sought to achieve hegemony over both.
Over the next several months, the Japanese fleet, stymied from attacking Port Arthur itself because of Russian shore artillery, effectively blockaded the port. This task was made easier, in no small part, by the Russian navy’s unwillingness or inability to challenge the blockade, especially after the commander of the First Pacific Squadron, Admiral Osipovich Makarov, was killed on board the battleship Petropavlovsk in an April 1904 sortie from the safety of the harbor. The death of this capable and highly respected naval officer was a blow to the Pacific squadron and to Russia itself.
Moreover, the Japanese fleet also effectively closed off Vladivostok, Russia’s secondary naval facility in the Far East. The dual blockades of Port Arthur and Vladivostok made Tsar Nicholas II’s warships useless to Russia’s land forces in Manchuria and gave Japan control of the sea lines of communication in Northeast Asia.
Faced with this situation following Admiral Makarov’s death, the tsar in April 1904 decided to send much of Russia’s Baltic Sea Fleet, renamed the Second Pacific Squadron, to Port Arthur to break the blockade and reinforce the first squadron. He appointed Rear Admiral Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky (later promoted to vice admiral), then on the Naval General Staff in St. Petersburg, to command the squadron on its 18,000-mile journey.
In the early summer of 1904, the admiral began to put together a motley assemblage of warships and supporting elements at Kronshtadt Naval Base on Kotlin Island in the Gulf of Finland. The process was slow and punctuated with setbacks, as were his attempts to mold the squadron into a trained, cohesive, and disciplined naval force. On 15 October, after workups and training at Kronshtadt, Reval (present-day Tallinn), and briefly at Libava (Liepaja), the squadron began a slow transit of the Danish Straits, including one recoaling near Skagen. It departed the Baltic via the Skagerrak on 20 October and entered the North Sea proper at dawn on the next day.
Portrait of an Admiral
The fact that Rozhestvensky was able to take a variety of ships, ranging from some of the oldest combatants in the fleet to the newest Suvorov-class battleships—along with diverse supporting elements such as supply, refrigeration, and repair ships; naval colliers; and armed merchantmen of the Volunteer Fleet—on a treacherous journey of 18,000 miles can be considered a remarkable feat. Although two noncombatants were sent back to the Baltic while the fleet was anchored at Nossi Be off Madagascar, no ships were lost during the journey despite the fact that most of the crews and officers had little or no ocean-going experience.
This accomplishment can be attributed directly to the admiral’s willpower and determination to fulfill the objective Tsar Nicholas had set before him: to uphold the honor of the Russian fleet, “whose history has been embellished by so many stirring efforts of your comrades in the East,” and to take revenge “on the impudent enemy who has violated the tranquility of our Mother Russia.”3 Yet as Clausewitz has written, a commander in wartime needs more than determination. He must have leadership abilities proven through experience and “the utmost presence of mind,” lest this iron will that “pulverizes every obstacle” also “wears down the machine as well.”4
Rozhestvesky’s previous experience had not prepared him for the objective of his mission—to destroy the Japanese fleet and gain control of the seas. He had never commanded small units of ships, such as a destroyer flotilla, let alone an armada the size of the Second Pacific Squadron. He had been involved in the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War as the second in command of a small, armed steamer that operated against merchant ships. His sole experience against another combatant in that war consisted of a hurried flight from a Turkish ironclad man-of-war.
He was frequently temperamental and rash, occasionally physically striking those who dared venture near him during his moments of anger. Aleksei Novikoff-Priboy, a supply clerk on board the battleship Orel, had occasions to visit the admiral’s flagship, the battleship Knyaz Suvorov. In speaking with the secretary to the admiral’s staff, a man by the name of Ustinoff, Novikoff-Priboy asked about the commander’s state of mind. Ustinoff replied that the admiral was “peeved with the whole world,” and that most of the crew “tremble before him like thieves before the constable. The very signalmen, in the course of their duty, are afraid to speak to him. The other day he banged one of them about the head with a telescope, and the poor chap had to be sent to the sick-bay.”
