The precise meaning of this was clear to Tōgō and his superiors, who had in fact been discussing the best course of action for months; the Emperor himself had accepted the inevitability of war since January 1904. Behind the scenes, the Japanese military had been squabbling over the best moment to initiate hostilities, and the navy had been causing the delays. Technology had been one issue – the Japanese Admiralty wanted wireless telegraphy installed aboard its ships, which was only completed at the end of 1903.4 Meanwhile, two impressive new Japanese warships, the Nisshin and Kasuga (the latter named after the famous vessel on which the teenage Tōgō had served), were en route from Italy, and the navy did not wish to find itself in the same embarrassing position of the Chinese a decade earlier, entering a war with their two best weapons impounded in a foreign port. It was thus only when the new acquisitions reached Singapore that the navy approved the escalation of hostilities, knowing that their new prizes were only a fortnight away.
After midnight, Vice Admiral Tōgō called a meeting aboard his flagship, the Mikasa. The huge ship was crowded by a swarm of smaller vessels, cutters, picket boats and torpedo boats, and Tōgō’s cabin was packed to the gunwhales with expectant officers. Tōgō’s officers assembled around his table, which was bare of the usual maps and charts. Instead, a ceremonial tray sat in the centre of the table containing nothing but a unsheathed dagger – the last resort of the trapped samurai, a symbol of final, noble suicide. None commented on the ominous blade, and Tōgō made no mention of it himself; but it was to become a regularly repeated scene in the Tōgō legendarium for years to come.5
Perfect silence reigned for a few minutes. The Admiral was simply looking at the sword. From this eye hint, commanders, captains and other officers comprehended the meaning of the Admiral. The hint was: ‘If defeated, don’t return, but use the sword.’6
Tōgō informed his officers that their orders were to ‘destroy the Russian Pacific Squadron and command the sea’. The Japanese fleet was to split into two squadrons, with Vice Admiral Uryū taking one group for a surprise attack on Chemulpo. Uryū’s mission, already underway, was to wipe out the Russian naval presence at Chemulpo and to watch over the ensuing landing of Japanese troops. As Tōgō knew from his own personal experience, seizing Chemulpo would leave Seoul itself open to the Japanese and hasten the Japanese seizure of Korea. However, the bulk of the fleet, including three entire divisions and the entire destroyer complement, were to be placed under Tōgō’s command and given the more difficult job – destroying the Russian Pacific Sqaudron, currently rumoured to be anchored at Port Arthur.
‘Upon this war,’ noted Tōgō dourly, ‘depends the safety of our country, and I intend with you officers, by doing our utmost, to crush the enemy without fail and ease His Majesty’s mind.’7
I hope that we shall all meet again when your mission has been accomplished; but if any one of you has to die, his is the greater glory, that of having sacrificed his life for the greatness of Japan, and history will place him forever among its heroes.8
Records of Tōgō’s address to his men do not include any mention of a more pressing strategic concern – that under any reasonable analysis, a Japanese attack on the Russian navy was an act of suicidal daring. The Russian navy had more than twice the tonnage of the Japanese at the time, and the Admiralty in Tokyo had resigned itself to losing perhaps half its ships in a desperate scramble for mastery of the Yellow Sea. Even if Tōgō were successful, he would only buy the land forces a few weeks to seize Korea before the inevitable Russian counter-attack, which was expected to come by land along the Trans-Siberian Railway and by sea from one of Russia’s European squadrons.
The vast harbour at Sasebo was packed with ships at dawn, as the sun streaked the clouds in the sky overhead with warm colours. Tōgō signalled his fleet to leave in a pre-arranged order – a further sign that the ‘surprise’ departure of the Japanese had been in the planning stages for some time.
