Red Mutiny (3 page)

Forbidden to stop in most ports because assisting the Russians would violate a country's neutrality, Rozhestvensky made sure the squadron took on as much coal as possible from German merchant colliers that met the ships along the way. Coaling at sea was dangerous in its own right, but living with it stacked on the decks and in cabins, corridors, bathrooms, workshops—everywhere—while steaming through the suffocating, 120-degree tropics, was daily torture. Coal dust stung the eyes and choked the lungs. Men collapsed from heat stroke or simply went mad from the daily strain. Other horrors
included the ravenous shipboard rats, the dysentery, the decks so hot that they blistered bare feet, and the hurricanes, during which forty-foot waves washed sailors overboard, never to been seen again.

Somehow, Rozhestvensky managed to arrive in Madagascar with most of his crew, though his orders to wait in Hellville destroyed the entire crew's morale more than the heat and coal dust ever could. Rozhestvensky was crushed. For several weeks afterward, his officers heard him moaning in his locked cabin. When he next appeared, he looked twenty years older, haggard and listless. Some of his staff wondered whether he had experienced a stroke, since he now dragged his left leg. What they did know for sure, as January turned into February, then March, was that their fleet was falling apart.

Each day, black torpedo boats carried out to sea those stricken dead by malaria, typhoid, or their own hand. After a single cannon shot, the bodies, sewn in cloth, were let off the side. Those remaining in the harbor suffered a host of illnesses, as well as rotten food, cloying heat, and torrential rain. Many had tropical eczema, scratching themselves until they bled and treating their weeping grazes with kerosene or eau de cologne. At night they slept naked on mats on the decks. Monkeys, chickens, cows, hares, and pigs, brought on board by the sailors, overran every ship. Their stench was overwhelming. Cockroaches and rats swarmed through cabins. Moss and barnacles grew thick on the ships' hulls, and sharks circled around the fleet, eager to consume any bad meat thrown overboard.

Discipline collapsed. Men got stupefyingly drunk, gambled, stole from the local Malagasies, and disobeyed their officers. Signs of mutiny abounded, yet Rozhestvensky, who was reputed to have punched out a sailor's teeth for a minor transgression, let them off easy. "How can I intimidate men ready to follow me to the death by condemning them to be hanged?" he asked his chief of staff. Order deteriorated further upon receiving reports of mass strikes throughout Russia and how the tsar allowed the butchery of his own people, women and children included, when they marched on the Winter Palace to appeal for a better life. Revolution seemed imminent. What was more, the newspaper editorials were pessimistic about the squadron's own mission—writing that the armada was doomed to the same fate as the one Spain sent against England in 1588.

Finally, on March 4, Rozhestvensky, who through sheer force of
will had taken back command of his ravaged fleet, decided that he had had enough. He could no longer stand waiting for a fleet of ancient "self-sinkers"—as he called the Third Pacific—that would likely prove a hindrance in a sea fight. Defying his orders, the admiral left Hellville to steam across the vast Indian Ocean. Unbeknownst to him, that day, thousands of Russian infantry troops died in a rout south of the Manchurian city of Mukden. The battle, where over half a million men confronted one another, was the largest of the Russo-Japanese War, and of modern history. The Russians sacrificed ninety thousand men at Mukden.

Proceeding at a sluggish six knots, experiencing engine breakdowns and other severe mechanical problems such as one battleship's loss of steering, the squadron made its way across the ocean. Lost to Japanese scouts and the Russian high command for three weeks, the squadron finally appeared off Singapore's coast in four columns; several days later, it anchored in Camranh Bay off French Indochina. On direct orders, this time from Nicholas himself, Rozhestvensky waited again for the Third Pacific. A month later, the squadron arrived. Before dawn on May 14, the combined fleet set out for the naval base in Vladivostok, where Rozhestvensky hoped to service his battleships and restore his sailors' spirits before facing the Japanese fleet. The squadron charted a course through the Korea Strait, the narrow waters between the Japanese coast and Tsushima Island. Rozhestvensky prayed they would elude their enemy in the mist and fog, but his fortune, now in the hands of famed Japanese admiral Togo, would not accommodate his wishes.

