[7] Admiral Nebogatoff, with the 3rd squadron, joined the main fleet on 9th May.—A.B.L.
[8] A play upon the words. The Russian translation of “presentiment” is “feeling before.”—A.B.L.
[9] Fate had not been kind to us. The Terek and Kuban met no one all the time that they were there, and no one knew of their presence in those waters.
[10] Verbatim in the context.—A.B.L.
[11] According to Japanese reports, Togo, who was stationed with his main body somewhere off Fusan, was at this time in complete ignorance of our whereabouts and was waiting for news from both north and south.
[12] A point = 11¼°.
[13] At Port Arthur the long Japanese shells of big calibre guns were nicknamed (“chemodani”) “portmanteaus.” Indeed, what else could you call a shell, a foot in diameter and more than 4 feet long, filled with explosive?
[14] A flag-sub-lieutenant.
[15] Japanese officers said that after Port Arthur had capitulated, while waiting for the Baltic fleet, they worked up to their high state of preparation as follows:—At target practice every gun captain fired five live shells out of his gun. New guns were afterwards substituted for those worn out.
[16] According to thoroughly trustworthy reports, the Japanese in the battle of Tsu-shima were the first to employ a new kind of explosive in their shells, the secret of which they bought during the war from its inventor, a colonel in one of the South American Republics. It was said that these shells could only be used in guns of large calibre in the armoured squadrons, and that is how those of our ships engaged with Admiral Kataoka’s squadron did not suffer the same amount of damage, or have so many fires, as the ships engaged with the battleships and armoured cruisers. Very convincing proofs of this were the cases of the Svietlana and Donskoy. On 28th May the former was subjected to the fire of two light cruisers, and the latter to the fire of five. In the first place, both were able to hold out for a considerable time, and in the second (and this is most important), they did not catch fire, although on both ships—the Donskoy, which was one of the older type, and the Svietlana, which was like a yacht—there was considerably more combustible material than on the newer type of battleship.