On the other side of the world in St Petersburg, the Japanese minister Kurino Shinichirō received a telegram on 6 February ordering him to break off diplomatic relations. He informed the ministers of Tsar Nicholas of his order, and noted that the Japanese would now ‘take such independent action as they deemed appropriate’. Meanwhile in Tokyo, the Russian ambassador Roman Rosen was called in to hear the same news. Rosen returned to his legation, only to hear that the Japanese fleet had already put to sea in two battle-ready squadrons. He was thus, perhaps, the first Russian to realise that the ‘independent action’ was no idle threat or brinkmanship, but a de facto declaration of war. He rushed to warn St Petersburg, only to discover that all foreign telegraph traffic had been suspended. Tōgō was already underway, and there was no hope of warning the Russians in Port Arthur.9
The crews of the Japanese ships were not informed of their objective until the fleet was already at sea. That night, as the ships steamed towards the Yellow Sea, Tōgō ordered all vessels to watch for torpedo boats. Although the Russians were oblivious as to the approaching danger, Tōgō saw no reason not to regard the countries to already be in a state of war.
Instead of preparing for trouble, the Russians in Port Arthur were preparing for a party. The city was decked out in celebration of a forthcoming feast day, and many officers had been given extended leave to attend a round of banquets and balls. ‘Many houses,’ noted one Russian officer, ‘gave banquets to celebrate the day and a gay atmosphere pervaded the streets. One could see people staggering tipsy along the streets.’10 Among all the festivities there were two must-have tickets. The wife of Vice Admiral Oscar Stark, leader of the Russian Pacific Squadron, would be holding the party to end all parties to which many high-ranking naval officers had been invited. Across town, Lady Sonnenbrin, the wife of the chief surgeon attached to the 10th Regiment, planned a rival shindig favouring the army. Both parties were to be held on the night of 7 February, but many officers appeared to have been getting in the mood with a round of pre-parties that left them hungover or bedridden the next morning.
Consequently, there was nobody of sufficient intelligence or rank on duty that morning when a steamer put into Port Arthur from across the gulf. Onboard was the Japanese consul from Zhifu, who paid his respects to what few staff were on duty at the naval base. He made no secret of his mission; he had come to pick up the Japanese residents of Port Arthur and to take them to safety. This, it seems, was misinterpreted as a reiteration of Japan’s decision to break off diplomatic relations and not as the rather obvious statement of intent to commence hostilities that hindsight affords. Nor, it seems, did the Russians notice the behaviour of the consul’s fellow passengers, as the Zhifu steamer was crammed with naval officers disguised as common sailors and labourers. While the consul dropped in on several woozy and delicate officials, still recovering from the night before, his spies fanned out across the harbour and diligently noted down the disposition and condition of every vessel in sight.
While the Russians in Port Arthur carried on regardless, Tōgō was already at the tip of Korea. At Mokpo, in the south-west of the Korean peninsula, Tōgō left behind his ‘Third Squadron’ – a creaking collection of condemned ships and outdated tubs, many of them once-proud combatants in the Sino-Japanese War, including the legendary Zhenyuan. Under the control of the aging Vice Admiral Kataoka, the Third Squadron was charged with keeping the Yellow Sea safe from any unexpected Russian attack from the rear. However, there was little chance of that. The Japanese spy network was remarkably thorough, and it was known that only a handful of ships from the Russian Pacific Squadron were outside the Yellow Sea area and presumably far out of harm’s way in Vladivostok.
The crossing to Korea was not uneventful. Tōgō’s fleet ran into and captured a merchant vessel, whose name, the Russia, was taken by all the Japanese to be a great omen. Less happily, the Takachiho literally ran into something else, ramming an unfortunate whale on the open sea. However, the damage was not fatal, at least not to the Takachiho.
Uryū’s squ
adron peeled off for Chemulpo, while Tōgō and the main fleet continued on their course for Port Arthur. Tōgō’s own observations during the Boxer Rebellion had taught him that the Russian ships were not at peak performance, slowed by barnacles and diminished by poor discipline and corner-cutting. Intelligence reports told him more – that the Russians had not yet bothered to dredge the approaches to Port Arthur. This meant that the largest and most powerful Russian ships could only enter or leave the harbour at high tide. At all other times, they would either be unable to flee into the harbour or unable to steam out of it to aid in the port’s defence. Twice a day, the Russian commanders had to decide whether their ships were in the right position and to stick to that arrangement for the next twelve hours.
