Battle of the Yellow Sea, 1904: the Port Arthur squadron's failed escape

According to the exhibition on the Russo-Japanese War by the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR), part of the National Archives of Japan, from the outbreak of war in February 1904 the Combined Fleet made eight attacks on Port Arthur and three attempts to block its harbor mouth, but the Russian squadron was still intact inside.²

Tokyo feared that Russia's Baltic Fleet would sail east and join it. A new Third Army under General Nogi Maresuke was formed to take the fortress from the land, and from 7 August it bombarded the Russian outworks, while a naval brigade of heavy guns shelled the town and harbor. On 9 August they hit the battleship Retvizan. JACAR, citing the naval historian Toyama Saburō, notes that this damage started the Russian debate over leaving Port Arthur, and Rear Admiral Wilgelm Vitgeft decided to take the whole squadron out.³

Vitgeft did not expect to succeed. In Tony Bunting's Britannica account he went reluctantly, on a direct order from Tsar Nicholas II, with six battleships, four cruisers and fourteen destroyers. The Japanese record summarized by JACAR lists the battleships Tsesarevich, Retvizan, Pobeda, Peresvet, Sevastopol and Poltava, the cruisers Askold, Diana and Pallada, eight destroyers and a hospital ship.⁴

The chase

The squadron sailed on the morning of 10 August. Togo took personal command of the blockading fleet, which Britannica gives as four battleships, ten cruisers, eighteen destroyers and twenty-nine torpedo boats; his First Division was the battleships Mikasa, Asahi, Shikishima and Fuji with the armored cruisers Kasuga and Nisshin. Bunting writes that Togo took too long to form his line and let the Russians slip past the blockade.⁵

Around noon the First Division was south of Encounter Rock, steering west-southwest, but the Russians were already about ten nautical miles beyond it. JACAR describes Togo trying to draw them out to the open sea while they turned southeast to escape. At 1:15 in the afternoon the Japanese opened fire at long range and the Russians replied, but Vitgeft kept running southeast. After a chase of about two hours the First Division caught up some 45 nautical miles northeast of the Shandong promontory, and at 5:30 the second, decisive phase began.⁶

One shell on the bridge

The two lines pounded each other at ranges of up to seven miles. Togo's flagship, the British-built Mikasa, took heavy punishment. At about 6:40, by JACAR's timing, Japanese shells struck the Tsesarevich. Bunting credits the Asahi with the hit that smashed the bridge, killed Vitgeft and his senior staff and wrecked the steering. The flagship swung out of control into her own line, and the Russian formation fell apart.⁷

The Retvizan's captain then made a daring move, turning his battleship straight at the Asahi with every gun firing. The Japanese concentrated on her until she turned away under her own smoke. Britannica calls the action one of the first naval battles fought entirely by steel ships firing explosive shells.⁸

After sunset Togo ended the gunnery duel and sent in his destroyers for night torpedo attacks. The Russian squadron broke up. According to JACAR, five battleships and one cruiser made their way back to Port Arthur, while the other ships fled to Jiaozhou Bay, Chefoo, the Shandong coast, Shanghai and Saigon, where those that reached neutral harbors were interned, the battered Tsesarevich among them.⁹

Aftermath

Britannica counts 444 Russian and 226 Japanese casualties. Four days later, on 14 August, Vice Admiral Kamimura Hikonojō's armored cruisers met the Vladivostok cruisers Rossia, Gromoboi and Rurik off Ulsan and sank the Rurik. With these two battles, JACAR concludes, Japan won almost complete command of the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea.¹⁰

The fight off Ulsan followed the same pattern. JACAR describes how the Rurik fell out of line and drew the concentrated fire of the Japanese cruisers; the Rossia and Gromoboi turned back three times to cover her, but at 8:22 in the morning they abandoned her and fled north. Kamimura gave chase until ten, when his flagship, the Izumo, reported that she was running out of shells.¹¹

The ships that returned to Port Arthur were lost when the besieged fortress surrendered in January 1905. Bunting notes that the Yellow Sea has been called "the Trafalgar of the East", but its real sequel came the next year, when the Baltic Fleet that Japan had feared reached the Tsushima Strait.¹² › Battle of Tsushima, 1905