Battle of Chemulpo Bay, 1904: the Varyag's hopeless sortie

The first shots of the Russo-Japanese War were fired at Chemulpo on 8 February, and the battle that followed the next day was fought in front of an audience. British, French, Italian and American warships lay at anchor in the port, and the two Russian ships sailed out past them to a fight they could not win. For Japan the prize was not the ships but the harbor: the troops landed there opened the road to Seoul and, beyond it, to Manchuria.²

Background: a war over Korea

The war grew out of the rivalry of Russia and Japan for Korea and Manchuria. Japan had beaten China in 1894 and 1895 and won the Liaodong peninsula, only to be forced by the European powers to give it back; Russia then leased Port Arthur, at its tip, as a naval base and poured troops into Manchuria during the Boxer Rebellion. Japan feared that Korea would be next. The British official history of the war says that for Japan it was politically desirable to forestall the Russians in Korea, and that holding its western harbors would give the Japanese fleet bases and save the army a long march toward Manchuria.³

Talks failed in early February 1904. On the night of 8 to 9 February, without a declaration of war, Japanese torpedo boats attacked the Russian squadron at Port Arthur. Formal declarations of war came only afterward, after the first shots had already been fired at Chemulpo.⁴ › Battle of the Yellow Sea, 1904

Two Russian ships in a neutral port

Chemulpo, today Incheon, lies on the west coast of Korea near the capital, Seoul. In early 1904 it held the Russian protected cruiser Varyag, built in Philadelphia, a ship of about 6,500 tons with twelve 6-inch guns, a designed speed of 23 knots and a crew of about 570, and the old gunboat Korietz. Neutral warships shared the anchorage: the British cruiser Talbot, the French Pascal, the Italian Elba and the American gunboat Vicksburg. So did the Japanese cruiser Chiyoda, which had spent weeks watching the Russians.⁵

The Russians did not expect war. The British official history blames the viceroy in the Far East, Admiral Alekseyev, for refusing to believe that war was imminent even at the last moment, and Britannica also judges his leadership poor. Antoine Vanner notes that the Russians at Chemulpo kept to their peacetime routine almost to the end.⁶

Armies and commanders

Rear Admiral Uriu Sotokichi led the Japanese 4th Division of protected cruisers, among them his flagship Naniwa, reinforced for the operation by the armored cruiser Asama, the most powerful ship on either side, and by torpedo boats. His task was to escort three transports carrying about 2,500 soldiers and put them ashore. Counts of his force differ slightly: the Great Soviet Encyclopedia gives one heavy and five light cruisers with eight torpedo boats, Argumenty i Fakty six cruisers and eight torpedo boats, and Vanner six cruisers, some eight smaller vessels and three transports.⁷

Against them stood one modern cruiser and one gunboat under Captain First Rank Vsevolod Rudnev of the Varyag. Uriu's ships outgunned them many times over. The British official history calls Rudnev's decision to fight gallant but his task hopeless; the Great Soviet Encyclopedia calls the battle heroic.⁸

The first shots, 8 February

On the afternoon of 8 February the Korietz left Chemulpo for Port Arthur, sent to report the Japanese ships seen at sea, and ran into the Japanese squadron at the harbor mouth. The accounts of what happened next differ. The British official history says the Russian captain, seeing that he would not be let through, turned back and sent his men to quarters, and that two shots were fired by mistake from a light gun; it adds, in a note, that the Korietz's captain said the Japanese had already fired three torpedoes. Vanner says the Chiyoda launched a torpedo after the gunboat's guns went off, and Robert Neff that the Korietz was fired upon. Either way the gunboat went back into port, and these were the first shots of the war.⁹

That evening the Japanese transports anchored off Chemulpo, close by the Russian ships, and began landing their troops. The landing started around 6 p.m. and was finished by 3 a.m. on 9 February. The Russians did nothing to stop it.¹⁰

The ultimatum

Early on 9 February Uriu sent the neutral commanders a letter, in English, from on board his flagship Naniwa. Hostilities existed between Japan and Russia, he wrote; if the Russian ships did not leave the port before noon he would attack them there; he asked the neutral ships to keep away from the scene of action, and promised that the attack would not take place before 4 p.m. to give them time. The text survives in the report of the American commander, W. A. Marshall, and Vanner quotes it in full.¹¹

Rudnev received his own summons that morning, while the neutral captains were conferring. The British, French and Italian captains agreed to protest to Uriu against the breach of Korean neutrality, but they could do nothing more to shelter the Russian ships. The American commander was not at the meeting; in his own report Marshall says he was not invited, and that he had made clear beforehand that he would observe strict neutrality. Rudnev decided to fight outside the harbor.¹²

