Chapter 4

"Eventually a deal was reached with the English," the Admiral continued, "Lieutenant Commander Jago was offered to them to state our case in an International Commission of Enquiry. Of course, everything had been settled behind closed doors already. This was for public consumption."

"And this Jago, sir," replied the Ensign, "he wrote the official record?"

"Aye, that was for Russian public consumption. They needed to hear about heros, gallantry, how we overcame a treacherous attack. The Government didn't want to tell them what a bunch of scared, bumbling fools we were."

"I suppose so, sir. I mean the Autocracy..."

"Autocracies, Democracies, the Soviet Union, they're all the same when it comes to mistakes, my friend. 'Cover your arse, ' the Americans say, always cover your arse and never admit the truth."

"But sending Jago? That was a terrible mistake that Rhozdventsky lived to regret," Admiral Gorshin added sadly.

Lieutenant Commander Jago was a man on a mission. A man of great ambition, he believed he knew better than the commanders of the expedition and constantly said so.

This may not have been too much of a problem for the Admiral but for the fact that Jago hailed from a large publishing family. Ever since Libau he had been sending home long articles full of criticism of the enterprise and its commanders. These had been widely circulated causing much embarrassment.

This, of course, was a serious breach of the chain of command and he should have been dismissed. However, a group of Senior Admiralty agitators had listened with interest and championed the fiery Officer. To get rid of him would seem to substantiate his claims and Rhozdventsky chose to keep him where he could keep an eye on him.

The gist of his proposals were thus. During the latter half of the 19th century the Baltic fleet had been basically a coast defence force. Russia had been humiliated during the Crimean War by steamships of the French and British roaming at will along the coast of Russian Finland. Therefore in the ensuing years she'd concentrated on building low-freeboard turret ships along the lines of American Civil War monitors to protect the coast.

These ships had never been designed for service beyond the coast. They were old, slow and antiquated and Rhozdventsky had ignored them as having no fighting value.

Jago suggested sending these old ships out to the Far East in support of the 2nd Pacific Squadron. 'They could be used to diffuse Japanese fire and allow the 1st Division a respite for which to concentrate on the Japanese flagship.' Rhozdventsky thought the scheme just plain daft, never mind sending the crews on what amounted to a suicide mission. The ships were too slow and unseaworthy, compounding his organisational difficulties.

There were the two 'flatirons, ' the Senyavin and the Apraxin. They looked like floating slippers with a tin can mounted on the toe. The other was the ancient Nikolai the First, its two obsolete guns only recently mounted in a turret. Originally it had them in an open barbette. The last ship Jago wanted to send was the Nakhimov, an Armoured cruiser built in the late 1870's complete with a barque sailing rig to assist her feeble engines.

Surprisingly the Russian Admiralty found someone to command this ill-assorted quartet, Vice Admiral Nebogatov.

Finally the Russian fleet was allowed to leave Casablanca for Dakar, their next port of call. They sailed into a storm of unseasonal proportions that hammered the ships with huge seas. The Destroyers were all taken under tow and most of the crews took shelter in the tugs. The remainder spent a perilous night in the wildly pitching boats.

Boilers were doused by seawater cascading down the funnels and ventilators. The skeleton crews had to spend the night pumping the water out with handpumps to prevent the boats from being swamped. They worked in the dark lit by swinging oil lamps because the generators were steam-powered and couldn't be started.

Yvgeny Gorshin was left on board the Grozny as senior Officer. He knew that if the boat sank they wouldn't be rescued. With this grim knowledge, Gorshin and his 15 crewmates worked themselves to exhaustion to save the Destroyer.

In the morning, the seas were calm enough to permit the crews to be relieved. Exhausted, they flopped into cold bunks on the tug Kamchatka in their wet clothes and tried to sleep. Amazingly, no-one had been lost during the storm.

Just when things were looking optimistic once more, the Orel lost way and wallowed in the swell. Her port engine had broken down again.

"We sheltered in the Bay of Agadir," Gorshin explained. "While they repaired the Orel we got some steam up and patrolled down the coast of the Western Sahara. It was good to get under way and out from under the nose of the Admiral. He had a blistering temper, he snarled at everyone. Except Kursel, of course, they were as thick as thieves."

"Kursel?"

"Sub Lieutenant, Admiral's Aide and Rhozdventsky's only confidante. Kursel went down with the Suvurov fighting her only remaining gun, a 74mm out of a stern port. A real hero, Kursel, one of many... they deserved a better cause."