The admiral’s famous temper was also frequently reflected in his signal-flag communications with ships’ commanding officers whom he believed had not carried out some order either expeditiously or correctly. “Provided that we kept line and maintained our proper distances one from another, all was considered to be going well,” Novikoff-Priboy observed. “But if a ship got out of line, Rozhestvensky completely lost control. After a volley of oaths directed at the offending vessel, the order would come: ‘Signal that idiot a reprimand!’”5
Rozhestvensky exacerbated his public reprimands by not privately communicating with his senior officers on important matters they needed and deserved to know by virtue of their rank and position. Perhaps this was because he had so little confidence in them to begin with, a situation further aggravated on a daily basis as ships failed to maneuver properly or keep station when cruising in formation. His failure to effectively communicate with his subordinates led to unnecessary problems. As naval historian Richard Hough wrote:
From the beginning it had been his policy to keep his own counsel, limiting his communication with his captains and admirals to the briefest instructions. . . . No one ever knew the squadron’s sailing orders, what was to be their next port of call, or where they were next to coal and provision. They were left only to hope that combat instructions would be provided before they met Togo.6
Indeed, this hope was never realized, as Rozhestvensky never had a full conference with all his commanders and flag officers present. “The admiral behaved as if he alone counted, the staff and the captains of the various ships being of no importance whatever,” recalled Novikoff-Priboy. “He suppressed the initiative of his staff, the captains, their chief subordinates, indeed of everyone in the fleet.”7
Fiasco at Dogger Bank
The admiral’s judgment, notably his decision-making under stress, was called into question in the wake of the Dogger Bank incident: On the night of 22–23 October 1904, his warships fired on British trawlers in their traditional fishing grounds 60 miles from the English coastline. The squadron had received numerous, highly exaggerated intelligence reports from various Russian espionage rings on the possibility of Japanese torpedo-boat attacks. The admiral apparently believed that these boats were using the British fishing fleet as cover and had in fact attacked him as the squadron transited the area.8 After realizing that his ships had fired on fishermen, he ordered his squadron to sail on without searching for survivors, even though he was aware that some of the British boats were in distress. To make matters worse, he did not notify the British (via wireless communications) as the squadron sailed through the English Channel en route to Vigo, Spain, where it was to recoal.
Given the intelligence reports and the ensuing fleet-wide alert the admiral had ordered, perhaps his actions, which he considered to be defensive, were understandable. Not understandable were his leaving the scene without searching for survivors and his lateness in reporting the incident. It was those two decisions that aroused the British public’s ire and caused the British government to place its fleet on a war footing.
The negative consequences of Rozhestvensky’s failure to exercise good judgment were to haunt the fleet throughout its entire voyage. First, the squadron was delayed at Vigo and not permitted to recoal for five days as St. Petersburg and London searched for a diplomatic solution to the incident. Second, units of the Royal Navy shadowed the Russians continually until shortly after their departure from Tangier, increasing already high tensions in the squadron. Thereafter, British ships occasionally reconnoitered the squadron as it passed near British colonial possessions, causing additional consternation.