"Enemy squadron square 203 ... apparently bearing eastern passage." The 4:45
A.M.
message from a Japanese scout came as welcome news aboard
Mikasa,
the Japanese fleet's flagship. Admiral Togo Heihachiro, who was five foot, three inches tall and weighed a scant 130 pounds, had been waiting for the appearance of the Russians for months. At last, this hero of the Japanese navy, responsible already for several brilliant triumphs over the Russians, could finish off his enemy in one decisive battle. His Zeiss binoculars around his neck, his black uniform buttoned tight under his chin, and his beloved sword in a gold scabbard on his left hip, he calmly began to give orders to his officers on the bridge. Sprays of saltwater splashed over the decks as
his fleet moved southeast from its base. A lone sailor sang, "And raging storms dispel the morning dew.... So shall the triumph by our vessel won ... Scatter the Russian ships and all their crew."

By late morning, back on the
Suvorov,
Rozhestvensky watched four Japanese cruisers shadow his fleet's movements like wolves scouting their prey. There would be no slipping through to Vladivostok. Radio intercepts indicated that Togo was on his way. The night before, the mood throughout the Russian fleet had been one of nervous expectation. Sailors slept by their guns or looked out over the railings into the black sea; in the shadows cast by the moon they perceived torpedo boats that never materialized, and they shared their fears. "She'll never get over it if I get killed," said one. "Brrr! It's horrible on the bottom," said another. Rozhestvensky had managed a couple of hours of sleep in an armchair on the forward bridge but had been hunched over his charts from an early hour. Despite the approaching battle, he ordered every ship to pay their respects to the anniversary of the tsar's coronation. Priests moved quickly through the prayers. Tots of vodka were raised: "To the health of His Majesty the Emperor and Her Majesty the Empress! To Russia!"

Before the ceremony's end, action stations were called throughout the fleet. After crossing themselves, sailors hurried to their posts to await the battle. The morning mist cleared, and Tsushima's cliffs towered above them to the west.

At 1:19
P.M.
, the admirals of the two fleets spotted black smoke on the horizon and, minutes later, each other's fleets. At ten miles' distance, the Japanese were a streak of uniform gray against the heavy, rolling seas. The Russians, their battleship funnels painted yellow, made easy marks. On paper, the two fleets were more or less evenly matched. They each had twelve line-of-battle ships, and although the Japanese had more guns, the Russians boasted heavier weapons. Togo held an advantage in speed and in numbers of destroyers and torpedo boats, but this challenge was by no means insurmountable if Rozhestvensky played his hand right. However, the Russian admiral was no longer the bold, resolute leader who had left Libau eight months previously.

From the day's beginning, Rozhestvensky, who was leading a total of forty-eight ships into battle, weakened his chances by muddling the chain of command and offering the sparest of battle plans. Throughout the engagement, he issued only two orders, both before the first shot was fired. His first order, given even before sighting the Japanese fleet, deployed Rozhestvensky's fleet in a line-abreast formation (perhaps because the admiral feared an attack from the east and did not want to be exposed). His second order, delivered after spotting Togo's ships directly ahead of him, remanded the first order, instructing his fleet to return to single-file, line-ahead formation. This order came too late and only furthered the advantage of the Japanese, who seized upon the Russians' confusion by perfectly executing one of the most daring maneuvers in naval history.

At 1:55
P.M.
, as the two fleets jockeyed for position before engaging, Togo lifted his right hand and cut a semicircle in the air. The shout "Hard to port!" was raised throughout his ships. Due to the heavy seas and smoke, Togo had misjudged the Russians' initial approach and found himself poorly placed to follow his original plan of isolating two of his enemy's divisions. After his ships passed from starboard to port in front of Rozhestvensky's fleet, heading in the opposite direction, he gave the order to completely reverse direction. For several minutes, his fleet would be exposed at a single spot for the Russians to focus their fire. It was a gamble, but if the ships survived the turn, his fleet could run on a parallel course, and then, with their superior speed, the Japanese could cross in front of the enemy's formation, an ideal vantage point from which to rake them with fire.

During the execution of the turn, guns roared from the flagship
Suvorov,
but most of its shells fell wide and short. Worse, most of Rozhestvensky's fleet, which should have been blanketing the
Mikasa
with shells, was in chaos because of his second order to return to single-file formation. Ships had to slow down, some to a complete stop, so as not to ram those ahead of them. This also made them easy targets for the devastatingly accurate Japanese gunners.

