Fleet That Had to Die, The

'You have all wished us a lucky journey and have expressed the conviction that with our brave sailors we will smash the Japanese. We thank you for your good intentions, but they only show that the public funds spent on ship construction have been wasted. You wish us victory, but there will be no victory. But we will know how to die, and we shall never surrender. . . '
­ Captain Bukhvostoff of the Alexander III

By autumn 1904 the Russo-Japanese war had been raging for six months. Routed in Manchuria, the Russians decided to strike back. In October 1904, their Baltic fleet, a haphazard armada of some fifty outdated and ill-equipped men-of-war, led by a burnt-out neurotic and manned by 10,000 reluctant and badly trained sailors, set sail for the East. Their plan was to unite with the Pacific squadron, then trapped in Port Arthur, on the Chinese Liaoning peninsula, and crush the 'yellow monkeys' of Admiral Togo.

As Admiral Rozhestvensky's fleet lumbered through the Straits of Tsushima towards Vladivostok on 27 May 1905, the Japanese, in one of the most crushing naval victories of all time, utterly destroyed the Russian armada. The humiliating and total defeat of Russia was confirmed, giving rise to a new and dynamic superpower in the East.
Richard Hough was the author of numerous books on naval and other history, including Jutland, Dreadnought, and Admirals in Collision. His book The Great War at Sea is widely recognised as a classic. He died in 1999.

Also available: The Great War at Sea, ISBN 1841580538, ?12.99