Russian Fleet

“ Torn by internal dissensions and threatened from the outside by an onslaught of the German High Seas Fleet, the Russian navy was little better than a collection of disorganized ships awaiting destruction—unless the men responded to the trumpet-call of true patriotism. ”

“ Russia has a most effective fleet of torpedo-boats, some of which have attained very high speeds under the usual test conditions of carrying 141⁄2 tons of ballast, coal sufficient for 1200 miles, and a crew of eighteen. The Russian officers have already shown their skill and daring in this system of warfare, and, should they be called upon, there is no doubt that the whole capacity of these boats will be tested under the guidance of a courage and an intelligence which are unsurpassed in any other navy of the world. ”

“ So far as we are concerned, we are seventeen ships strong, apart from our destroyers, while our friend, Hang-won, informs me that the Russian fleet consists of fourteen ships, again apart from destroyers. ”

“ They do not openly fly the Japanese flag, but lurk among the English ships, with the connivance of the treacherous islanders.
“The Baltic Fleet approaches. The torpedo boats, skulking behind the shelter of their friends, steal closer to the Russian ships. Then the brave Russian Admiral remembers his promise. Just in time to save his fleet from destruction, he signals to the British to retire.
“They obstinately refuse. The Russian fleet opens fire. ”

“ Russian and foreign cruisers are anchored in the vast bay. Every day a new steamer arrives. Here is a trading vessel carrying the Dutch flag, advancing towards the pier. I see numerous fishing-smacks plying towards the open sea.
Official visits have been exchanged between my husband and the admirals. Sergy went over to the cruisers in a steam-launch carrying his standard. He called first on Admiral Tirtoff, the chief of the Russian fleet, on his man-of-war Pamiat Azova, on which our Emperor made his voyage around the world when he was heir to the throne. ”

“ There are fifty vessels of this type in the Russian fleet, but the Narwhal is at least thirty miles an hour faster than any of them. An attack will probably be made by the Russians on our station at Kerguelen Island within a week by submarine vessels and a small squadron of air-ships, and there we shall begin our operations against the enemy. If you have any reply to make to this letter we will wait for it at sea off Kerguelen, and then begin the campaign we have planned. We shall never rest until we have either destroyed the Russian fleet in detail or have died in the attempt to do so. ”

“ Her sole departure from the attitude of strict neutrality was to permit certain pilots, familiar with the North Sea navigation, to offer their services to the Russian fleet.
“Glance into the future,” said the Czar. “Tell us what you see about to happen.”
“I see the Baltic Fleet setting out. The Admiral has issued the strictest orders to neutral shipping to retire to their harbors and leave the sea clear for the warships of Russia. He has threatened to sink any neutral ship that comes within range of his guns. ”

“ As Sailors Saw the Battle "At dawn on Saturday our squadron left its rendezvous and advanced through the Tsushima Channel. At 2.08 in the afternoon we sighted the Russian fleet. Gradually closing in, we found the Kniaz Souvaroff leading the line, with the Borodino, the Alexander III, the Orel, the Osliabia and the Navarin following in the order named. The Nicolai I brought up the rear. Parallel to this line we observed five cruisers. After them came the special ships and torpedo boat destroyers. We counted thirty-two Russian ships in all. ”

“ No fleet is a fleet in being unless inspired by what may be called the animus pugnandi, that is, unless, if and when the opportunity offers, it is prepared to strike a blow at all hazards. For this reason the Russian fleet in Sebastopol at the time of the invasion of the Crimea was not a fleet in being, although it had a splendid opportunity, which a Nelson would assuredly have found too tempting to be resisted, of showing its mettle when the French warships were employed as transports ”

“ The Russian fleet has met with its heaviest losses owing to the clever manoeuvring and the superior torpedo tactics of the Japanese. It looks as if in modern naval battles artillery would prove altogether inferior to mines, and here our superiority in submarines will soon show itself when we attack the fleets of Germany and France in their harbours. Only a naval engagement between our squadrons and those of the French and Germans can teach us the proper use of modern ships of war. ”

