A Game of Battleships
Roger Hudson expands on an image of Russian ships destroyed by the Japanese at Port Arthur, 1904.
Two badly damaged warships of the Russian Far East Fleet lie in Port Arthur sometime in the middle of 1904. On February 8th Admiral Togo of Japan had launched a surprise torpedo attack on the fleet with his destroyers, hitting two old pre-Dreadnought Russian battleships as well as the 6,600-ton cruiser Pallada, on the left in the photograph. Only three hours later did Japan formally declare war (a trait that was to reach its culmination at Pearl Harbor in 1941). A series of inconclusive naval actions followed. On April 12th two old Russian battleships slipped out of Port Arthur, but both hit Japanese mines, the Petropavlovsk sinking within minutes and taking the Russian commander Admiral Makarov down with her. The Pobeda (on the right in the picture) got back into harbour, though badly disabled. The following month it was the turn of two Japanese battleships to be sunk by Russian mines.
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