Assuming (wrongly, as it turned out), that the Russians would have the guns of Port Arthur fully manned and garrisoned and ready to return fire, Tōgō hatched a scheme that would keep the most valuable of Japanese warships out of harm’s way. On the starlit but moonless night of 8 February, he intended to send in his destroyers with torpedo boats to deal with any of the Russian ships that rode at anchor outside the harbour. A second, smaller group would mount an assault on the harbour at nearby Dalian, just in case Tōgō’s intelligence was wrong and there were any Russian ships in that port.
At the final briefing, Tōgō cautioned his captains to make every effort to run dark. There should be no lights on the boats, and all should run at low speed until the very last moment so as to avoid any telltale sparks flying from the smokestacks. Pouring champagne for the captains, Tōgō did what he could to impress upon them the momentous importance of their mission:
Let me especially remind you that the attack must be delivered with the greatest energy possible, because, gentlemen, we are at war, and only he who acts fearlessly can hope for success. Your duty, gentlemen, is very simple, and I make only one request, a request which … has produced excellent results in cases much more complicated than this: Show yourselves worthy of the confidence which I place in you, and for which I am responsible to His Majesty the Mikado.11
After the champagne toast, Tōgō shook each man’s hand – a strangely European gesture that shows the continued foreign influence on naval etiquette in Japan.
The attack began at 10:30 p.m., before the imminent moonrise brought unwelcome additional light to the dark waters. The Dalian group found nothing and turned back, heading directly for Chemulpo as agreed beforehand. The others knew they would have better luck in Port Arthur, but, running dark themselves, were entirely unprepared for the sight of most of the Russian fleet, lit up like Christmas trees, riding obliviously at anchor in the waters outside Port Arthur. The Russian viceroy, that same Yevgeny Alexeiev who had once tried to charm military secrets out of Tōgō during the Boxer Uprising, had remained convinced there would still be a diplomatic solution to the quarrels between Japan and Russia, and had made no effort to prepare for hostilities.
They ran into two Russian destroyers on patrol and took hasty evasive action, although the Russians did not open fire. With no lights or means of signalling, the Japanese squadron was now functioning entirely independently, with no ship truly able to coordinate with any other. It was 12:20 a.m. when one of the groups decided to take the initiative. The torpedo boats worked in as close as they thought possible, releasing their torpedoes at a distance of half a mile. Although the Russians seemed oblivious to the risk of Japanese attack, the vessels off Port Arthur were fitted with torpedo nets – extensive skirts of wire mesh designed to prevent a torpedo striking the sides of the ship. The Japanese torpedoes were fitted with net-cutting blades but these often dragged them off course. Those that did reach the nets did so without enough force to tear through the mesh, but three torpedoes still managed to hit their targets. As the moon rose, the Japanese torpedoes slammed into the battleships Tsetsarevich and Retvizan and the light cruiser Pallada. The Tsetsarevich opened fire on the torpedo boats while sailors on the other vessels scrambled to action stations. The torpedo boats retired, while the Russian ships limped back for Port Arthur, grounding themselves close to the harbour and further blocking the channel for their fellow ships.
The noise of the initial explosions, and of the Russians opening fire, was heard clear across town at Lady Sonnenbrin’s party. A curious guest phoned the naval station, only to be told that the Retvizan had been ordered to conduct midnight firing practice and there was nothing that need concern the partygoers.
‘The firing ceased for some time,’ wrote a reveller, ‘but half an hour later guns were again heard, this time more violently and in quick succession. An expression of uneasiness spread again over the countenance of every one, but, conscious of the invincible power of our fleet, [everyone] kept his seat complacently at the banquet table.’12
By the time someone on shore sounded a proper alarm, Tōgō’s torpedo boats were already on their way home. Fearing a Japanese landing, the Russians scrambled to their posts, in such a panic that many got lost or arrived at the wrong fort. In a triumph of bad preparation, the 10th Regiment reported for duty but neglected to bring any ammunition.
