The North Pacific: A Story of the Russo-Japanese War

by Willis Boyd Allen

The gulls seemed uneasy, in spite of the desolateness of the broad expanse of heaving swell. They called to each other with warning cries as if some hidden danger were near. What lay concealed beneath those fleecy folds of mist, which already began to mellow to golden in the rays of the rising sun, and to drift southward before the light breeze which was springing up? What would be revealed when the white curtain should lift?

For many weeks, since the day when the Russian fleet passed the Straits of Malacca and had been reported from Singapore, the naval forces of Japan had seemed hardly more than a myth. "Where is Togo?" was the question on every lip. "Will he proceed southward and meet the enemy in the China Sea? Will he lie in wait for them between Formosa and the mainland—that mine-strewn sea where the fair Isles of the Fishermen, bristling with fortifications, bait the open trap? Will he lure them eastward, past the Philippines, to the Pacific, and attack them there, or will Japan allow her enemy to take refuge in her one port of Vladivostock, there to be brought to bay and pulled down as were her proud battle-ships and cruisers at Port Arthur?"

Back and forth under the sea flashed the questions and the appeals for news; but Japan gave no answer; her admiral was dumb. He and his ships disappeared from view. Newspaper correspondents burdened the cables with surmises, but no news. Every naval expert had his opinion to give—at space rates—but home editors and the great, waiting, impatient public clamoured in vain for authentic information.

At the War Office in Tokio a few men, small of stature and suave in demeanour, bowed and smiled as of old. They were gentle, courteous, mild, and inscrutable. They received and sent despatches without a gleam of emotion in their dark faces. They saw, in these despatches the North Pacific, with each bay and port and headland, the approaching Muscovite enemy and the leashed fleet of Japan, as a crystal-gazer holds a far-off scene in the hollow of his hand. One day their smiles faded, for a moment, and their eyes grew stern as they dictated a new order. They were crushing an empire.

In the Winter Palace of Tsarskoe-Selo a slightly built young man with a dark beard and pale, irresolute countenance paced the marble floor nervously. He had seen his proudest fortress in the East reduced to submission; his armies, whose watchword had been, "Russia never withdraws," driven back, beaten, overwhelmed by the soldiers of despised Nippon; his war-ships tortured by shot and shell, by enemies upon the sea and beneath its waters; and he had read report after report of their loss and of the death of countless thousands of men, "at the Czar's command." And now his new fleet, brought together and built up at enormous expense, but ill-manned and ill-managed, had all but finished its long voyage, and had entered hostile seas. Upon this fleet hung all his hope of retrieving the disasters of the war. One great naval victory, and Russia would be wild with joy. The past would be forgotten and the name of the Little Father once more revered.

The Baltic fleet halted, for coal and provisions, off the friendly port of Saigon, the leading city of the French possessions in Lower China. Nebogatoff, with a third squadron, was hurrying across the Indian Ocean to join Rojestvensky, who now anxiously awaited his approach. The sympathies of the French ports were but half concealed; the needed supplies came in abundance. Japan calmly but sternly remonstrated at this apparent breach of neutrality, and France was obliged to warn the Russians off her coast. Nebogatoff, however, had succeeded in adding his ships to those of the larger squadrons, and Rojestvensky, with his entire fleet coaled and provisioned, was now ready for the decisive battle. Week after week passed, and still no smoke of the hostile armada appeared on the northern horizon. Compelled to change his station day by day, the Russian moved nervously here and there in the China Sea inviting attack. He sent out reports that he was about to essay the narrow passage west of Formosa, either east or west of the Pescadores; he harboured his fleet under the lee of the great island of Hainan; he professed an intention to thread the dangerous passages north of Luzon and make a dash across the open Pacific, for the friendly port. Still the wily Japanese remained silent, unheard, unseen, until the supplies of her harassed, perplexed, impatient enemy once more diminished and her bunkers were again nearly empty.

At last, driven to desperation by the refusal of the inscrutable, invisible foe to emerge from the obscurity where he lurked, Rojestvensky set the signal to advance. He hoped that the Japanese had been misled by rumours of his escape to the open Pacific, and that by a direct course northward through the Korean Straits he could reach Vladivostock, now so few miles away, after his weary seven months' voyage from the Baltic. The fog of the early morning was dense. No scout-ship of the enemy was visible. It would take time to notify Togo of any movement of his adversary. Forming in double line, with strict orders for silence throughout every ship, the great flotilla got under way and started northward through the early morning mist.

In days gone by the leader of an armed force could obtain information of the manœuvres of his enemy only by means of trusty couriers. Later, written messages were despatched by aides, who brought the news and conveyed orders, riding hard or traversing the sea in swift boats. Centuries passed and the telegraph began to play its part in the transmission of despatches, to be succeeded in its turn by the field telephone. But as the Russo-Japanese war brought into practical use for the first time the terrible submarine torpedo-boat, so it found a new and marvellous medium for communication between headquarters and outposts of an army or fleet. The ancient Samurai of Nippon fought with two swords; their descendants in 1905 wielded the submarine and the wireless telegraph. As Rojestvensky's sombre fleet moved forward there were no armed scouts dashing across the waves to announce their coming; the electric cable, far below, was dumb; but the very sky above, the waters that were ploughed by the black keels, at the moment when the harassed Russians began to breathe freely, were betraying them.

"At exactly 5.30 A.M., on Saturday, May 27th, a wireless message was received at the naval base of the Japanese: 'The enemy's squadron is in sight.'"