Third, following the incident, the British pressured the French and Portuguese not to let the squadron recoal in their colonial ports. The Russians thus were turned away at Dakar, Senegal (French); Great Fish Bay, Angola (Portuguese); Madagascar (French); and finally at Cam Ranh Bay, French Indochina (present-day Vietnam). Even the admiral’s most loyal supporter, Commander Vladimir Semenoff, rued, “Why was this disgrace brought on us? We were not allowed to rest anywhere. We were hunted out of every place.” The period of lingering off the Indochina coast lasted for nearly four weeks and took its toll on the squadron. “And now began our wanderings on the coast of Annam, the slow wasting away of that heterogeneous collection of ships called officially ‘the Second Squadron.’” During this period, observed Semenoff, “insubordination showed itself, discontent began to break out over the most trifling matters; offences against discipline . . . became more frequent.”9
Rozhestvensky’s poor judgment at Dogger Bank directly contributed to a steadily declining efficiency as his ships, not permitted in port, were forced to recoal while in the open ocean or at anchorages. This was both dangerous and exhausting. Fleet engineer Eugene S. Politovsky, in describing open-ocean coaling, wrote, “The fleet does not anchor, but only lies with engines stopped. The wind and sea continually bring ships towards each other.”10 There were occasional collisions during these operations. A pitching and rolling collier rammed the flagship Suvorov, for example, and one of the flagship’s guns actually speared the coal vessel. “The methods were extremely primitive,” Novikoff-Priboy recounted. “Sacks were filled from the colliers’ bunkers . . . and conveyed by boat to the respective ships. . . . Here they were hoisted on board and emptied into the appropriate receptacles. To coal ship in this way was utterly exhausting.”11
Rozhestvensky drove his subordinates to overcome the obstacles presented by the lack of in-port coaling facilities, a situation he had helped create through poor decision-making during the Dogger Bank episode. Yet he did so at the expense of his ships and his men, both worn down by the process.
Other factors contributed to the further erosion of the fighting mettle of the Russian sailors, making them physically and mentally unprepared to do battle with an experienced and rested Japanese fleet: nature-made problems caused by the heat of the tropics, and man-made problems such as rotting food supplies, irregular mail delivery, and lack of shore leave. Close leadership attention to those last three issues could have helped make life in the squadron more bearable. Inattention degraded morale—and led to disciplinary troubles.
Quality of Shipboard Life (or the Lack Thereof)
Much of the squadron’s journey was spent in hot, humid weather conditions that would be trying for anyone but were especially so for cold-weather Russian sailors. The heat made the majority of the men lethargic and irritable; others succumbed to the relentless tropical sun and suffered heat strokes and heat-related deaths. The tropics also brought disease. “There are a lot of sick in the fleet,” Politovsky noted. “It is the fault of this climate.” Novikoff-Priboy wrote that “sickness was rife among the ships’ complements. Malaria, dysentery, tuberculosis, boils, mental derangement, prickly heat, fungoid infections of the ear, wrought havoc among us.”12
Morale declined precipitously as a result of such conditions. Acts of insubordination became more and more frequent, as did drunkenness. “How dreadfully the men drink sometimes!” Politovsky observed. “Today I saw a sailor being carried on a stretcher, unconscious and shaking with spasms. It was a repulsive sight.” Even Rozhestvensky’s confidant, Commander Semenoff, who was generally loath to write anything that might reflect unfavorably on the admiral, spoke of the declining morale of the fleet: “The heat, the damp, the closeness are unbearable. Complete demoralization is not—I venture to say—far off.”13
The long wait off the coast of Indochina exacerbated the debilitating physical and mental conditions. There were more deaths, several desertions, and at least one mutiny. Politovsky summed up the problems arising from spending so much time in the tropics: “It is very unhealthy. . . . Fevers, dysentery, and similar delights are rampant. Europeans cannot stand the climate. Anchorages like our present one end by having a bad effect on the spirits of the crew. They deteriorate.”14
There is a saying, usually attributed to Napoleon, that an army marches on its stomach, referring to the beneficial effects of proper nutrition on unit morale and proficiency. This is no less true for sailors, especially when they are far away from home for lengthy periods. Unfortunately, the sailors of the Second Pacific Squadron were the victims of a corrupt, inept logistical bureaucracy that failed to adequately supply the fleet with reliable refrigerated ships and sufficient foodstuffs for the long voyage. Only one vessel, the decrepit French merchant Esperance, was contracted to carry frozen foods, mostly meat, but also cheese and fish. Unfortunately, the ship’s refrigeration unit continually broke down, and the frozen meat, fish, and cheese spoiled quickly in the heat.