The Bravy led Grozny, Bezuprechny, Buiny and Bedovy down that flat featureless stretch of coast. Inland they could see the final orange ridges of the High Atlas mountains peter out to the sea. For several hundred kilometres there was nothing except the occasional camps of fishermen, their dhows pulled up onto the sands.

Finding a wide, empty beach, the Destroyers anchored and the crews rowed ashore. A crewman from the Bedovy planted the St Andrews Ensign in the sand while the sailors shared out their stocks of vodka. Someone ran naked into the sea to the shouted encouragement of the other men. Soon more followed until hundreds of naked, pink, male bodies thrashed about in the Atlantic surf.

Returning, the five Destroyers steamed into the anchorage under full power, their battle ensigns flapping from their mainmasts. At the signal from Bravy they all turned to port in perfect order. The bored crews of the battleships clapped and cheered at the impressive display.

Pikalevoi, so drunk he could hardly remain upright, accepted the congratulatory signal from the Commander in Chief on behalf of the Destroyers. [A fine piece of drill] enthused the Suvurov.

"It was a happy carefree day," smiled the old Admiral, "perhaps the best day we had and were to have during the entire expedition. The Senior Officers may have suspected, but the crews of the Squadron certainly knew. From then on we were called the 'Vodka Flotilla' or simply 'The Smirnoffs.' And I have to tell you, we lived up to that tradition conscientiously."

On the second day of their stay at Agadir a steam launch arrived with a French Official to deliver a formal note of protest. It was against the Laws of Neutrality to conduct repairs to the vessels of beligerent Nations in Neutral waters. That said, the Suvurov's Senior Officers sent him back to shore comprehensibly drunk after an afternoon's repast in the sun.

No-one had any doubt that it was the English who were causing all the trouble.

Repairs concluded on the morning of the third day of their stay at Agadir. The repair ship Ural cast off the limping Orel and the fleet raised steam. It left the anchorage just before a second, and more severe, protest arrived from the French.

The voyage down to Dakar required a second coaling at sea. This was achieved off the Canary Islands from a fleet of 13 colliers. It was back-breaking work. First, the bags of coal, each upwards of 80 kilos, were swung over to the ships on slings. The crews then had to haul the bags to the chutes and tip the contents into the bunkers. From there the coal had to be shovelled around to trim the ship.

Eventually, on the longer legs of the journey, the Suvurovs took on board nearly 5000 tons of coal each. This represented over a quarter of the total displacement of the Battleships and it all had to be manhandled by the crew with shovels. Afterwards the ship and crew were caked in a slimy, black dust.

It wasn't until the middle of November the fleet arrived at Dakar. It had been over 6 weeks since they had left Libau. Progress had been glacial. Again coaling was done outside the harbour and the fleet left within 24 hours. No shore leave was granted, even the Admiral remained on his ship.

The next scheduled call was to be Luederitz in German Southwest Africa. The fleet coaled twice on that leg. First off the Ivory Coast and again far off the coast of German Kamerun in open sea. The second coaling was extremely difficult in the rising Atlantic swell.

Arriving at the German colonial port, they found the Germans had laid out a neat anchorage in a wide bay to the North. There they were allowed to coal in the calm of a sheltered anchorage. Afterwards the crews were permitted ashore to get stone drunk. Compared to the extravagance of Casablanca, there was little else to do in that strictly Calvinist German town.

Firing practice continued whenever they had a chance. The Tug Kamchatka had the unenviable task of towing the target, a canvas sail on a raft. Even with half a kilometre of cable run out, the tug was repeatedly hit by practice rounds. The hapless crew cowered behind the superstructure. When the sternhouse of the Kamchatka was smashed in and the main winch dismounted, practice was called off for the day. For the first time on the expedition, a ship's crew refused duty. In future the gunners would have to fire on fixed points such as rocks. The Kamchatka flatly refused to tow any more targets.

The next leg was going to be one of the longest. British or Portugese territories extended for the next 3000 kilometres or more and neither of those powers welcomed the Russian fleet. Therefore the next stop was going to have to be in French Madagascar. In fact they had been requested to anchor by a small island off the Northwest coast, Nossi Be'.

No matter where the coal was stowed, the Russians couldn't cram sufficient into the Destroyers for them to steam all that way. They therefore had to be towed.

The bigger ships, though, took on as much coal as they could find places to stow it. Coal was piled into empty cabins, passageways and on deck in bags.

