Part of the What Do You Know About That series
by Ruth Orr
SOUTH CHINA SEA — Alright everyone, let’s play a game. The year is 1904. You are Tsar Nikolai Alexandrovich Romanov II, or Emperor Nicholas II, latest in a dynastic line that has ruled Russia for the last three hundred years. The name of the game is Imperial Expansion. Your opponent? A silly, small little back-water island nation halfway around the world, some place called… Japan?
Okay, so the first thing to do is set up the game board. You pull it off the shelf, blow off the dust, and unroll it. Oh look! It’s a map of the Asian continent. That makes sense, you’re on one side, the Japanese are on the other, you’re fighting for the middle bits. The rules are easy enough to understand, and you’ve got the advantage, being from the obviously superior country. You’re European, for Pete’s sake! No eastern nation could ever challenge your supremacy. With that in mind, set up your pieces on the map, and let’s kick things off.
But first, maybe some backstory. The thing about Russia is that while it’s pretty flipping enormous, it’s also pretty flipping landlocked, and all of that land is to the very far north where it is very cold for a big chunk of the year. That means that if Russia wants to trade anything with anyone, they either have to go with the long and costly overland route options, or they have to wait for the narrow window in the summer months when their ports aren’t frozen over in ice. They had just one, Murmansk. So a long-term goal of the nation has always been to acquire at least one more warm-water port, both for trade and national security purposes. Murmansk gives them access to the Atlantic, so it made sense for them to look east for Pacific access.
Russia had been on a strong expansionist policy for a while now, pushing ever-further east in a bid to prevent the Mongols from ever coming in and kicking the living daylights out of them again (shush, we don’t talk about the Mongols). At any rate, the point is, Russia was moving east, fast. They were already renting a port from the Chinese that gave them year-round access to the sea, and were quite happy to keep pushing boundaries. It’s fun to be in charge of everything!
The Japanese were of a similar mind, though for different reasons. They didn’t have to worry so much about access to the ocean, seeing as they were surrounded by it. What they did need however, was stuff. Specifically, resources that are not available on their small home turf. They were looking west, expanding their influence into Manchuria and Korea, in order to get access to natural resources and oil.
The Japanese were not thrilled to see Russians knocking on their doors, but they did try to be good neighbors at first. They offered to split the difference, leaving Manchuria to the Russians if they’d just let them have the Korean peninsula. Russia refused, negotiations broke down, probably someone insulted someone else’s mother, and next thing you know, boom! The Imperial Japanese Navy has just attacked the Russian Eastern Fleet and war has been declared.
Russia was flabbergasted from the get-go when it turned out they were not just inherently better at everything than the Japanese. A European nation had never been defeated by an Asian one before (Stop thinking about the Mongols! They don’t count!) and the idea that the Russians might not win was just… silly. Obviously they were going to. I mean, sure, they’d lost a few decisive battles here and there. But it was just a matter of time. Still, better safe than sorry— with the war not going so well, Tsar Nicky decided to dispatch the Russian Baltic Fleet to provide backup for their embattled Eastern Fleet. And here’s where the game actually just goes off the rails.
Now, the ‘Baltic’ bit of ‘the Baltic Fleet’ refers to where the ships were currently stationed. For those of you less well-versed in global geography, the Baltic Sea is that bit of water between Sweden and the nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. For those of you even less well-versed, it’s as far west as Russia could reach. And this is the fleet that was supposed to provide aid to the ships a continent away in the South China Sea. Not exactly a rapid-response team.
Our Brave Baltic Boys ran into problems from the very beginning. For one, the ships were shoddily made and undersupplied. Most of the people being recruited had never set foot on a warship before. They were also spreading rumors like wildfire about the new rapid-attack torpedo ships that the Japanese had hidden along the Danish coastline and in the Norwegian fjords. They claimed the seas around them were riddled with mines that would sink their ships before they’d ever really left home. It should be noted, literally none of those rumors were true, but that didn’t stop the untested, untrained, and highly paranoid crew from fearing every single thing around them. One ship, the Kamchatka, got separated early on, and upon seeing another group of boats approach, assumed the worst and began shelling them. It was a group of European merchant men and fisherfolk. Luckily, nobody died.
That led to a bit of a sticky situation when they popped out at Dogger Bank in the North Sea, the bit between England and Denmark. It was foggy, because it’s England, and Russian look-outs spotted lights and flares ahead of them. Rather than check it out, the sailors immediately decided the secret Japanese fleets that were totally, definitely there, were attacking, and they scrambled to fire back. They began shelling everything around them as fast as possible. One ship let off 500 rounds in rapid succession. The fighting was fierce, and went on for 25 minutes. One crew was even preparing to be boarded, getting themselves ready for hand-to-hand combat, when a ceasefire was finally called. They succeeded in punching holes below the waterline in the battleship Aurora, and killing two sailors on board. Another three boats were hit, and two of their number were killed, while many others were injured. Oh wait, what’s that? The Aurora was part of the Russian fleet, and the sailors killed were fellow Russians? And those other three boats were not Japanese enemies, but actually British fishermen, who had their lights on and sent up flares to let the incoming Russians know where they were? Whoops.
The Brits were understandably not amused. They demanded monetary compensation from Russia, but even worse, they refused to let the Baltic Fleet move through the Suez Canal, which would have allowed them to shave months off their travel time. Instead, the beleaguered Baltics had to sail out to the open ocean, and then go all the way around Africa. Thanks to neutrality contracts, very few countries were willing to help them, so they continued to run ragged the whole way along.
By December of 1904, the Japanese had pretty much wiped out the Russian Far East Fleet, which did not help the morale of the Baltic Fleet, who were on their way to help them. There would be no combined force now, and they were on their own. The Russian commanders were barely able to keep the crew from mutinying.
When the Baltic Fleet finally limped into the South China Sea in May 1905, they were hurting. They didn’t have a chance to breathe however, because the Japanese Admiral Heihachiro Togo was expecting them. The fleet was almost immediately engaged in the Tsushima Straight.
It… did not go well for the Russians. Exhausted, hungry, undertrained, and with few supplies, the older Russian ships were rapidly overwhelmed. The Japanese had spent months training and practicing. Their ships were speedier. Their guns fired faster. Before long, four ships were at the bottom of the ocean. The Russians tried to flee, but the Japanese chased them down. Before lunchtime the next day, the Baltic Fleet had surrendered.
Final battle tally: 21 Russian ships sunk, seven ships captured, 5,045 Russians dead. The Japanese lost 117 men and three torpedo boats. Oof.
The humiliating defeat was the final nail in the coffin. A peace treaty was signed on September 5, 1905. The balance of power shifted, making Japan a great power and diminishing Russia’s importance. The defeat wasn’t great for ol’ Nicky either. The Russians were facing a whole pile of problems, and were already in a state of revolt. The embarassment of losing to an —ugh— Asian nation didn’t help. He managed to hold power for a few more years, but that was basically just during WWI, which also sucked for Russia. By 1917 he was forced to abdicate the throne, ending the Romanov dynasty and setting the stage for the rise of the Russia we know today.