While off Madagascar, the squadron was able to purchase livestock to replace the spoiled meat, which was thrown overboard, but once it left for Cam Ranh Bay, the number of animals diminished as they were quickly consumed. The squadron then turned to salted meat as the main staple of their daily diet. This proved to be another catastrophe as it also had spoiled. “This salt meat, badly prepared, had for the most part gone putrid during the journey through the tropics,” Novikoff-Priboy lamented. “When a cask of it was hoisted on deck and broached by the cook, he had to flee precipitately, so abominable was the stench.”15
Poor provisioning not only degraded the physical condition of the men, it also contributed to the declining morale and increasing disciplinary problems of the squadron, further reducing its fitness to do battle.
No News Is Bad News
As a morale booster, the importance of regular news from home cannot be overestimated. Unfortunately for the men of the Second Pacific Squadron, the mail arrived only sporadically and often brought disappointment. In late January 1905, while at Nossi Be off Madagascar, the squadron finally received mail, but the letters were all addressed to individuals at the Emperor Aleksandr III Electrotechnical Institute in St. Petersburg. The squadron then received no mail from the time it departed Nossi Be on 16 March 1905 until its arrival at Cam Ranh Bay on 13 April. Upon arrival, the rumor spread that the civilian ship Gorchakov, which had left the squadron at Nossi Be, was carrying mail from Russia and soon would arrive. When she did, it was discovered that the letters were those the sailors themselves had posted home from Nossi Be.16
Morale sunk to an abysmal low. Death and desertions became more frequent. Politovsky, never an optimist, despaired: “How can we fight Japan when they [the Russian leadership] cannot arrange such a simple matter as sending the mails? If they cannot do this much that is absolutely necessary for the moral welfare of the personnel of the fleet, how are they to contend against an enterprising foe like Japan?”17
A final element that contributed to the mounting friction in the Second Pacific Squadron was the restrictive shore leave. This affected the sailors much more than the officers, as it was the former who were rarely permitted ashore. In fact, no enlisted were allowed to leave their ships from the time the squadron left the Baltic in mid-October 1904 until it reached Nossi Be in early January 1905. Even there, shore leave was severely limited, as Semenoff noted. “Leave was given to the ships’ companies only on high and feast days, and then only to men specially selected.”18
Rozhestvensky’s solution to the lengthy period spent at anchorage was to increase the men’s workload—virtually to the point of exhaustion—while denying almost all opportunity to occasionally escape the drudgery of shipboard duties. “We never got a full night’s rest,” Novikoff-Priboy noted. “Some of the men were so fagged out that they could scarcely drag one leg after another.”19
At Cam Ranh Bay, before the French expelled the squadron, both officers and men were allowed shore leave. Once the wanderings off the coast of Indochina commenced, as they awaited the arrival of the Third Pacific Squadron, there was no more liberty. The tropical afflictions of Madagascar were repeated—fatigue, disease, and death—with no hope of leaving the ships for even a brief respite ashore. In such a situation, as had happened at Nossi Be, instances of disorder on board the ships increased.
The lack of shore leave combined with the other elements of friction to result in a significant lowering of both individual and unit performance. Exhaustion due to over-exertion, heat, disease, and poor nutrition enveloped the squadron. With exhaustion came defeatism, as Semenoff despairingly opined. “We had exhausted our strength. . . . When the order comes we shall not hesitate to stake our lives. We are without fear, but also without hope.”20
A Foregone Disaster
That the Battle of Tsushima was a lopsided victory for Admiral Togo’s Japanese fleet is attested to by the sheer number of Russian ships and lives lost. Moreover, it ended quickly. Japanese cruisers began shadowing the Russian squadron early on the morning of 27 May as it approached the Tsushima Strait. Although Rozhestvensky tried to deploy his 12 battleships in a line-abreast formation to meet the Japanese main force head on, only the Borodino, the Orel, and the flagship Suvorov managed to accomplish the maneuver. He canceled the order and returned to the previous line-ahead formation, but with the squadron in two columns: the four newest battleships on the right and the rest of the ships slightly behind and to the left.
