After a series of accidents and delays, the Baltic fleet under Admiral Rojdestvensky--8 battleships, 5 cruisers, 8 destroyers, and numerous auxiliaries--left Libau Oct. 18, 1904, on its 18,000-mile cruise. Off the Dogger Bank in the North Sea, the ships fired into English trawlers under the impression that they were enemy torpedo craft, and thus nearly stirred England to war. Off Tangier some of the lighter vessels separated to pass by way of Suez, and a third division from Russia followed a little later by the same route. Hamburg-American colliers helped Rojdestvensky solve his logistical problem on the long voyage round Africa, and German authorities stretched neutrality rules upon his arrival in Wahlfish Bay, for the engrossment of Russia in eastern adventures was cheerfully encouraged by the neighbor on her southern frontier. France also did her best to be of service to the fleet of her ally, though she had "paired off" with England to remain neutral in the war. With the reunion of the Russian divisions at Nossi Be, Madagascar, January 9, 1905, came news of the fall of Port Arthur. The home government now concluded to despatch the fag-ends of its navy, though Rojdestvensky would have preferred to push ahead without waiting for such "superfluous encumbrances" to join. Ships, as his staff officer Semenoff afterward wrote, were needed, but not "old flatirons and galoshes"; guns, but not "holes surrounded by iron."[1] After a tedious 10 weeks' delay in tropical waters, the fleet moved on to French Indo-China, where, after another month of waiting, the last division under Nebogatoff finally joined--a slow old battleship, 3 coast defense ironclads, and a cruiser. Upon these, Rojdestvensky's officers vented their vocabulary of invective, in which "war junk" and "auto-sinkers" were favorite terms. [Footnote 1: RASPLATA, p. 426.]