1These cruisers had no armour protection for their guns.

2All, except the naval transports carrying war stores, were left at Shanghai.—A.B.L.

3Evidently the Oslyabya was omitted by a printer’s error. She should come in as the fifth ship, i.e. after the Orel, and leading the 2nd armoured squadron.—A.B.L.

4Cruel irony! We were attempting to force our way through to our base, and had been ordered to take with us, if possible, everything in the way of materials and supplies that we might require, so as not to overtax it. The railway was only able with difficulty to supply the army, and we were under no circumstances to count upon its help.

5“Together” has a literal meaning: the ships all change direction simultaneously to the same side and at the same angle. By doing this they take up a new formation, parallel to their former line, and to starboard or to port of it, moving ahead or not according to the size of the angle of turning. Shortly after changing direction the order is again given to turn “together” at the same angle, but to the opposite side, and the ships thus find themselves once more in single column line ahead, but at some distance to starboard or to port of their original course.

“Together” is the direct opposite to “in succession,” when each ship changes direction as she comes to the spot in which the leading ship has turned—i.e. follows her.

6“Samotopy” literally “self-sinkers.”—A.B.L.

7Admiral Nebogatoff, with the 3rd squadron, joined the main fleet on 9th May.—A.B.L.

8A play upon the words. The Russian translation of “presentiment” is “feeling before.”—A.B.L.

9Fate had not been kind to us. The Terek and Kuban met no one all the time that they were there, and no one knew of their presence in those waters.

10Verbatim in the context.—A.B.L.

11According to Japanese reports, Togo, who was stationed with his main body somewhere off Fusan, was at this time in complete ignorance of our whereabouts and was waiting for news from both north and south.

12A point = 11¼°.

13At Port Arthur the long Japanese shells of big calibre guns were nicknamed (“chemodani”) “portmanteaus.” Indeed, what else could you call a shell, a foot in diameter and more than 4 feet long, filled with explosive?

14A flag-sub-lieutenant.

15Japanese officers said that after Port Arthur had capitulated, while waiting for the Baltic fleet, they worked up to their high state of preparation as follows:—At target practice every gun captain fired five live shells out of his gun. New guns were afterwards substituted for those worn out.

16According to thoroughly trustworthy reports, the Japanese in the battle of Tsu-shima were the first to employ a new kind of explosive in their shells, the secret of which they bought during the war from its inventor, a colonel in one of the South American Republics. It was said that these shells could only be used in guns of large calibre in the armoured squadrons, and that is how those of our ships engaged with Admiral Kataoka’s squadron did not suffer the same amount of damage, or have so many fires, as the ships engaged with the battleships and armoured cruisers. Very convincing proofs of this were the cases of the Svietlana and Donskoy. On 28th May the former was subjected to the fire of two light cruisers, and the latter to the fire of five. In the first place, both were able to hold out for a considerable time, and in the second (and this is most important), they did not catch fire, although on both ships—the Donskoy, which was one of the older type, and the Svietlana, which was like a yacht—there was considerably more combustible material than on the newer type of battleship.

For a great many years in naval gunnery two distinct ideas have prevailed—one is to inflict on the enemy, although not necessarily much (in quantity), severe and heavy damage—i.e. to stop movement—to penetrate under the water-line—to get a burst in the hull below the water-line—briefly, to put the ship at once out of action. The other is to pour upon him the greatest volume of fire in the shortest time—though it be above water and the actual damage caused by each individual shot be immaterial—in the hope of paralysing the ship, trusting that if this were done it would not be difficult to destroy her completely—that she would, in fact, sink by herself.

With modern guns, in order to secure the first of the above ideas, solid armour-penetrating projectiles must be employed—i.e. thick-coated shells (whose internal capacity and bursting charge is consequently diminished), and percussion fuzes with retarded action, bursting the shell inside the target. To secure the second idea shells need only be sufficiently solid to ensure their not bursting at the moment of being fired. The thickness of their walls may be reduced to the minimum, and their internal capacity and bursting charge increased to the utmost limits. The percussion fuses should be sensitive enough to detonate at the slightest touch.

The first of the above views prevails chiefly in France, the second in England. In the late war we held the first, and the Japanese the second.

17A colonel of the marine artillery—flag gunnery officer.

18By the Admiral’s order the iron oil drums, instead of being thrown away, had been converted into buckets, and these home-made contrivances were placed about the decks.

19In the Battle of Tsu-shima the Japanese losses were:

These figures are sufficiently eloquent, even allowing for the reports of Japanese officers to be somewhat partial. Almost half of the casualties (252 out of 537) were killed and dangerously wounded, the other half were severely and slightly wounded—less than 8 per cent. The total number was insignificant. Our shells evidently either never burst, or burst badly, i.e. in a few large pieces. The Japanese bursting charge was seven times stronger than ours, and consisted not of pyroxylene, but of shimose (and perhaps of something still more powerful). Shimose, on exploding, raises the temperature one and a half times higher than pyroxylene. In fact, one might say that a Japanese shell bursting well did as much damage as twelve of ours bursting equally well. And this ours rarely succeeded in doing!

20The ships nearest to us reported afterwards that the armoured shield on our after turret had been blown right up above the bridges, and then was seen to fall crumpled up on to the poop. What had actually happened was not known.

21In order to establish a connection between the facts which I personally saw and noted down, and in order to be able to explain the Japanese movements, I shall have recourse to sources which can hardly be suspected of partiality towards us. I refer to two Japanese official publications which are both entitled “Nippon-Kai Tai-Kai-Sen” (“The Great Battle in the Sea of Japan”). The books are illustrated by a number of photographs and plans taken at different moments of the fight, and contain the reports of various ships and detachments. A few quite immaterial differences in description of detail by various witnesses have not been removed, as they only give the stamp of truth to the publication.

I must request my readers to excuse the heavy, and at times incoherent language introduced by me in these quotations. The reason for this is my wish to keep as near as possible to the original, and, in the construction of its sentences, Japanese is totally different to any European language.

22In a ship there is no proper church compartment. The church is only rigged when a service is to be held.

23There were probably more here than in the whole of the Japanese fleet.

24Whether this turn was intentional or accidental, owing to the damage done to her steering communicators, will for ever remain a secret.

25Courland is one of the Baltic Provinces where German is spoken.—A.B.L.

26Of all the wounded members of the staff, who were below, under the armoured deck, it was only possible to “collect” two—Filipinoffsky and Leontieff. The former was in the lower fighting position, which was hermetically separated from the mess deck, and received a current of fresh air through the armoured tube of the conning tower. (All the same he had to sit by candle light, as the lamps had gone out.) The latter was at the exit hatch. The mess deck was in darkness (the electric light had gone out) and was full of suffocating smoke. Hurrying along to find the staff, we called them by name; but received no answers. The silence of the dead reigned in that smoky darkness, and it is probable that all who were in the closed compartments under the armoured deck, where the ventilators took smoke instead of air, gradually becoming suffocated, lost consciousness and died. The engines had ceased to work. The electric light had given out for want of steam; and no one came up from below. Of the 900 men composing the complement of the Suvoroff, it would not be far wrong to say that, at this time there remained alive only those few who were gathered together in the lower battery and on the windward embrasure.

27It was impossible to come up on the leeward side, because of the smoke and flames.

28He was transferred to the Biedovy on the morning of 28th May.—A.B.L.

29The Bezuprechny was ordered to go to the Nicolay and to give (by semaphore) the late commander’s instructions to the new, i.e. Nebogatoff. The Biedovy was sent to the Suvoroff to take off the remainder of her complement, but the flag-ship could not be found.

30She had gone down about 5.30 P.M.