The Battle of Tsushima, which ended Russia’s naval pretensions in the war between that country and Japan a few years ago, is the only one in which modern ships and guns have been employed on both sides in anything approximating to equal terms. After the Russian squadron already in the Far East had suffered so severely at Port Arthur and the few vessels at Vladivostok deemed it advisable to stay there, Russia collected as many sea-going war vessels of all shapes and sizes as she could muster, and sent them out in two detachments from Europe in the hope that they would reach Vladivostok, Japan permitting. The voyage was exciting enough at the start when, through a bad attack of nerves, the Russians opened fire upon and damaged one or two British trawlers in the North Sea under the delusion that they were Japanese torpedo boats advancing to attack them. Loud was the outcry in Great Britain and great was the clamour that the British fleet should make short work of the Russian ships before they did any more damage. But the Government saved its powder and money and put its trust in the Japanese, confident that the Mikado’s ships would do all that was necessary if the imaginative Russians ever got that far. The Russian ships were very slow, the best speed of which the fleet was capable was nine knots, and as the Russians themselves estimated the Japanese speed at sixteen knots, and this estimate was endorsed by the naval experts, it was taken for granted that the Russian fleet was going out to certain disaster. [Illustration: THE RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP “TSAREVITCH” AFTER THE FIGHT OFF PORT ARTHUR, AUGUST 10, 1905.] [Illustration: EFFECTS OF JAPANESE SHELLS ON THE “GROMOBOI.”] The progress of this heterogeneous fleet was a matter of some months, but at last it approached the Japanese coast, off which the ships of the Mikado’s fleet were waiting. The Japanese vessels, being of superior speed, were able to choose their own position for the attack. No innovations in the way of tactics were attempted. When the Japanese were ready they attacked, and they selected a moment for doing so when the slow-moving Russian ships were attempting to carry out an order of their admiral and were, in consequence of the order being incompletely executed, unable to offer a resistance to the suddenness of the attack. This very suddenness, indeed, threw them into greater disorder, and rendered them the more easily assailable by their relentless antagonists. The Russian ships, too, were so overloaded with stores and coal that the upper edges of their heavy armour-plates were well below the water-line and, therefore, in so far as the hull protection was concerned, they were armoured cruisers and not battleships. The cabins, passages, etc., were so filled with coal that the sanitary arrangements for the men were blocked in some of the ships since leaving Leghorn, and the decks were in consequence in an indescribable condition.[52]