Tōgō had, if anything, been overly cautious. Unwilling to believe that the Russians would be so entirely unprepared, his own flagship was still an hour away at dawn with the bulk of his fleet; nor had he dared send troop transports in ready for a landing. As the sun rose on Port Arthur, the only Japanese ships in the area were the light cruisers of Rear Admiral Dewa Shigeto. Dewa urgently radioed Tōgō with the news that the three holed ships had blocked the harbour entrance and that the Russian Pacific Squadron was trapped offshore in whatever state it had been in the night before. From what he could see, several of the Russian ships had not even raised steam. There would be little chance of coaling or resupply before the Japanese could arrive. If there was a time for the Japanese to engage the Russians in open battle, it was right now.
By 11 a.m., when Tōgō arrived aboard the Mikasa, the element of surprise had been lost. The Russians had had all morning to man the guns in the coastal forts to offer some modicum of cover to the ships. Tōgō raised a signal inspired by his youthful instruction in Nelson’s career: ‘Victory or defeat depends on this first battle. Let every man do his duty.’13
The Mikasa led the charge herself, taking a heavy pounding from the forts and ships. One shell actually hit the ship’s main bridge and would have killed Tōgō had he not chosen to command from the smaller forebridge, as was his habit. The Japanese and Russians fired at each other for an hour, until it became plain to Tōgō that he would not achieve anything unless he could either lure the Russians away from the covering fire of their coastal forts, or land troops to deal with the forts directly. At half past noon, Tōgō gave the order to retreat, leaving the Russians in disarray and despondency. As one Russian captain recalled:
As our fleet had been ordered by the viceroy not to go beyond the range of the forts, we were unable to pursue the retreating enemy. While the enemy sang triumphal songs and were thus able to stimulate the morale of the whole fleet, our petty officers and men, on the other hand, became obsessed with the idea that the Japanese were unconquerable.14
Tōgō steamed for Chemulpo, confident that Uryū’s mission would have been successful. Sure enough, Uryū had been able to land thousands of troops in full view of the Russian battleship Variag, without any attempt at stopping him. Uryū warned the foreign ships in the area to stay out of the way, despite protests from the future British admiral Lewis Bayly that his acts were in violation of Korean neutrality. The Russian presence was limited to a single battleship, the Variag, and an insignificant vessel called the Korietz. The Russians tried to make a break for the open sea, but were heavily outnumbered by the Japanese, and retreated, battered, to the port, where the ships were scuttled. When Tōgō arrived, Uryū was able to inform him that the new American-built Variag had been sent to the bottom of the harbour without so much as a scratch on any Japanese man or ship.15
While Japanese troops poured into Korea, re
ady to advance into Manchuria and Liaodong, Tōgō kept watch over Port Arthur. His strategy baffled the Russians, who continued to expect an all-out assault; but Tōgō much preferred to wear them down. In an ideal world, he hoped to block the Port Arthur harbour entrance with wrecks so that Russian ships could get neither in nor out, trapping the best ships in harbour, and ensuring that none of those outside had the chance to make repairs. Tōgō ordered a second torpedo boat attack on 13 February, striking in the midst of a driving snowstorm. Visibility was so poor and the seas so rough that only two of Tōgō’s boats even located Port Arthur. They returned without scoring any hits.
Although the fame of the devastating attack soon spread, at the time there was grumbling among the lower ranks about Tōgō’s lack of preparation. Some officers dared to suggest that Tōgō should have been more pro-active in his assault. A significant proportion of the Japanese were aghast that Tōgō had not been more ready to exploit his immediate advantage. ‘It is to be hoped,’ wrote one captain, ‘that the inactivity of the Admiral that night will not be repeated.’
All naval history goes to prove, and the English in some measure also teach us, that only an attack delivered with energy and determination can be successful. I do not think that Nelson with his squadron would have remained inactive before Port Arthur, as Tōgō did.16
Over the weeks that followed, Tōgō tried several more attacks on the Russians. In March, he decided to use condemned Japanese vessels, intended to be sunk as blockships at the harbour entrance if the Russians would not oblige by allowing themselves to be hit. Tōgō asked for a handful of volunteers to pilot the doomed ships. He received 2,000 applications, some of them earnestly written in blood. Tōgō invited the successful applicants to dinner aboard the Mikasa. ‘You have a great task before you,’ he said, with his usual sparse words, ‘and I hope you will succeed.’17
Admiral Togo Page 16