“ In spite of the critical position in which the negotiations between the two Powers had been standing for weeks, the Russian fleet in the Yellow Sea was unconcentrated and generally unprepared for war. The outbreak of hostilities found two vessels, the Varyag, a protected cruiser of 6,500 tons, and the Korietz, a gunboat, old, indeed, but not without some use for coast defence, quietly stationed at Chemulpo, a ready prey for a Japanese squadron. ”

“ Preparation for war was never thought of. Why should it be? The French Navy had no aggressive designs, and was much below our own, both in material strength and in personnel, while the Russian Navy was partly confined in the Black Sea, the other part being in the Baltic. And so we, both officers and men, set out to have a good time. Our ships were kept up to yacht-like perfection as regards their paintwork, while their bright work shone like gold, and the road to promotion lay not through professional efficiency, but the state of cleanliness and splendour of one's ship. ”

“ With it fell the Russian fleet which had been cooped up in its harbor for nearly a year; defeated and driven back in its every attempt to escape; its flag-ship, the "Petropavlovsk," sunk by a mine on April 13, 1904, carrying down Admiral Makaroff and nearly all its crew; the remnant of the fleet being finally sunk or otherwise disabled to save them from capture on the surrender of Port Arthur to the besieging forces. ”

“ The Catherine II., Tchesme, and the Sinope are the most powerful battle-ships of the Russian fleet. The first and second were launched in May, 1886, the third in June, 1887; they are built of iron and steel [140] (wood sheathed and coppered) , have ram bows, and are of the following dimensions: length 339 feet, beam 69 feet, mean draught 26.5 feet, displacement 10,181 tons. They are encircled by a belt of compound armor twelve to eighteen inches thick, and have a complete 3-inch protective deck. ”

“ As the Bayan slowly passed out far below, the bitter words I had once heard about the state of the Russian navy, uttered by one of its officers, recurred to me: 'So long as our fleet is purely for parades and peaceful political demonstrations; so long as its Admirals do not serve and work hard in peace-time, doing active duty, and not merely writing orders; so long as the officers are promoted for anything but their capabilities and services; so long as they do not know their ships as the five fingers of their hands; so long as the whole complement of the navy does not like the sea ”

“ So vast is British sea-power of every kind, compared with the sea-power of any other people, that foreign fleets and joint expeditions generally have to get British shipping to help them through their troubles when the British are either neutral or allied. The Russian fleet could not have gone to the Far East in 1904-05 without the supply ships of the British. ”

“ The Swedes had 18 ships of the line, 14 frigates and sloops, seventy-four galleys and smaller vessels, besides gun-boats; and this force was in a far better state of equipment than the Danish. The Russians had 82 sail of the line and 40 frigates. Of these there were 47 sail of the line at Cronstadt, Revel, Petersburgh, and Archangel; but the Russian fleet was ill-manned, ill-officered, and ill-equipped. Such a combination under the influence of France would soon have become formidable; and never did the British Cabinet display more decision than in instantly preparing to crush it. ”

“ The population of the adjoining town will aggregate nearly fifty thousand persons, more than half of whom belong either directly or indirectly to the army or navy. The Russian fleet, consisting of iron-clads, rams, torpedo-boats, and sea-going steamers of heavy armament, lies at anchor in a spacious harbor behind the forts. The united defences here are so strong that the place is reasonably considered to be impregnable. An enemy could approach only by a narrow winding passage, which is commanded by such a cross-fire from the heaviest guns as would sink any naval armament now afloat. ”

“ And, at first sight, this seemed to be the Russian Admiral’s intention, for, on the 4th of February, the fleet, having coaled, weighed and steamed out to sea, leaving only two battleships—the Sevastopol and Peresviet—in the harbour, where they had perversely stuck on the mud and refused to be got afloat again, for the moment at least. The Russians, twenty-six ships strong, inclusive of eleven destroyers, having cleared the roadstead, steamed slowly to the eastward, and were, that same day, sighted in the offing from Wei-hai-wei, apparently practising evolutions. ”

