death of Admiral Vitgeft, was now in supreme command—was a perfect wreck, so far as her upper works were concerned; both masts were destroyed, her funnels were battered and pierced, and she was on fire; while the Poltava had two of her 6-inch guns smashed and the containing turret jammed.
At the moment when the confusion created by the erratic movements of the Tsarevich was at its height, the Peresviet displayed a signal from her bridge and, sheering out of the melee, headed away back in the direction of Port Arthur, followed by the Sevastopol and Poltava, while the Askold, Admiral Reitsenstein’s flagship, followed by the cruisers Diana, Pallada, and Novik, broke away from the rest of the fleet and, under every ounce of steam that they could raise, headed away in a south-easterly direction, followed by the Asama and six other cruisers. As for the Pobieda and Retvisan, apparently animated by the same desperate resolve, they suddenly shifted their helms and steamed straight for our battle-line, as the mortally wounded lion will sometimes turn upon the hunter and, with the last remains of his fast-ebbing strength, slay his foe before perishing himself. It looked as though both meant to use the ram, the successful employment of which might cost us the loss of at least two of our treasured battleships; and they were accordingly received with a terrific fire from every Japanese ship present. The Retvisan, being slightly in advance of her companion, received the heaviest of our fire, and under it she seemed to crumple up into an almost shapeless mass of wreckage. It was not possible for mere mortals to continue to face such a devastating hail of shells, and as suddenly as she had started toward us she now swerved away, instantly followed by the Pobieda, both steaming hard in the wake of Prince Ukhtomsky’s division, which they rejoined just as the dusk of evening was turning to darkness.
With the flight of those two ships the battle came to an end; because for some reason, known only to himself, Togo failed to follow up his advantage and complete the destruction of the Russian fleet. Some of us were of opinion that he felt himself handicapped by the stringent orders which he had received not to risk the loss of any of our precious battleships, one or more of which might easily have been destroyed in the darkness by mines dropped by the flying enemy, or by torpedoes launched from the decks of daring and enterprising destroyers. And if he was influenced by such considerations as these who shall blame him, or say that he was wrong?
Yet people were not wanting who complained that the battle was an indecisive one, because no Russian ships had been either captured or sunk in the course of the fight. But although this assertion was undeniable, the grumblers forgot a little group of very important facts, the chief of which was that the five Russian battleships and the protected cruiser Pallada which succeeded in regaining Port Arthur harbour were so desperately damaged that they were practically reduced to the condition of scrap iron, inasmuch as that, despite all the efforts of the Russians to repair them, none of them was again able to leave Port Arthur until they fell into the hands of the Japanese when the fortress surrendered. As for the sixth Russian battleship, the Tsarevich, she took advantage of the darkness to separate from the rest of the fleet, and made for Kiaochau, where she arrived on the following day, and where she was of course interned. The same fate befell the cruisers Askold and Diana, the former of which sought shelter at Shanghai, while the latter succeeded in escaping as far south as Saigon. The destroyer Reshitelny, which separated from the Russian fleet immediately after its departure from Port Arthur, escaped the Japanese destroyers and duly reached Chifu, whither she had been sent with dispatches from Admiral Vitgeft, requesting that the Vladivostock squadron might be dispatched to assist him in his proposed passage through the Korean Strait. Her mission accomplished, her commander agreed to assent to the demand of Sah, the Chinese admiral on the station, that she should disarm and surrender certain vital parts of her machinery. The Japanese, however, had their doubts as to the power of the Chinese authorities to enforce this demand, and accordingly Commander Fujimoto took matters into his own hands and, late on the night of 11th October, entered Chifu harbour and, after an altercation with the commander of the Russian vessel, calmly took the Reshitelny in tow and carried her off. This was of course a violation of neutral territory, and led to a little temporary friction, but it ended in the destroyer being added to the Japanese navy.
Chapter Nineteen.
THE FALL OF PORT ARTHUR.
I have said nothing as to the part played by the Yakumo in the battle of the Yellow Sea, for the simple reason that there is nothing particular to relate; but that we played a not altogether unimportant part in the fight is evidenced by the fact that only two of the Japanese ships, namely, the Mikasa and the Nisshin, had a heavier list of killed than ourselves, although the Kasuga scored one more in wounded than we did.
The fact is that, in a general engagement such as that referred to, after the initial movements of the various ships have been noted, one becomes so utterly engrossed in one’s own particular share of the work that there is little opportunity to note more than the most salient incidents of the battle. Moreover, the din of battle, the continuous roar of the guns, the crash of bursting shells, the deafening clang of projectiles upon armour, the screams of the wounded, the suffocating fumes of powder, all tend to benumb one’s powers of observation, so that the captain of a fighting ship has little opportunity to note anything more than the movements of the particular ship which he happens to be engaging at the moment.
The importance of the defeat of the Port Arthur fleet, indecisive as it had at first seemed to be, soon began to be realised when our secret agents in the fortress sent us complete and carefully ascertained information relative to the condition of the ships which had succeeded in regaining the shelter of the harbour. From this information it at once became apparent that, as fighting units, none of them could again be made of service until the conclusion of the war, and Japan heaved a great sigh of relief, which was intensified when, on the evening of 14th August, the news was flashed through the country that the gallant and sorely tried Kamimura had at last been granted his long-cherished wish to meet the Vladivostock squadron, and had defeated it. True, the defeat, like that of the Port Arthur fleet, was not as decisive as could have been wished; for of the three cruisers—the Gromovoi, Rossia, and Runk—which sallied forth from Vladivostock, under the command of Admiral Jessen, in response to Admiral Vitgeft’s call for support in his last desperate sortie from Port Arthur, two of them, the Gromovoi and the Rossia, succeeded in regaining the shelter of Vladivostock harbour, while only the Rurik, the least formidable of the trio, was sunk. But again, as in the case of the Port Arthur fleet, although the bulk of the Russian force contrived to escape either capture or destruction, it had been so severely handled as to be rendered innocuous for many months to come, and Japan was at last free from the continual menace of it. The destruction of the fast cruiser Novik in Korsakovsk harbour on 21st August, by the Japanese ship Chitose, drove the last nail in the coffin of Russia’s naval power in the Far East; and from that time forward, with the exception of maintaining the effective blockade of Port Arthur, the Japanese navy had little to do except prepare itself at every point to meet the menace of the Baltic Fleet, which at this time was beginning to materialise and take definite shape.
Meanwhile, after almost superhuman struggles against enormous odds, and in the face of frightful sufferings and losses, Japan’s land forces were beginning to make progress. During the last days of July General Kuroki’s forces fought and won the battles of Towan and the Yushuling Pass. On 3rd August, General Oku seized Hai-cheng and Newchwang old town, which is situated some twenty miles inland from the port of Newchwang; and then there came a pause, during which the final preparations for the advance upon Liao-yang were being completed.
Liao-yang promised to be a very tough nut to crack, for General Kuropatkin, fully recognising the possibilities of the position, had determined to make his stand there and inflict upon the Japanese such a crushing defeat that all further capacity for taking the offensive would be driven out of them, after which, the subjugation of a beaten and disheartened enemy should prove an easy task, rendered all the easier, perhaps, by the fact that the great assault upon Port Arthur by the Japanese had failed disastrously, with frightful loss to the assailants. The defences of Liao-yang were of great extent and enormous strength, including not only formidable forts and earthworks armed with powerful guns, and mile upon mile of most carefully and elaborately constructed trenches, but also with innumerable pitfalls, each with its sharpened stake at the bottom, as in the case of the Nanshan Heights defences.