"Open fire! Open fire!" First Togo's
Mikasa,
then each ship coming out of the turn, directed salvos from over five hundred guns at the Russian flagship and at the
Oslyabya,
which spearheaded the fleet's second division and was one of the ships that had pulled to a standstill. Within minutes, the range of the Japanese shells closed. The
Oslyabya,
a modern yet oddly shaped battleship with a high, sloping hull and tall stacks, received a large-caliber hit at the waterline near the bow. The sea poured into the ship's compartments, and soon it
began to list dangerously to port, bow down. The Japanese exploited their advantage, showering the
Oslyabya
with shell after shell. The bow turret was ripped away, decapitating one sailor and crippling the rest inside. While being carried below on a stretcher, a sailor with his foot shorn off cried, "Monsters! Bloodsuckers! You see what you've started! May you be swept off God's earth!" An officer stumbled about nearby, his chest ripped open. Most of the shrieks and moans of the dying were lost in the continuing barrage that turned the ship's hull and decks into confetti of twisted steel. Fire leapt across the ship, the acid in the Japanese shells feeding off the paint. The
Oslyabya
shook from bow to stern as it was struck again and again. Soon most of the guns aboard were silenced. Dense black smoke rose from every quarter, and the air bent in the intense heat. Chunks of flesh scattered the decks where there had once been men. As the ship's second officer ran about in a panic, the bow eased deeper and deeper into the water. Still the shells came. The captain, who had died three days before, was lying in a coffin in the ship's chapel, the only one to enjoy peace that day.

Admiral Togo stood unprotected on his upper bridge, one foot forward, lips pursed, watching his fleet advance on the Russians and firing as quickly as his crews could reload the guns. His staff officers tried to get him to move to a safer position—twelve Russian shells had already hit the
Mikasa
—but Togo liked his view. On the foremast to his side battle flags, raised at the engagement's start, signaled that
THE RISE OR FALL OF THE EMPIRE DEPENDS UPON THIS ONE BATTLE. DO YOUR UTMOST, EVERY ONE OF YOU.

In the
Suvorov's
cylindrical conning tower, Rozhestvensky watched the battle unfold through the sliver of a porthole cut in the ten-inch-thick steel structure. The
Oslyabya
had fallen out of line. Most of the fleet was in disarray from the savage Japanese attack, and Togo's ships had closed to within two miles. The distance tightened every minute.

"Your Excellency, we must change the distance," yelled Rozhestvensky's commander, over the roar of explosions. "They've got our range already and they'll make it hot for us."

The admiral turned, a gleam in his eye. "Not so fast. We've got the range too."

Above and all around him, the four-foot-long Japanese shells wailed through the air before hitting. Outside Rozhestvensky's armored tower, the
Suvorov
was in desperate shape. Men scrambled through smoke and over slick pools of blood to help the injured, to escape the fires, or simply to take cover from the rain of hot metal. The gunners continued at their task, but most of the range-finder operators had been killed and the gunners were essentially aiming in the dark. The main mast had disappeared. The signaling halyards were gone. Throughout the ship, separate conflagrations began to join into one leaping inferno.

At 2:30
P.M.
, the conning tower—the ship's brain, as one observer put it—was hit. Twice. The armor deflected the force of the broadside, but shell splinters ricocheted about the small chamber until they sliced through flesh. Rozhestvensky and his commander suffered cuts on their faces and arms. The helmsman and flag gunnery officer were killed and now lay face-down at their instruments, blood coating the panels. On his knees, the admiral stayed in the tower, but his telegraph and voice tubes were damaged, his rudder was jammed, and he could see nothing through the smoke and flames enveloping his ship. Less than half an hour into the battle, Rozhestvensky had completely lost control of his fleet. The Russian armada disintegrated, every man and ship for himself. Togo maintained his attack in formation, knowing he had won.

At 2:50
P.M.
, the
Oslyabya
was the first battleship to sink. With its engines stopped, guns silent, and bow underwater, the ship took an eight-hundred-pound shell on the already-listing port side. Then another. Then another. Water gushed through a hole "big enough to drive a troika through," as a survivor described it. As the ship went vertical, sailors spilled over the sides into a sea of flame. An officer yelled, "Get away from the ship, the devil take you! If you don't, you'll go down in the suck! Away!" Over two hundred men never had even that small chance of escape. Locked under shellproof hatchways and forgotten by their comrades, those in the engine rooms and stokeholds went down with the ship, screaming for help in the darkness until the cold sea closed over them.