No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
THE surprise attack by the Japanese Navy against the Russian installations at Port Arthur during the night of February 8-9, 1904, was the act that precipitated the Russo-Japanese War. Admiral Heihachiro Togo at once ordered men-of-war drawn up offshore to blockade the Tsar's Asian Fleet, which was anchored in the harbor. In April and again in August, the Asian Fleet attempted to run Togo's lines, but was repulsed. Japanese armies moved onto the Liaotung Peninsula north of Port Arthur late in May and laid siege to the now beleaguered fortress. From the beginning the land war went badly for Russia. Its soldiers were ill-trained, its arms outdated, and the Trans-Siberian Railway, only partially completed, proved unable to meet the logistic demands of General Aleksei Kuropatkin's forces, which were desperately trying to halt the Japanese advance in Manchuria. There seemed to be little hope of relieving Port Arthur by land, and the chances of doing so by sea were almost as unpromising. In addition to its Asian Fleet, Russia possessed only one other sizable naval force: the Baltic Squadron stationed at Kronshtadt under the command of Admiral Zinovi Rozhdestvenski, a veteran officer of acknowledged ability. The sole possibility of delivering Port Arthur lay in sending this fleet across eighteen thousand miles of ocean to Vladivostok, from which point a naval offensive could be launched against Togo. Nicholas II decreed that the attempt be made. Even for a modern fleet with experienced crews this would have been a formidable assignment; for the Baltic Squadron such a mission seemed preposterous. The ships anchored at Kronshtadt were for the most part rusty, undermanned, antiquated hulks in no condition to make steam for such a long and arduous voyage. The squadron, moreover, did not constitute a real battle fleet for it lacked a full complement of both ships of the line and auxiliary craft necessary for the provisioning of the fleet with coal and other supplies. The Hamburg-American Line, or HAPAG (Hamburg-AmerikanischePaketfahrt-4ktien-Gesellschaft) as the company was popularly known, offered Russia its services.1 On Christmas Day, 1903, Albert Ballin, the line's
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.