“ Arnold, who had gone forward to the conning-tower as soon as the signal sounded, at once returned to the saloon and made his formal report to Natas.
"The Russian fleet is in sight, heading to the westward, and therefore evidently meaning to reach the Atlantic by the north of the Shetlands. There are twelve large battleships, about twenty-five cruisers of different sizes, eight of them very large, and a small swarm of torpedo-boats being towed by the larger vessels, I suppose to save their coal. ”

“ Admiral Greig now returned to Russia with the fleet, and for many years devoted himself entirely to the improvement of the Russian marine, and the development of the naval resources of the Empire—remodelling its code of discipline, relaxing its barbarity, civilizing and educating its officers and men, by training the marine cadets on board of two frigates or floating academies, and thus justly earning for himself the honourable and endearing sobriquet of the Father of the Russian Navy. ”

“ Tremendous Naval Battle Thirty-five miles to the southeast of Port Arthur the opposing fleets came within range; and then began the most tremendous naval battle—measured by the offensive power of its combatants—that the world has yet seen. The naval world had been waiting almost with eagerness for the present war to afford the spectacle of a fleet action between modern armorclads carrying modern armaments; and this unprecedented event had at last come to pass. The Russian ships were steering for the south, and the object of the Japanese was evidently to head them off. ”

“ The loss of the naval strength of Russia in eastern waters led to a desperate effort to retrieve the disaster, by sending from the Baltic every war-ship that could be got ready, with the hope that a strong fleet on the open waters of the east would enable Russia to regain its prestige as a naval power and deal a deadly blow at its foe, by closing the waters upon the possession of which the islanders depended for the support of their armies in Manchuria. ”

“ The fiery assault had quickly thrown the whole Russian array into disorder, while the Japanese skilfully manœuvred to press the Russians from side and rear, forcing them towards the coast, where they were attacked by the Japanese column there advancing. In this way the fleet was nearly surrounded, the torpedo-boat flotilla being thrown out to intercept those vessels that sought to break through the deadly net. ”

“ In the last two great wars of the last century we particularly needed the co-operation of the fleet, but our sailors at Sevastopol fought on land, owing to our naval inefficiency. In the war of 1877–78 the Turks had no fleet on the Black Sea. Russia is undoubtedly a land Power; the small part played in the past by the fleet, therefore, was not accidental, but natural. If we had spent large sums in this period on our navy, we should only have made our position worse, for it was only by immense expenditure on the army that we were able to [Pg 107] win. ”

“ We ought to have equipped Russia before we equipped our own Armies, for, had we done so, the Russians would never have sustained the appalling losses they did in pitting pikes against rifles and machine-guns. This was the real reason of the Russian Catastrophe—the appalling casualties and the inability of the old régime to supply armaments on the modern scale. Had another229 policy been pursued and the British Fleet, with its enormous supremacy, cleared the Baltic of the German Navy and landed a Russian Army on the Pomeranian Coast, then the War would have been won in 1915! ”

“ The Aerian fleet then divided into fifty squadrons of five vessels each, and these winged their way towards the Russian frontier, ever soaring higher and higher, until their wings were beating the rarefied air at an altitude of over three miles.
Odessa, Kieff, Gomel, Vitebsk, Dünaburg, and Riga were all covered by the time the sun rose. Scores of Russian air-ships were seen by the various squadrons darting about hither and thither along the frontier at varying elevations, evidently on the look-out for an enemy. ”

“ There were four modern battleships of a powerful type and of homogeneous design; but their value is much discounted by the fact that some of their consorts are distinctly less powerful; and in naval warfare the manœuvring power of a fleet becomes that of its weakest item. This was proved very signally on the occasion of the engagement between Admiral Kamimura and the Vladivostock Squadron, when the Russian cruisers Gromoboi and Rossia suffered most severely from having to stand by the Rurik, the lame duck of the squadron. ”