Togo of Tsushima

At dawn on the morning of May 27, 1905 the newly invented wireless telegraph began to crackle and spit on a small Japanese warship: "The enemy's squadron has been sighted at point No. 203. The enemy is apparently steering toward the Eastern passage." About 2 p.m. a grizzled little man who had studied at Britain's Greenwich Naval College and well knew the Nelson tradition hoisted a fluttering ribbon of flags to the truck of his flagship:

"The existence of the Empire depends on this battle. Japan expects this day the courage and energy of every officer and every man in the fleet, Togo."

There began the greatest naval battle of modern times--a battle that for grand strategy surpassed Santiago seven years before, for decisiveness outclassed Jutland eleven years later. It was the kind of battle for which nations and navies build and spend and strive and dream for generations.

To attempt to recapture Port Arthur and replace Russia's already shattered Pacific fleet all that was left of the imperial Russian navy sailed from the Baltic under command of Admiral Ziniry Petrovich Rozhestvensky. One half cut through the Mediterranean while the other rounded the Cape of Good Hope. The halves met off Annam and crept cautiously up the China coast.

The Japanese commander-in-chief, Admiral Heihachiro Togo, knew that Admiral Rozhestvensky was a brave, capable and intelligent adversary. He knew that the Russian fleet was slightly superior numerically to his own: eight battleships, twelve cruisers, nine destroyers to five battleships, three second-line battleships, 23 cruisers and a flotilla of gunboats, torpedo boats and destroyers. But Admiral Togo also knew that Admiral Rozhestvensky's fleet was undermanned and under-provisioned, that all its bottoms were foul from its long sea voyage, that it could not carry enough coal to dodge all the way around Japan to Vladivostok with the possibility of being forced into an engagement on the way. With his fleet drydocked, scraped, painted, remunitioned and in review order, Admiral Togo waited confidently by the 122-mile Straits of Tsushima at the entrance to the Japan Sea.

After the wireless message and the Commander's message came the battle. Firing opened at 7,000 yards, the two fleets steaming in parallel columns like a classic exercise in an Annapolis textbook. In three quarters of an hour the leading Russian ships were out of action and Admiral Rozhestvensky gravely wounded. After nightfall when the Russian fleet was in hopeless disorder, the Japanese torpedo boats struck.

On battleships of 1905, bristling with pillbox turrets, it was impossible to depress gun muzzles sufficiently to beat off this new attack. A few coffee-grinding Catling guns were all the Russians had to oppose the little sea hornets. By next noon four battleships, seven cruisers, five destroyers and five auxiliary ships were at the bottom of the Japan Sea. Four more battleships and two hospital ships had surrendered. Four thousand Russians were killed or drowned and 7,000 more surrendered. Japanese losses were three torpedo boats, 116 killed, 538 wounded. The Battle of Tsushima Straits decided the naval mastery of the Eastern Pacific, sweeping Russia from the sea and placing Japan overnight among the world's great powers. Never before or since has the price of a great naval victory been so cheap.

Admiral Togo steamed back to Sasebo a world hero. His Emperor made him a Count. In 1911 when he was returning from the coronation of George V via Washington Admiral Togo was almost knocked out of his uniform by the enthusiastic back-slapping Teddy Roosevelt.

Last week, two days after the 20th anniversary of his great victory, Heihachiro Togo lay in his little Tokyo house, dying of cancer of the throat. For years Admiral Togo has been a living myth to the people of Japan, appearing publicly only once a year on the anniversary of the Battle of Tsushima Straits.

When the Emperor learned that the 86-year-old hero could not live more than a day or two, he had him raised from a Count to a Marquis, sent him from the imperial cellars twelve bottles of ancient wine. Admiral Togo could not swallow, could scarcely speak, but he had not forgotten how to receive such honors. He had his ceremonial Japanese robes (the haori-hakama) spread over the end of his bed. For six years his wife, the Countess Tet-suko Togo, had been bedridden with neuralgia. But at the clink of the Emperor's bottles she rose painfully to take her place beside her husband's wooden bed in a little room bare of all decoration but a print of Mount Fuji.

"I just want to rest until the end," croaked Admiral Togo, "I am thinking of my Emperor--and roses."

Next day he died. In formal proclamation the Emperor decreed that he should have a State Funeral, the 17th since the Meiji Restoration 66 years ago.

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