The extra weight created more stability problems for the ships of the first Division. The 'tumblehome' design of the hull meant that as they sank lower in the water they took on an excessive rolling motion. The Suvurovs began to heel over spectacularly under way in moderate seas.

Miraculously, all ships arrived and anchored at Nossi Be'. It had been a harrowing and uncomfortable journey for the sweating crews. The weather was hot and humid making life unbearable in the boiler and engine rooms. Some stokers had been overcome by heatstroke. The Squadron began to record the first deaths. The barely-sanitary, overcrowded, overloaded, boiling hot conditions were beginning to take their toll on the crews.

For most of the Destroyer crews, however, they spent a relatively pleasant, although boring time sunning themselves on their towed vessels.

At Nossi Be' Rhozdventsky was to learn the shocking news that he was to wait for another 'fleet' to reinforce him. Nebogatov was on the way through the Suez Canal with his 'Third Pacific Squadron' of vessels derisively dubbed the 'Self-sinkers.'

Horrified, the Admiral was for leaving straight away before he could be encumbered by these ancient vessels, however Orel had badly miscalculated her coal requirements. She had barely 600 tons on board, not enough for the next leg of the journey. Rhozdventsky felt that the fates were combining against him. He had no choice but to wait.

The crews swamped the small rubber port on Nossi Be', Andoani. The jungle was barely kept at bay, a lush, exotic and rich wall of vegetation. Everything had been laid on again by the French, rivalling that of Casablanca. Boatloads of Champagne, caviar and prostitutes had been arriving for days preceeding the Squadron's arrival. When the fleet arrived they found a veritable playground of delights waiting for them.

The fleet was to languish at Nossi Be' for nearly three months waiting for Nebogatov, who finally left in early February. Many of the Russians had not seen such exotic wildlife before and a roaring trade began in tropical animals. Birds of every description fluttered about inside the warships or cackled from bamboo cages. Monkeys both large and small shared the mess decks with the crew. The warships soon looked like floating menageries.

Boatloads of traders, pimps and prostitutes, shady characters of all stripes swaggered their way around the ships. For a few kopeks the crewmen could have their laundry done, the Chinese using the ships' running rigging as clothes-lines.

A mood of indolence began to set in. After the hardships of the voyage so far, the crews soaked up the tropical languor. Rust was not cleaned off the vessels, cleaning and painting was ignored. The ships began to look like abandoned hulks, albeit teeming with wildlife, human and animal.

Rhozdventsky had taken the news about the reinforcements hard. He seemed to lose interest in the expedition, preferring life ashore in the 'Hotel Orientale.' For days he kept himself in his Hotel suite while the discipline of the Squadron began to disintegrate. Crime escalated as law and order waned.

Enkvist sulked on his flagship, the Aurora. Always willing to find fault with Rhozdventsky, he had ample opportunity at Nossi Be'.

Felkersam of the Second Division finally died at Nossi Be'. Ill for some time, his death was kept from the Squadron in case it proved a bad omen. His flag still flew from the Oslyabya's mainmast although the old boy himself was in a pine box in his cabin, packed in ice. Not even the Captains of the rest of the Division, the Navarin, Sissoi Veliky and Monomakh, knew the truth. In effect, the Oslyabya's Captain, the same man who displayed such dubious ethics at 'The Battle of the North Sea, ' became a de facto Admiral. The 2nd Division still looked to the flagship for orders.

The next blow to befall the Squadron was the news of the fall of Port Arthur. Gorshin's prediction at Libau had come true, there was now nothing in the Far East to relieve. The original raison d'etre of the expedition had evaporated.

Port Arthur had withstood a siege for close to 180 days. Thanks to the Vadivostok Cruisers, who sank the Japanese ships carrying the siege guns, the Japanese army had had great difficulty overcoming the defences. But with fresh 280mm howitzers, the Japanese slowly reduced the place, hill by hill. The 1st Pacific Squadron, Poltava, Retvizan, Pobieda, Peresviet and the Armoured Cruisers Pallada and Bayan had been systematically sunk by heavy Japanese shells. The last, the Battleship Sevastopol, Gunboat Otzvashny and seven Destroyers conducted a final desperate defence, firing from the Coast at the advancing Japanese. With all ammunition exhausted the Battleship and Gunboat scuttled themselves while the Destroyers broke out through Tojo's waiting fleet.

A terse announcement appearing to emanate from the Commander in Chief cited Sevastopol's heroic example. Popular opinion credited it to Kursel, Rhozdventsky's faithful aide and apologist. The Admiral himself was locked in a deep depression.