Togo’s main force of battleships and armored cruisers closed the range from the northeast and passed in front of the northbound Russian dual column on a westerly course. The Japanese fleet then executed a 180-degree turn, leaving it vulnerable until all ships had completed the turn and reformed. Recognizing this vulnerability, at 1349, Rozhestvensky gave the command to open fire. Unfortunately (for the squadron), the inexperienced and anxious Russian gunners were largely off-target. Several minutes later Togo’s ships returned fire, at first erratically but soon with deadly accuracy, at the lead battleships and the cruiser Oslyabya. The Suvorov, in the lead, then in quick succession, the Alexander II, Borodino, Orel, and Oslyabya were rapidly disabled. Rozhestvensky was severely wounded and, along with several members of his staff, transferred to the torpedo boat Boiny.
With these losses, the battle quickly degenerated into a melee. Later that night Rear Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov, on board the battleship Nicholas I and now in command, signaled for those ships that could to follow him on a northeast course. By dawn of 28 May, only four ships accompanied the Nicholas I. Later that day this small element was surrounded by a much larger Japanese contingent, and the Russian admiral surrendered.
The sole remaining Russian flag officer, Rear Admiral Oskar Enkvist, whose First Cruiser Division was still relatively unscathed because of its position at the tail end of the squadron, had turned his ships southwest late on 27 May and left the Korea Strait. During that night, Japanese torpedo boats attacked the retreating division. By dawn the next day, only two cruisers followed Enkvist on board the flagship Oleg. They made their way to Manila in the Philippines, a neutral port, where they arrived on 3 June.
Given the trials and tribulations—the friction—of the long voyage, it is perhaps more remarkable that the Russians fought as well as they did than that they were so easily defeated. For example, the Orel’s officers and crew refused to surrender their ship when Nebogatov signaled them to do so. Instead, some of the officers went below to scuttle her. They were stopped by a Japanese boarding party, dragged up on deck, and shot. The armored cruiser Izumrud also refused to surrender and, using her speed, broke through the Japanese ships that encircled Nebogatov’s division. She ran aground before reaching Vladivostok, but the crew had enough presence of mind to scuttle her before she fell into Japanese hands.21
In the final analysis, however, such acts of courage could not forestall the inevitability of the Japanese victory. Before arriving at Tsushima, the Russian squadron already had been irretrievably weakened by the accumulating friction—a synergistic web of misfortunes that contributed considerably to the tragic fate of the squadron.
1. Richard M. Connaughton, The War of the Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: A Military History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–5 (New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 270.
2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and eds. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), p. 119.
3. J. N. Westwood, Witnesses of Tsushima (Tallahassee, FL: Diplomatic Press, 1970), pp. 82–83.
4. Clausewitz, pp. 119–20.
5. Aleksei Novikoff-Priboy, Tsushima: Grave of a Floating City, trans. Eden and Cedar Paul (London: Aberdeen University Press, 1937), pp. 42–43.
6. Richard A. Hough, The Fleet That Had to Die (New York: Viking Press, 1958), p. 65.
7. Novikoff-Priboy, p. 55.
8. Constantine Pleshakov, The Tsar’s Last Armada: The Epic Journey to the Battle of Tsushima (New York: Basic Books, 2002), pp. 80, 83. Westwood, p. 106.
9. Vladimir Semenoff, Rasplata (The Reckoning), trans. L. A. B. (London: John Murray, 1910), pp. 431, 434, 438.
10. Eugene S. Politovsky, From Libau to Tsushima, trans. F. R. Godfrey (London: John Murray, 1906), p. 197.
11. Novikoff-Priboy, pp. 102–3.
12. Politovsky, p. 119; Novikoff-Priboy, p. 96.
13. Politovsky, p. 168; Semenoff, p. 348.
14. Politovsky, p. 134.
15. Novikoff-Priboy, p. 104.
16. Politovsky, pp. 244–45.
17. Ibid., pp. 175–76.
18. Semenoff, p. 346.
19. Novikoff-Priboy, p. 97.
20. Semenoff, pp. 436–37.
21. Westwood, pp. 262, 271. David Woodward, The Russians at Sea: A History of the Russian Navy (New York: Praeger, 1965), pp. 152–53.