Maritime Operations in the RussoJapanese War, 1904-1905: Volume One

By Julian S. Corbett

Sir Julian Corbett was regarded as one of the greatest naval historians of the early twentieth century. Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905 was never available to the public during his lifetime. As noted in the introduction to Volume I, Corbett dealt not with “minute details and themes,...but a continuous narrative that demonstrated the interrelationship of land and sea events as they impinged on each other in conception, execution and results. Thus political objectives, geographic factors, and the machinery of government all could be seen working together as part of a whole.” Corbett’s work delineated the differences between maritime and land warfare, while also exploring their interaction. Published in hardcover by the Naval Institute Press in 1994, both volumes are now available in paperback for the first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Mar 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781612518206

Book preview

MARITIME OPERATIONS IN THE

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR, 1904–1905

This book has been brought to publication with the generous assistance of an anonymous donor through the Naval War College Foundation and Edward S. and Joyce I. Miller.

Naval Institute Press

291 Wood Road

Annapolis, MD 21402

The publisher regrets that it was impossible to reproduce the illustrations that accompanied the 1914/15 edition of this work owing to their size and condition. References to maps, charts, and plates have been left in the text in order to maintain the scholarly integrity of the work. The only known originals of these illustrations can be found in the Library of the Royal Naval College and at the Naval Historical Branch, Ministry of Defence, London.

Text of the book by Corbett, with illustrations, © British Crown copyright 1994, published by permission of the Controller of Her Britannic Majesty’s Stationery Office.

This work first appeared in January 1914 as a confidential publication of the Intelligence Division of the Admiralty War Staff. This edition reproduces the copy held by the Library of the Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

Introduction copyright © 1994 by the United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First Naval Institute Press paperback edition published in 2015.

ISBN: 978-1-61251-820-6 (eBook)

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Corbett, Julian Stafford, Sir, 1854–1922.

Maritime operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905 / Julian S. Corbett: with an introduction by John B. Hattendorf and Donald M. Schurman.

p.cm.

Includes index.

1. Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905—Naval operations, Japanese. 2. Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905—Naval operations, Russian. I. Hattendorf, John B. II. Schurman, D. M. (Donald M.). III. Title.

DS517.1.c671994

Print editions meet the requirements of ANSI/NISO z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

232221201918171615987654321

First printing

INTRODUCTION

Sir Julian Corbett was one of the greatest naval historians in the early years of the twentieth century. Even today, nearly three-quarters of a century after his death, Corbett’s books are still in print and have become classics of naval history. One book that he wrote, however, was never published: Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905. In January 1914 the Intelligence Division of the Admiralty War Staff released six copies of volume one, which included much sensitive information from official Japanese intelligence reports. More generously, it printed just over 400 copies of volume two in October 1915. Although marked confidential, the book was available to senior active-duty naval officers. Only a few sets of the original printing have survived and, until now, this work has not been available to the general public.

CORBETT AND NAVAL HISTORY.

From the time Corbett published his first major book, Drake and the Tudor Navy (1898), he was recognized as a brilliant naval historian. At first he was recognized only at home in England, but soon his reputation spread to the far corners of the British Empire and to the United States, where he was quickly accorded attention at the Naval War College in Newport.¹ From an early stage in Corbett’s career, certain powerful and influential people sought to use his historical insights to illuminate the British and imperial strategic problems of the Edwardian era. Although he enjoyed a reputation as a serious thinker, Corbett never did convince naval activists of the real value of his strategic propositions or even of his methods of confronting problems. This, quite apart from his historical work. The same can be said of his influence overseas during his lifetime. He was taken seriously in the United States, but Corbett never equaled Alfred Thayer Mahan in the public eye, let alone replaced him, nor did he upset Mahan’s preeminence in England. The pulpit belonged to the prophet.

In his strategic writing Corbett attempted to use historical evidence — in some detail and with discrimination — to allow the age of sail to speak to the age of steam. He was doing this at a time when costs were escalating and the navy had to be seen trying to marry concepts to costs. Behind Corbett’s work lay the thought that navies would not invariably dominate the sea on the basis of some crude calculation of the biggest being the best. This also meant that naval policy in war might not always be the pursuit of battles of annihilation but might involve some paring, twisting, and, perhaps, stealth. These thoughts, whether understood or not, were reinforced by the fact that British seapower was traditionally geared to working with the army to such an extent that it was almost impossible to think of them separately, although army and navy officers and their apologists were always prepared to try. Nevertheless, in terms of statecraft, seapower was tied to service cooperation in Britain.

This situation forced Corbett to examine the more subtle aspects of naval policy in war; that, of course, meant thinking about the preparation of naval matériel in peacetime. Corbett was pushed toward creating a doctrine of limited war that fit not only the central thoughts behind his work but also the need to plan realistically against invasion — from France or from Germany—and against anti-imperial incursions around the world by the Russians. One might think that the same mentality that welcomed the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of 1902, providing as it did some respite from having to defend everything everywhere, ought to have welcomed Corbett’s work; but that did not happen. Indeed, some critics thought that Corbett was advocating a sneaky kind of naval warfare that sought to avoid glorious full engagements — even to avoid action altogether.

Julian Corbett’s notions of limited naval warfare kept him from being widely acclaimed as a strategist in his own day. Even when he first published his famous study Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (1911),² the eclectic brilliance of its concepts dazzled its readers more than it convinced makers of naval policy. Aside from the fact that Corbett attacked the always go at ’em view of naval tactics and strategy, there were other reasons why he created suspicion among naval officers. He was, after all, a mere civilian trained in the law, so that his strategic work was quite different from the sort of thing professional naval officers were used to considering. Just why Corbett was different will become clear to even the most casual reader of the present volume.

Recent historians customarily note that Corbett was influenced by Carl von Clausewitz.³ Any modern reader of Corbett’s England in the Seven Years War (1907) and Some Principles of Maritime Strategy will be aware of that fact. Nevertheless, the Corbett of the years that followed — especially the Corbett of the Russo-Japanese War—will be extremely hard to understand unless we detach him from the resulting modern assumptions that follow and which Corbett himself would not have accepted. Although clearly influenced by Clausewitz, Corbett said more than once that he found German thinkers and German strategic ideas uncongenial. Furthermore, he thought that the wide acceptance of ideas generated in the confines of the German General Staff was a strange new development in British military thought. The English were, he maintained, different.

Looking back, it is easy for historians to conclude that during both the Edwardian period and the Great War, continentalist ideas, theories, and strategic thinking in Britain carried the day as a result of profound cogitation, not because practical events dictated last-minute stances and the weighting of relative value among the different services. Historically speaking, it is not difficult to argue that, from the time of the Armada onward, there was no continental versus blue water contest in every war. That the English survived and created an empire testifies to the fact that it was a cooperative venture involving alliances, money, and armies and navies. The integration mechanism did the work. These factors were conjunct aspects of an island power’s stance, a stance necessarily dependent on the sea, using it as a launching pad and a defensive scarp. The weighting varied, but the joint nature of national activity never did. For instance, it was a recurring fact that the Royal Navy took a couple of years to work up from an in ordinary stance to that of a war footing. And there is no large record of continentalists or anyone else who tried to impede the process.

Whether the navy was the single most important ingredient in British foreign policy or whether it was the army, the diplomats, the economic capacity of empire, or the subsidy method could be and has been argued. We will not attempt to continue the debate here, but what needs to be firmly understood is that Julian Corbett wrote as if all these aspects were part of a whole. He was not afraid of stating that total victory in war could not come simply by the exercise of seapower. He was able to see that, historically, it never had been so. Not for him the heady ideas of Sir Herbert Richmond and other naval writers, that if Elizabeth I had not done all by halves and had been totally committed to seapower, then victory against Spain might have been possible. No historian writes like that today about that period. Similarly, when Corbett summed up his 1910 study on The Campaign of Trafalgar, he concluded, As it was, the sea had done all that the sea could do, and for Europe the end was failure.⁴

Corbett was not a blue water writer. If the wealth of the combined forces of the British Empire was real, the will and the capacity to defend it were limited. Corbett had written The Successors of Drake in 1900 and England in the Mediterranean in 1904 precisely because he thought the rivalry between the army and the navy for the public purse on the basis of exclusivist arguments silly. Between 1901 and 1904 he wrote a number of articles for the Monthly Review and its editor Henry Newbolt because, Liberal though he was, Corbett thought the idea of pretending that Britain was great without greater Britain was nonsense. He believed that the times demanded both humane treatment in war and careful husbanding of resources.

It was because Corbett was constrained by his historical appreciation of his own country’s national situation that he thought in terms other than absolute victory. It was his training as a nationally bound historian of the British armed forces that allowed him insights into the military problems of other peoples. Thus, it was natural for him to see the Russo-Japanese War as a limited conflict in which the idea of a Japanese admiral or general dictating terms of absolute surrender in St. Petersburg seemed ludicrous.

Furthermore, the whole course of the conflict led to a similar interpretation, seeing naval and military operations as part of a whole. Corbett thought that the sea battle in the Strait of Tsushima was nothing more than the extinguishing of a severe threat to a vulnerable Japanese army in Korea, stretched over the water. This is an important aspect for the modern reader to grasp, for it puts Corbett in general tune with other thinkers of his time. Even the German leaders regarded their High Seas Fleet as a part of a composite whole in a coming complicated war. Fear and facts, in concert, broadened the horizons of strategic ambition, not prevision. In this sense Corbett was a part of his times. This was not, of course, Mahan’s viewpoint, but Mahan was a historian of seapower in a country that interpreted British naval experience through the lens of its own distinctive American way of war.⁵

Churchill rightly said, Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than the wars of kings.⁶ While democracies provide no guarantee that barbarisms will be curbed, many statesmen of the time saw these wars as indicative of the needs to modify and to codify international law. In general, for the educated observer of current events at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Spanish-American War and the Russo-Japanese War represented the type of war people expected they would have in the future.

Corbett’s tendency to think about limited war had its roots, therefore, in the outlook of the time, as well as in the historical work he did on the Royal Navy and the relation of British state policy to it. When for the first time he turned to a foreign war as a subject, it was with his homegrown outlook and conditioning in mind. In this process, however, he did not branch out and become, as Mahan certainly had, a writer with a claim to being a universalist military-naval thinker. Corbett’s parochial approach to the Russo-Japanese War made him less valuable when the reader’s purpose was to formulate a principle of seapower by examining the case of a large land power with a sizable navy and to translate that into a principle for the Soviets or the Americans.

Along those lines, it is his inhibition and his English outlook on naval power that make Corbett less than satisfying outside his own country; certainly in the United States. Nevertheless, modern Americans will find him more interesting in the light of present and future conditions if the main issue is not how to make a decisive strike but how to get the maximum result — satisfying a world constituency—from the intelligent use of minimum force.

Corbett’s study of the Russo-Japanese War can be better understood by linking his general understanding of naval history and naval affairs with the origins of the book itself.

THE GENESIS OF THE BOOK.

British naval planners were drawn to examine a conflict like the Russo-Japanese War, involving as it did a spectacular naval victory as well as the deployment of an island power’s army over the water. Naturally, the primary interest of those leaders was an account of that war with lessons drawn for British seapower. The Committee of Imperial Defence (C.I.D.) organized a group of officers into a historical section to undertake the project at once, and by 1910 the first volume appeared.⁷ In other European countries, military staffs undertook similar studies, but some consider the British study the best, with its focus on imperial strategy and the treatment of the war as a whole, rather than as a composite of military and naval operations.⁸ The Admiralty, on the other hand, which had been interested in the Imperial Japanese Navy since that service decided to follow British methods of training in 1870,⁹ was suspicious of the preponderance of army interests in the C.I.D.’s approach to gathering materials. It wanted something more specifically naval on the Russo-Japanese War. To start the work, Captain Charles Ottley,¹⁰ the Director of Naval Intelligence, employed a linguist from his own office, Major E. Y. Daniel of the Royal Marines, to translate the available Russian naval documents. Japanese information was freely available under the mantle of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and included the Japanese navy’s confidential staff study of the war, translated by naval instructor Oswald T. Tuck, Royal Navy.

The problem lay with the actual writing of the history. The task first fell to Captain Thomas S. Jackson,¹¹ former naval attaché in Tokyo and eyewitness to the war, who was on temporary assignment to the Naval Intelligence Division in 1906. He continued with the project into 1907, even after he had taken command of the seagoing training ship for boys, HMS Cressy. By 1908 Commander John Luce¹² relieved Jackson of the writing task while on temporary assignment with Naval Intelligence. At first, Captain Ottley seems to have assumed that almost any intelligent naval officer, when ordered by his superiors, could work alongside the translator and interpret facts in a satisfactory manner. In late 1908, however, when Ottley (now secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence) and Captain Edmond Slade,¹³ the new Director of Naval Intelligence, saw Luce’s first draft, they were privately not satisfied. Shortly thereafter, Luce was promoted to captain and preferred not to remain with Naval Intelligence.

In his previous assignment Slade had been director of the Naval War Course and had employed Julian Corbett as one of the regular lecturers. Slade passed the draft on to Corbett, asking him to improve it. The reaction was strong and swift. I wrote him, Corbett confided in his diary,

a strong letter stating that it was useless — playing at it — and that I could have nothing to do with such amateurish stuff and thought the Admiralty ought not either. It is going back to where he began — trivial stuff without a spark of understanding of what strategy means — done by a Commander who could not possibly know enough . . . and he should protest at all the N.I.D. work being wasted for lack of proper treatment.¹⁴

Corbett’s reaction convinced Slade that the Admiralty should find a better author. Apart from seeing Luce’s draft, Corbett was not privy to the Admiralty Board’s gyrations. Since the Japanese had supplied much of the information secretly, the Director of Naval Intelligence thought that the history must remain secret. Slade considered several other authors for the job, including Rear Admiral Robert Lowry¹⁵ and Rear Admiral William Henderson.¹⁶ Before a decision could be made, though, Rear Admiral Sir Alexander Bethell¹⁷ took over from Slade, who was ordered to duty as Commander in Chief, East Indies Station. Slade left Bethell with the suggestion that Corbett might do the job, and shortly after taking over, Bethell offered Corbett a permanent post to write the history.

At first, Corbett was overjoyed at the prospect, confiding to his diary that such a job was the summit of ambition.¹⁸ The First Sea Lord, Admiral Lord Fisher, foreseeing the frustration for Corbett that secrecy and censorship would cause, however, sent for him and cautioned him against accepting the job. Slade too advised Corbett that senior officers at sea would not approve of the appointment. Corbett turned down the offer in a narrow squeak, leaving Luce to continue on a part-time basis.

Shortly afterward, the director of the Naval War Course invited Corbett to lecture on the Russo-Japanese War. This placed the C.I.D. in an awkward position, for Corbett was known to be critical of the C.I.D. history of the war, thinking it too rigidly based on the German approach to writing military and naval history in which technical details rather than broad strategic ideas were presented. At the same time, his views touched on the whole volatile question of historical writing and its instructional value for officers. While the Treasury pressed to abolish the C.I.D.’s historical work, the Admiralty pressed to bring the writing of naval history back to the Admiralty and to link it to both the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Naval War Course. Bethell felt that the C.I.D.’s history had little instructional value for the Royal Navy, and he wanted to go ahead with a special naval history.

One problem remained: there were no naval officers qualified to write it. At a meeting of the C.I.D. in November 1909, British army representatives stressed the need to prepare a military history, but they strongly opposed the notion of having civilians write it. Nevertheless, the group suggested vaguely that civilians might be preferable to having officers continue with the C.I.D.’s historical work. With this in hand, Bethell again approached Corbett, asking him to consider the job on contract. This created a minor bureaucratic crisis, with the C.I.D. objecting to the Treasury about the prospect of having a purely naval history, written by a civilian, charged to the C.I.D.’s budget. The Treasury, in turn, told the C.I.D. and the Admiralty that the history was purely the navy’s concern and cost and joined in saying that a naval officer—not a writer such as Mr. Corbett—should do the work.

Declaring that there was no officer who could possibly do the work, Admiralty Secretary Graham Greene contacted Corbett and asked him for his evaluation of the C.I.D. history. Corbett explained that, in his opinion, the history was hopelessly flawed by slavishly following the German approach, which stressed the detailed narrative of events, followed by a conclusion on a narrow theme. Corbett believed that this approach encouraged the separation of military and naval affairs, which tended to obscure the entire maritime viewpoint—that whole range of considerations that distinguished British history. Corbett proposed an entirely different approach: not one that dealt with minute details and themes, such as the effect of shot on armor, but a continuous narrative that demonstrated the interrelationship of land and sea events as they impinged on each other in conception, execution, and results. Thus, political objectives, geographical factors, and the machinery of government all could be seen working together as part of a whole.

In September 1910 Corbett wrote to Greene that for £1,000 he would write the book along the lines of his Naval War College lectures. I have no idea of giving a microscopic account of the war such as ran into so much money and matter in another case, he wrote, contrasting his plan with the official history of the Boer War,

nor of dealing with such matters as the effect of shot, armour &c. Elimination and compression is what you have a right to expect when you employ a professed man of letters, & an historian who cannot get all that is worth telling of two short campaigns into two ordinary volumes I should consider did not know his job — that is if he is given a fairly free hand. . . .¹⁹

The Admiralty made available to Corbett all the materials they had assembled, including the sensitive documents from Japanese sources, as well as Admiralty correspondence with the Foreign Office on the origins and the events leading up to the war. They provided him with Room 43 in the Old Admiralty Building to work in, advising him that since the Japanese would not get a copy, he could be as frank as he wished in dealing with professional naval issues.

Corbett began in October 1910, and by July 1911 he had completed the first nine chapters. Progress immediately slowed, for he had completed only two more as of January 1912. It took another two years to complete the remainder of the book. A reorganization of the Admiralty, which transferred the officers with whom Corbett worked, as well as tedious and fluctuating procedures for review, caused the delay. Beyond these, however, many senior army officers at the C.I.D. opposed Corbett’s views on military history, and many naval officers failed to understand some of his abstract ideas.

Within the Admiralty Corbett found that three influential offiers wanted to supervise his work. Rear Admiral Thomas Jackson, who had been involved with the project early on, had now succeeded Bethell as Director of Naval Intelligence, and he wanted to keep the history within his office. Captain G. A. Ballard, Director of the Operations Division, thought that it should fall to his division. Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge, the first chief of the newly created war staff in the Admiralty, thought that he should manage it. Troubridge in particular made clear that he wanted some major changes in Corbett’s conclusions. In the midst of all this, Corbett wanted only to share it with Slade, with whom he had been conferring on the history from the beginning. After much delay and discussion, Greene threw his support to Corbett, collaborating with Slade and clearing the way to complete the work. Further delay was caused by Slade, who passed judgment on the chapters but was often otherwise engaged, even after returning from the East Indies for the period between 1912 and 1913.

In November 1913, when Corbett received the page proofs of the first volume, he discovered that Slade’s name preceded his on the title page. He protested and worked out the formula that finally appeared: By Julian S. Corbett, LLM, in consultation with Rear Admiral Sir Edmond Slade.

Finally, just months before the Great War began, the first volume was on the shelves of the Admiralty library, and the second followed shortly thereafter. The volumes were not open for general circulation because, although Japanese materials were widely used, the Japanese were not consulted about either the draft or the finished product. In the summer of 1914 Corbett’s history was overtaken by other, more pressing, events. Dust gathered.

EIGHTY YEARS ON.

Corbett’s study of the war between Russia and Japan, written only a decade after the events, contains useful material for the present. He examines in some detail the technical developments of the time that were influential in the war: namely, torpedo attacks, tactical maneuvers, speed and range of battleships, armament, and communications. These aspects are largely of the ‘period piece’ variety, but understanding their interplay nonetheless retains our interest. It is the balance between tactics and strategy that will engage the reflective reader, who may find relationships between then and now that could serve as the basis for a modern war game.

Undoubtedly, the main reason for moderns to study this campaign — either as an elucidation of actual war then or as a cautionary tale for today—lies in the way Corbett treated the war. He did not approach it as a conflict in which its great victories at Port Arthur or Tsushima could be utilized to demonstrate lessons contingent upon quick or overwhelming success. Instead, he saw the conflict as one in which a country with vast armies and a substantial sea capacity was attacked overseas by a country with a marginally, if locally, superior force. Corbett showed the dangers of these Japanese moves. The chief Japanese advantage was the long distance that separated Russian central control from its forces on the periphery.

Having established these reference points, Corbett went on to show how, despite early Japanese success in attacking the Russian fleet at Port Arthur, the result was not definitive, as many commentators seem to have assumed. Corbett showed how nervous the warlords and politicians in Tokyo were when they realized that Russian seapower was not totally contained and that Tokyo itself might be vulnerable. This illustrated the strong advantage the Russians still possessed, right up to Tsushima. He showed too how courageous the Japanese were to risk a large army on an overseas expedition, without being certain that their lines of communication would not be interrupted.

Thus, Corbett pointed out the pros and cons of ‘limited war’ by showing that what actually happened was not the only feature of the campaign to warrant assessment. He also pointed out the narrow margin on which Japan operated, a margin that the Russians might have exploited, but did not. It is on this level of combined-operations problems, and the possible variations of combined-operations responses, that this book is most instructive. Corbett married the matériel developments of the modern age to insights gained through long study of the age of sail. Therefore, his work should certainly interest the new generation of strategists today.

In our own time, the abrupt cessation of the Cold War has presented traditional practitioners of the naval art, together with strategists of the new situation, with another problem. Strategy must now be less obvious than before; it must be economical and cost-effective. In these circumstances, people will want to see how seapower can be used in a cheap, restrained manner. To do this, it must respond to sophisticated doctrines. One of these may well be Corbett’s.

In the search for sophisticated doctrines, Corbett’s study of the Russo-Japanese War may be of great value, making many of his ideas explicit. Indeed, it could turn out to be one of the more useful strategic books of the 1990s. Certainly, Corbett has something to say to post-Cold War naval planners, and it might prove to be more valuable to those who guide the U.S. Navy through the age of the pax-Americana than other more weapons-oriented modern productions.

The present edition of Corbett’s study of Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War makes several contributions. It is the first public edition of a major work by an important naval historian. Second, it makes an impressive argument and provides a significant, if previously overlooked, contribution to official naval history. In this it makes clear the contrast that Corbett saw between the English tradition of the broad use of history in writing on issues of naval strategy and the nineteenth-century German tradition of more detailed and technical records of military history. Finally, it is an important study of the joint strategic issues involved in limited naval warfare. All are issues for modern sailors and scholars to contemplate.

JOHN B. HATTENDORF

DONALD M. SCHURMAN

¹ For a full biography of Corbett, see Donald M. Schurman, Julian S. Corbett 1854–1922: Historian of British Maritime Policy from Drake to Jellicoe, Royal Historical Society Studies in History Series, vol. 26 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1981). For recent commentary and a bibliography of his writings, see James Goldrick and John B. Hattendorf, eds., Mahan Is Not Enough: The Proceedings of a Conference on the Writings of Sir Julian Corbett and Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 1993).

² See the annotated edition with an introduction by Eric Grove, Classics of Sea Power Series, vol. 1 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988).

³ For example, Michael Howard, The Influence of Clausewitz, in Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976): 38–39.

⁴ Julian S. Corbett, The Campaign of Trafalgar, vol. 2 (London and New York: Longmans, Green, 1910): 470.

⁵ See Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1973). See comments on Mahan, chapter 9.

⁶ Speech in the House of Commons, 13 May 1901. Robert Rhodes James, ed., Winston S. Churchill: His Complete Speeches, 1897—1963, vol. 1, 1897–1908 (London and New York: Chelsea House, 1974): 82.

⁷ The Committee of Imperial Defence Historical Section’s three-volume Official History (Naval and Military) of the Russo-Japanese War (London, 1910–20). For the detailed background, see Jay Luvaas, The First British Official Historians, Military Affairs, vol. xxvi (Summer 1962): 53–54, and Robin Higham, Official Histories (Manhattan, KS: University of Kansas Libraries, 1970): 481–505.

⁸ Jay Luvaas, The Education of an Army (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964): 302.

⁹ Arthur J. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. Strategic Illusions, 1936–1941 (Oxford: Claredon Press, 1981): 3"5.

¹⁰ Rear Admiral Sir Charles Ottley (1858–1932). Director of Naval Intelligence, 1905–7; Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, 1907–12.

The following section is a summary of chapter 8, Schurman, Sir Julian Corbett, and the Public Record Office, ADM 1/7878.

¹¹ Admiral Sir Thomas Jackson (1868–1945). Naval attaché in Tokyo, 1906; Director of Intelligence Division, War Staff, 1912–13; Director, Operations Division, January 1915–June 1917; Commander in Chief, Egypt and Red Sea, July 1917–January 1919. Retired 1923.

¹² Admiral John Luce (1870–1932). Commanded HMS Glasgow at the battles of the Falkland Islands, Coronel, and Juan Fernandez, 1914; Admiral Superintendent, Malta Dockyard, 1921–24.

¹³ Admiral Sir Edmond J. Slade (1859–1928). Director of Naval Intelligence, 1907–9; Commander in Chief, East Indies, 1909–12; special service in connection with oil supplies, 1912–19; Director, Anglo-Persian Oil Company, 1914–28.

¹⁴ National Maritime Museum, Corbett papers: Corbett’s Diary, 17.x.08.

¹⁵ Admiral Sir Robert Lowry (1854–1920). President, Naval War College, 1907–8; admiral commanding in Scotland, 1913–16; Commander in Chief, Rosyth, 1916.

¹⁶ Admiral Sir William H. Henderson (1845–1931). The first editor of the Naval Review, 1913–31.

¹⁷ Admiral the Honorable Sir Alexander E. Bethell (1855–1932). Director of Naval Intelligence, 1909–11.

¹⁸ National Maritime Museum, Corbett papers: Corbett’s Diary, 20.IV.09.

¹⁹ Public Record Office, ADM 1/7878. Corbett to Greene, 23 September 1910.

MARITIME OPERATIONS IN THE

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR, 1904–1905

From the 1914 report

Confidential.

This book is the property of H.M. Government.

It is intended for the use of Officers generally, and may in certain cases be communicated to persons in H.M. Service below the rank of commissioned officer who may require to be acquainted with its contents in the course of their duties. The Officers exercising this power will be held responsible that such information is imparted with due caution and reserve.

The attention of Officers is called to the fact that much of the information on which this History is based has been obtained through the courtesy of the Japanese Government in giving facilities to our Attachés, and in placing at the disposal of the Admiralty their confidential History of the War. This was done on the understanding that the information should be kept strictly confidential, and it is therefore most desirable that the lessons to be learnt from this History should not be divulged to anyone not on the active list.

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR, 1904–5.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION. Naval aspects of the Far Eastern Question

CHAPTER I. Strained relations

CHAPTER II. The Japanese Opening

CHAPTER III. Operations for covering the seizure of Seoul. The holding attack on Port Arthur

CHAPTER IV. The landing at Chemulpho, and destruction of the Russian Guard Ships

CHAPTER V. Acceleration of the occupation of Southern Korea, and the first attempt to cover by blocking

CHAPTER VI. Dispositions to cover the advance of the military base to Ping-yang. February 20—March 12

CHAPTER VII. Operations to cover the passage and landing of the Guards and Second Division, and the concentration of the First Army on the Yalu

CHAPTER VIII. Admiral Togo’s plan of operation for covering the final deployment of the Japanese Army

CHAPTER IX. Preliminary operations in preparation for the final deployment—The first mining attack on Port Arthur—The death of Admiral Makarov, and the Fourth Bombardment

CHAPTER X. Final arrangements for the military deployment, and Admiral Kamimura’s diversion in the Sea of Japan

CHAPTER XI. Russian dispositions to meet the Japanese deployment. Japanese naval co-operation at the passage of the Yalu, and with the movement of the Second Army. The Third attempt to block Port Arthur

CHAPTER XII. Landing of the Second Army

CHAPTER XIII. Arrangements for co-operation in the advance of the Second Army—Japanese naval losses of May 15th, and the consequent modification of the system of blockade

CHAPTER XIV. Co-operation with the advance of the Second Army, and the final stage of the main deployment

CHAPTER XV. The battle of Nanshan

CHAPTER XVI. The Russian offensive return in June—Japanese naval co-operation to assist in meeting it, and Admiral Vitgeft’s instructions for its support

CHAPTER XVII. Failure of the Russian combination to relieve Port Arthur. The battle of Telissu, and Admiral Bezobrazov’s raid—its object and results

CHAPTER XVIII. The sortie of the Port Arthur Squadron, June 23rd

CHAPTER XIX. Progress of the combined operations against Port Arthur, and Admiral Bezobrazov’s second diversion

CHAPTER XX. Admiral Iessen’s raid

CHAPTER XXI. Situation at Port Arthur—July 24th—August 10th

CHAPTER XXII. The Battle of the Yellow Sea—

Section i. Movements before contact

Section ii. The first action

Section iii. The second action

Section iv. The flotilla attack

CHAPTER XXIII. Movements after the action

CHAPTER XXIV. The cruiser action off Ulsan

CHAPTER XXV. The end of the campaign

APPENDICES.

A.Organisation for war of the Russian Pacific Squadron in pursuance of the accepted plan of campaign

B.Japanese Battle Instructions—

I. General instructions to the combined fleet by Admiral Togo

II. Special instructions to the First Division by Admiral Togo

III. Special instructions to the Second Division by Admiral Kamimura

IV. Special instructions to the Third Division by Admiral Dewa

V. Special instructions to the Fourth Division by Admiral Uriu

C.Admiral Makarov’s tactical instructions

D.Admiral Togo’s operation orders for the First Blocking Expedition

E.Admiral Togo’s operation orders for the second bombardment of Port Arthur

F.Admiral Togo’s operation orders for the third bombardment of Port Arthur

G.Admiral Togo’s operation orders for the Third Blocking Expedition

H.Arrangements for the evacuation of Nanshan and a retirement to Port Arthur in case of a Japanese landing in rear of the position May 15–25

I.Admiral Togo’s order for blockade, June 18, 1904

J.Admiral Togo’s Blockade Orders, July 23

K.Japanese War Vessels

L.Russian War Vessels

INDEX

PREFACE.

THE present volume, after dealing with the causes of the war, the war plans on each side, and the period of strained relations, traces the progress of hostilities till the first week in September 1904. That week marks logically the end of the first period of the war, for by that time the original Japanese scheme of operations had culminated in the indecisive naval actions of August 10 and 14, the unsuccessful assault on Port Arthur and the failure to destroy the Russian Army at Liau-yang.

In a war which from the nature of its object and the geographical conditions of its theatre was so essentially maritime the naval and the military operations during this period are for the most part inseparable. While, therefore, the history of the struggle is viewed from the naval point of view and naval operations alone are dealt with in detail, it has been found necessary to follow the military developments closely enough to bring out the mutual reactions of the two spheres.

For the land operations little or no independent research has been made. All through the British Official History of the War (cited in the notes as C.I.D.) has been followed except in a few cases, such as the Nanshan episode, where further detail seemed called for in order to elucidate its aspect as a combined operation.

In everything that concerns the fleet a fresh examination of all the available authorities has been made. Foremost among them is the minute and exhaustive history prepared by the Japanese Naval Staff, which, though strictly confidential, has been courteously placed at the disposal of the Admiralty by the Japanese Government for the use of naval officers only. A translation, made by Naval Instructor Oswald T. Tuck, R.N., by direction of the Intelligence Division, exists at the Admiralty, and it is this work which is cited as the Japanese Confidential History.

Consisting as it does of a bare but minute record of the proceedings, not only of every squadron, but of every division, flotilla and detachment almost from day to day, it is not what Europeans understand by a history. It is rather a chronicle, a bare record of facts with scarcely a comment, and only here and there a laconic indication of the reasoning on which the movements were founded. It is, indeed, little more than a collection of individual reports arranged by movements in chronological order, but each theatre is treated separately. Although, therefore, it makes no pretence of giving a broad comprehensive view of the war as a whole, or of correlating its various parts, it affords admirable material from which a history can be constructed.

For certain important episodes the original reports of commanding officers have also been communicated to us from which it has been possible to throw further light on several points of interest. These invaluable documents are cited in the notes as Report of _____.

With this amplitude of first hand evidence available, the official despatches written for publication become only secondary authority and little use has been made of them.

The record is not quite complete, but the only serious gaps in the very full information we have been granted are the book relating to the Causes of the War and that relating to Combined Operations. The latter, however, is filled to some extent by the Japanese Official Published Naval History, which has been translated by the Russian Naval Staff, with valuable notes by Russian officers who were present. But as the translation in some places leaves something to be desired, it has been carefully checked at all important points, from the original Japanese. A French version of this Russian translation and the appended notes has been issued by the French Naval Staff under the title Opérations Maritimes de la Guerre Russo-Japonaise, and it is this work that is cited in the notes as the Japanese Published History.

From the Russian side, at the time of going to press, no official naval history had been issued, and nothing was available except the chronological abstract of events prepared by the Naval Staff in the course of their preliminary studies. This want, however, is supplied to a considerable extent, so far as plans and orders are concerned, by the Military History prepared by the Russian General Staff, which in view of the dependence of the land operations upon what the navy could do and did, goes fully into the naval orders and councils of war and the correspondence between the Viceroy or Commander-in-Chief and the officer commanding at Port Arthur. To this extent, indeed, it serves well as a combined history. It is in course of translation by the French General Staff, and it is this version, so far as it has gone, that is cited as the Russian Military History.

With the actual operations at sea it naturally has no concern, but here again we have a good deal of material from various Russian sources, which has been collected, arranged, and translated by Major E. Y. Daniel, R.M.L.I. Of these the most valuable are two series of articles published in the Morskoi Sbornik and the Ruskaya Starina. The former may be regarded as at least semi-official, and in several places the author acknowledges his indebtedness to the Naval Historical Commission. At the time of going to press, however, the series was not quite complete for the period covered by this volume. The latter is specially valuable for its reports of Naval Councils of War at Port Arthur.

Of private works the most informing is Captain Bubrov’s Reminiscences of the First Pacific Squadron and Operations of the Naval Brigade, but for operations at sea his knowledge is for the most part at second hand, he himself being most of the time ashore in command of the Naval Barracks. The better known works of Naval Officers such as Commander Semenov’s Rasplata and Lieutenant Steer’s Novik, though interesting for the feeling in the Russian fleet and the morale of the men, are too inaccurate and ill-informed to be regarded as real historical material. Of far higher authority are the excellent works, Nanshan and Port Arthur, by Colonel Tretyakov (translated by Lieutenant A. C. Alford, R.A.), and La Défense de Port Arthur by Colonels von Schwarz and G. Romanovski (translated by J. Lepoivre, Chef d’escadron in the French artillery). As Colonel Tretyakov commanded at Nanshan and 103-Metre Hill and the other two officers were on the spot both works are first hand authorities, but, of course, they only touch naval operations which took place in direct support of the Army.

Amongst British sources the most important for Naval and Combined Operations are the volumes of Reports from our Attachés, &c. But besides these other reports not issued in volume form have been consulted as well as the confidential Foreign Office and Admiralty correspondence which is specially instructive for the period preceding the outbreak of war. These sources have been in places supplemented by information from officers concerned.

The spelling of place-names has presented the usual difficulties owing to the fact that no logical system of transliteration has yet been officially adopted. The nearest approach to such a system is that used by the Historical Section of the Committee of Imperial Defence. But in spite of its many advantages it was decided that as a matter of practical convenience for Naval Officers, it would be better to follow the Sailing Directions and Admiralty Charts, and this has been done so far as was consistent with any degree of uniformity.

The inadequacy of our terminology for expressing the internal organisation of fleets presents similar difficulties, and with a view to avoiding confusion as far as possible, certain typographical distinctions have been used. