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Russian Where Angels Fear to TreadRussians get woefully spanked in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, Admiral Togo snickers |
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At the end of the nineteenth century, Russia would kill for a warm water port -- the country lay sprawled all over Eurasia like a fat lady on a small couch, but hardly had any ports for shipping. On the West, ships had to negotiate past Finland and Norway just to get to the Atlantic, and out East, the lonely port of Vladivostok was frozen solid three months of the year. So, with France and Germany along for the ride, the Russians put the diplomatic arm on the Japanese and squeezed them out of juicy, warm Port Arthur, just west of Korea. As one might predict, this eventually led to war, and by early 1904, the Russians and Japanese stopped pretending to like one another. Besides, war with Japan was on every industrialized nation's twentieth century to-do list, and Russia had just spun the figurative bottle. As any armchair Russian historian will tell you, the country deals with warfare by throwing millions of bodies at its enemies. In keeping with this one-trick playbook, Russia decided to send more damn boats than the Japanese would know what to do with, thereby ensuring victory. In order to do so, the Russians recruited some tubs. Some old tubs. Some old tubs with lousy arms and slow movement and an insatiable hunger for coal. They sent 42 ships in all, and, even going at a pedestrian speed, these boats ate up 3,000 tons of coal a day. Not only that, but, not really having a Pacific fleet, they had to sail from St. Petersburg all the way to Japan, some 21,000 miles in all. They set sail in mid-October, 1904. It eventually took eight long months. Dat's King CoalThe ships needed to re-coal once every five days and usually carried twice their alleged capacity. Sailors were forced to tiptoe around bags of coal in the galleys; officers kicked them out of the way in their quarters. Even without the coal, the supplies necessary for eight months at sea crammed the holds: clothing, food, water, vodka, champagne, and livestock (kept in pens on deck). The weight sank the armored boats so much that only two feet of plate showed. The Navy had 12,000 positions it needed to fill and there was a shortage of sailors. Many of the new men plucked off the streets were criminals, anarchists and revolutionaries -- not at all the sort of chaps who took well to orders. Figuring this was war and enemies might be about, Russians stationed Danish spies all along the North Sea coast to look out for Japanese gunboats. Of course, no sane navy would send boats 21,000 miles,[1] but since the spies wanted to keep their jobs, they fabricated many sightings and took long naps in between. They claimed to see the Japanese everywhere: in tributaries, marshes, and out in the open sea. They increased the "sightings" as the convoy drew near. By the time they reached the North Sea, the Russian fleet, commanded by the impressively-named Rear Admiral Zinovi Petrovich Rozhdestvenski, had a case of the heebie-jeebies.
Fishing for Trouble, or, "Oh my cod!"On August 22nd, near the British coast, a Russian repair ship got lost in a dense fog and panicked. It radioed the presence of eight ships chasing it in the darkness, and, feeling certain the Japanese were about, the larger battleships swung round and began firing. For twenty minutes, they unleashed relentless fury on a piddling group of pasty white guys throwing up arms in meek, terrified supplication and holding up the occasional wriggling flounder to indicate their trade -- they were hapless British fishermen, but no matter; their boats exploded and sank all around them in the midst of Russian salvoes. The noise of the shelling attracted the attention of other Russian vessels some fifty miles away, who returned, and in the fog began firing on each other as well as the fishermen. After the "threat" was clearly gone and a few fishing boats foundered, the Russians steamed on, not bothering to collect any survivors who might be freezing to death in the unforgiving North Sea. The Russians were firmly convinced their first naval battle was a rousing success.[2] Delirious, newspapers in St. Petersburg trumpeted that "the new treacherous attack by the Japanese had been met by the vigilant and pitiless eye of our Admiral and the straight fire of our guns."[3] Surprisingly, British-Russian relations soured immediately. The Russian Ambassador was given the raspberry in London, demonstrators thronged in Trafalgar Square,[4] and a second war almost broke out. The British, eager to get the Russians out of local waters, firmly escorted them south. The limeys maneuvered deftly and tightly as Russian ships broke down and listlessly drifted to and fro, smoke belching, engineers cursing. In a nutshell, the Russian sailors were inexperienced, incompetent and bungling. They broke steering mechanisms and narrowly averted collision disasters; ships got lost even in a convoy. Later, when weighing anchor, one boat pulled up the telephone cable connecting North Africa and Europe; it was cut to release the ship.[5] Watching the fine British seamanship, Rozhdestvenski openly lamented his own plight and wept in front of the sailors. Indeed, when the fleet later encountered a British vessel off the coast of Singapore, incompetence reared its ugly head again. From an officer's diary: The English cruiser impudently hoisted the signal, "I cannot see the Admiral's flag. Who is your admiral and how should he be saluted?" [The Russian ship] got the signals mixed up and replied, "Knives and forks." The English asked no more and passed us without saluting[6] The Russians headed south, and, as temperatures rose, so did crew madness and insurrection. Rozhdestvenski got increasingly grumpy: at one point he tried to resign his command and hid in his cabin for two whole days. Meanwhile, frequent calls to port presented unintended difficulties: sweeps of the ships after stops in Madagascar produced boa constrictors, monkeys, and a crocodile snuck aboard by aspiring zookeepers looking to break the monotony of sea travel. Bread and even hardtack[7] got moldy and sailors rebelled by throwing their ruined foodstuffs overboard in protest, until the flagship leveled its guns at them, at which point the rebels relented and went back to grumbling quietly. When he emerged from his cabin and found out, Rozhdestvenski had fourteen of the upstarts shot anyway. One ship found itself 400 tons of coal short, forcing everyone to make another stop closer to Japan than would be prudent. An Admiral Felkerzam had died a mere two days from Japan, but, seeking to avoid any further precipitous drops in morale, Rozhdestvenski ordered his body secretly closeted away in the stateroom and told no one what had happened. The journey was an unmitigated nightmare. Peril, PrematureMeantime, Japanese land forces didn't have the decency to wait for the Russian fleet to arrive and conquered Port Arthur. To be more accurate, an idiotic Russian general surrendered the port with lots of troops and supplies without bothering to tell anyone else he was even considering it. This was really bad news, because the Russians had schlepped their fleet all the way out there with intent to invade Japan using Port Arthur as home base. Now the slow-moving fleet under Rozhdestvenski's command would have to contend with faraway Vladivostock to even consider invading. Rozhdestvenski doggedly pressed on as his chances for success dwindled. Finally, on May 27th, 1905 the Russian fleet bumped into the Japanese one. The Russian fleet tried to swing round to engage the Japanese broadsides, but instead got bungled up in itself with poor maneuvering as the Japanese executed the same maneuver perfectly.[8] The whole scene resembled a marching band populated by easily-distracted sixth graders. As one officer later related, "One vessel had turn to starboard and another to port so that there was absolute confusion. Mob is the only word literally to express our formation at this time."
The Russians Get All WetWhile the Russian ships occupied themselves with trying valiantly not to bump into one another, the Asians laid it on thick. They sailed circles around the Russians and sank ship after ship. It was a true massacre. By nightfall, many Russian ships had turned and were attempting to flee back to Vladivostock, only to find themselves surrounded by the Japanese fleet. The Japanese leaned into them heavily, even after white flags were raised. Japanese Admiral Togo announced, "I will not cease fire until they stop their engines." The Russian fleet spent eight full months sailing from St. Petersburg, most of these without even postal contact, in sweltering, miserable temperatures. It made dusty, backbreaking, abhorrent coal stops in sometimes hostile ports. It staved off mutinies and starvation, incompetence and boredom. The Japanese sunk it almost entirely in less than twenty-four hours. Only three Russians ships ever made it to Vladivostock; Rozhdestvenski had left St.Petersburg with 42. Oops! As for the Japanese, they only lost three torpedo boats, and felt pretty damn good about themselves, until, well, 1945. Footnotes
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 ©1996-2006 History House Inc.All Rights Reserved. |
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