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

No ship was sunk in the main action, and yet the battle settled the war at sea in the Far East. Once the Port Arthur squadron had failed to break out, it was trapped in a harbor under siege.²

Background

Japan opened the war in February 1904 with an attack on the Russian squadron in Port Arthur, at the tip of the Liaodong peninsula. Over the following months, according to the Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR), part of the National Archives of Japan, the Combined Fleet made eight attacks on the port and three attempts to block its harbor mouth, but the Russian squadron was still intact inside.³ › Battle of Chemulpo Bay, 1904

Tokyo feared that Russia's Baltic Fleet would sail east and join it. For Japan, as the British official history puts it, the land campaign depended on command of the sea, and it was vital to crush the Port Arthur squadron before reinforcements could come from Europe. A new Third Army under General Nogi Maresuke was formed to take the fortress from the land.⁴

In early August the siege guns came within range of the harbor. From 7 August the Japanese bombarded the town and the anchorage, and on 9 August they hit the battleship Retvizan, which took in hundreds of tons of water through a hole below the waterline. JACAR, citing the naval historian Toyama Saburō, notes that this damage started the Russian debate over leaving Port Arthur.⁵

Vitgeft did not expect to succeed. He went, as both Britannica and the British official history record, on a direct order from Tsar Nicholas II to break through to Vladivostok, and with the fear that his ships would otherwise be sunk at anchor without a fight.⁶

Armies and commanders

Vitgeft flew his flag in the Tsesarevich. The squadron sailed with six battleships, the Tsesarevich, Retvizan, Pobeda, Peresvet, Sevastopol and Poltava, the cruisers Askold, Pallada, Diana and Novik, and destroyers. Britannica counts fourteen destroyers and JACAR eight; the British official history explains the gap: fourteen came out, but only eight were to go on to Vladivostok, while the rest turned back after seeing the fleet through the mined waters.⁷

Togo commanded the Japanese fleet in person from the battleship Mikasa. His battle line was the battleships Mikasa, Asahi, Fuji and Shikishima with the armored cruisers Kasuga and Nisshin. Britannica puts his whole force at four battleships, ten cruisers, eighteen destroyers and twenty-nine torpedo boats; the official history counts four battleships, three armored and eight protected cruisers, seventeen destroyers and twenty-nine torpedo boats close at hand.⁸

The battle in phases

The Russian squadron steamed out of Port Arthur on the morning of 10 August and turned southeast for the open sea. Togo gathered his divisions as soon as he heard. Britannica writes that he took too long to form his line and let the Russians slip past the blockade, and the official history agrees that their path now lay open before them.⁹

Early in the afternoon the two fleets opened fire at long range. The first action was indecisive: the lines maneuvered and passed each other, the Russian cruisers drew out of the line, and the Russians kept running to the southeast. Then, to the official history's approval, Togo made a deliberate choice. Rather than accept a close fight that might let the Russian van escape, he drew off out of range and set out to overhaul them, so as to force them back to Port Arthur instead.¹⁰

The chase took about two hours. JACAR puts the point where the Japanese caught up some 45 nautical miles northeast of the Shandong promontory. In the late afternoon the second, decisive action began, the two lines pounding each other at ranges of several miles.¹¹

The Japanese ships took real damage. Togo's flagship Mikasa was hit hard, and the official history records that by the end of an hour of fighting neither side had gained any real advantage; the Russians had begun to hope that they could hold on until dark.¹²

Turning point

Then two 12-inch shells struck the Tsesarevich in quick succession. The official history, using Port Arthur time, puts the moment at about 5:45 in the evening; JACAR, from the Japanese record, at about 6:40. One shell burst by the foremast and killed Vitgeft and members of his staff; the other burst on the conning tower and killed or stunned every man inside. Britannica credits the hit to the Asahi.¹³

The helm was left jammed hard over. The Tsesarevich swung round in a circle and cut through her own line, and the Russian formation fell apart. The Retvizan's captain then made a daring move, turning his battleship straight toward the Japanese line to draw their fire, and the Japanese concentrated on her until she turned away.¹⁴

With their admiral dead and their line broken, the Russian battleships, still in confusion, turned back toward the north and west. Togo pressed them toward Port Arthur until dusk, then broke off the gunnery duel and sent in his destroyers and torpedo boats for night attacks.¹⁵

Aftermath

The squadron broke up. Five battleships and one cruiser, the Pallada, found their way back to Port Arthur the next morning. The rest scattered to neutral harbors: the Askold to Shanghai, the Diana to Saigon, and the battered Tsesarevich to the German port of Qingdao on Jiaozhou Bay, where they were disarmed or interned.¹⁶

Four days later, on 14 August, Vice Admiral Kamimura Hikonojō's armored cruisers met the Vladivostok cruisers Rossia, Gromoboi and Rurik off Ulsan in Korea. The Rurik fell out of line and drew the concentrated Japanese fire, the other two turned back to cover her but were finally forced to leave her and fled north, and the Rurik was lost. The accounts differ on why Kamimura broke off the chase: JACAR records a report from his flagship Izumo that she was running out of shells, while the British official history judges that his judgment was at fault.¹⁷

With these two battles, JACAR concludes, Japan won almost complete command of the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea. The ships that returned to Port Arthur never came out again as a fleet, and they were lost with the besieged fortress.¹⁸ › Battle of Mukden, 1905

Legacy and memory

Britannica calls the Yellow Sea one of the first naval battles fought entirely by steel ships firing explosive shells. It showed both how hard such ships were to sink and how a single hit in the right place could decide a battle: hours of gunfire sank no battleship, but one shell on the Russian flagship broke the whole squadron.¹⁹

The battle's reputation rests on its consequences more than on its losses. Tony Bunting notes in Britannica that it has been called the Trafalgar of the East, and the British official history argues that Togo's choice to drive the Russians back rather than risk his ships was proved wise by events, since he kept his fleet for the coming battle with the Baltic Fleet.²⁰

That battle came the next year, when the Baltic Fleet that Japan had feared reached the Tsushima Strait.²¹ › Battle of Tsushima, 1905

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