Zinovy Rozhestvensky

Zinovy Rozhestvensky took a fleet from the Baltic to the Sea of Japan, a voyage of some 18,000 nautical miles, and lost it in an afternoon at Tsushima. He was an artillery specialist who had made his name in the Russo-Turkish war and then as a gunnery reformer, and he was given the Second Pacific Squadron in 1904 after the First had been bottled up and destroyed at Port Arthur. He did not believe the mission could succeed and said so. The squadron sailed in October 1904 and opened fire on British fishing trawlers on the Dogger Bank within a week, believing them to be Japanese torpedo boats in the North Sea, which nearly brought Britain into the war and closed the Suez Canal to him. He therefore took the heavy ships around the Cape of Good Hope, coaling at sea from German colliers because no neutral port would have him, in tropical heat, with hulls fouling and crews of conscripts and reservists who had never fired the guns in practice. The voyage took seven months. He reached the Tsushima Strait on 27 May 1905 and met Togo Heihachiro, whose ships were faster, whose gunnery was better, and who crossed his line twice. Two thirds of the Russian ships were sunk and most of the rest surrendered; around 4,400 Russians died against 117 Japanese. Rozhestvensky was wounded in the head and taken prisoner unconscious aboard a destroyer. He asked at his court-martial to be held responsible and was acquitted, the court finding that he had been sent to do something that could not be done. He died four years later. The defeat helped produce the revolution of 1905.

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