They were told, in fact, that it was a simple case of sacrifice, and they accepted it so willingly that the admiral found it difficult to detail a torpedo reserve in case the first division failed in its task.
Until sunset the heavy guns of the Japanese battleships and the ten-inch battery of the cruiser Kasuga roared and fired at the oncoming Russians, while the Russian guns roared in reply.
Borodino First to Go Down
First of the Russian battleships in line behind the protected cruiser Jemtchung was the 13,000-ton Borodino, and these two soon showed that they were receiving the brunt of the shelling. The cruiser Nakhimoff, in the van of the Russian port column, was also observed to be in distress, and then, the sun having set and the quick-setting darkness having come, the torpedoes were sent out under cover of a still heavier cannonade. The flotilla formed into two divisions, one heading for the battleship column of the Russians and the other for the cruisers.
The searchlights of the Russian fleet threw out their great beams and their small gun batteries swept the sea but the swift hornets of the sea went wallowing and buzzing on their way. They circled and swept, and then came the dull roars and heaving fountains that told that the torpedoes had been loosed from their tubes and were doing their deadly work.
Again and again came the roars, and as the Japanese searchlights swept across the field of fight and then went out it was seen that the great battleship Borodino was sinking; that the protected cruiser Svietlana was a wreck; that the battleship Alexander III had gone; that the two armored cruisers Dimitri Donskoi and Nakhimoff were out of the fighting. A far-sailing shell had also reached and sunk the supply ship Kamchatka. Thus ended the first day's fight.
Russians in Full Flight
In the darkness of the night of Saturday, May 27, the shattered Russian fleet reformed as well as it might, and once more took up its despairing run for the Sea of Japan and the haven of Vladivostok.
Hanging on to the already beaten enemy, an easy matter with his faster ships, Togo picked up the Russians all of Saturday night with his searchlights, occasionally sending a long-distance shell toward one of the shadowy hulls that were racing to get through the straits.
But just as Togo had selected his fighting ground for working out one chapter of the tragedy, so now he chose the scene of the second day's fighting.