The battle in phases

Shortly after 11 a.m. the Varyag weighed anchor, with the Korietz following. As they passed the foreign cruisers, the Russian minister to Korea, Aleksandr Pavlov, reported, the crews stood at attention and cheered, and the band of the Italian Elba played the Russian national anthem; Vanner and Neff tell the same scene.¹³

Just before noon the Japanese opened fire, the Asama first, at about 7,500 yards. The range closed to 5,000 or 6,000 yards as the cruisers converged. The Varyag answered at once, but the Japanese, with every advantage of numbers and position, hit her again and again. The Korietz took little part: her shells fell short, and she soon turned back.¹⁴

Turning point: the Varyag crippled

Within half an hour the cruiser was in deep trouble. A shell burst near the conning tower and wounded Rudnev; fires broke out on deck and below, one after another. Then a heavy shell struck her on the port side below the waterline, and a stokehold began to flood, giving her a heavy list. Vanner counts five serious hits at or below the waterline and at least five fires.¹⁵

How badly her guns were hurt is disputed. The British official history says that all but two of her 6-inch guns were disabled, and Vanner that all twelve were put out of action, their crews without gun shields and exposed to every splinter. Argumenty i Fakty points out that when the Varyag was later raised, all her 6-inch guns were found in place and in working order, so that she could in fact have fought on.¹⁶

Rudnev turned back for the anchorage, still firing. The fight had lasted about an hour.¹⁷

Scuttled in the harbor

At about 1 p.m. the two ships anchored again. Rudnev decided he could not renew the fight and would not let his ships become Japanese prizes. Boats from the British, French and Italian cruisers took off the wounded and the crews; the Vicksburg sent a doctor and helped with the wounded, but, as both Pavlov and Marshall record, would not take Russian sailors on board. The Korietz was blown up in the afternoon. The Varyag's sea valves were opened and she went down slowly after sunset, burning aft. The Russian steamer Sungari was set on fire and sunk as well.¹⁸

The figures for the dead and wounded differ. The British official history gives one officer and 30 men killed, six officers, Rudnev among them, and 85 men seriously wounded, and more than a hundred lightly wounded. The official Russian version, as Argumenty i Fakty sums it up, is 33 killed and 97 wounded; the Great Soviet Encyclopedia gives 122 killed and wounded; Vanner gives 82 killed and 190 wounded of a crew of 570.¹⁹

The damage done to the Japanese is disputed too. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia says the Varyag damaged two cruisers and sank a torpedo boat. The Japanese said none of their ships was hit; the British official history reports this and warns that little reliance can be placed on either side's claims, and Argumenty i Fakty was told by a Japanese naval attaché, citing the official Japanese naval history, that the Varyag scored no hits at all.²⁰

Aftermath

The overcrowded neutral cruisers could not keep the wounded for long. Pavlov wrote that gangrene broke out among them; Marshall describes being asked on 12 February to take them and refusing. In the end 24 of the most badly wounded were landed at a hospital in Chemulpo, and the rest of the crews went home by way of neutral ports. In Russia they were greeted as heroes.²¹

For Japan the outcome mattered far more than the gesture: it now held a harbor close to Seoul from the first day of the war. More troops followed. The British official history has the whole 12th Division ashore at Chemulpo by 22 February and on its way to Seoul, and Britannica describes the Japanese First Army landing at Inchon from March for its advance north to the Yalu.²² › Battle of Liaoyang, 1904

Legacy and memory

The Varyag did not stay on the bottom. The Japanese raised her in 1905 and commissioned her as the Soya. In 1916, with Japan and Russia now allies, Russia bought her back under her old name. She was sent to Britain for repairs in 1917, and after the revolution she never went home: she was sold for scrap and, under tow in 1920, ran aground on the coast of Scotland. A monument to her now stands on that shore; Vanner dates its unveiling to July 2006, Argumenty i Fakty to 2007.²³

In Russia the sortie became a legend of defiance. The Soviet encyclopedia called it a heroic battle in which the Varyag damaged two Japanese cruisers, and the version taught for decades, as Argumenty i Fakty sums it up, held that the fight had ended in effect in Russia's favor. Japanese and British records describe a brave but one-sided fight. The war that began at Chemulpo ended in 1905 with Japan's victory, the first by an Asian power over a European one in modern times, in Britannica's words.²⁴ › Battle of Tsushima, 1905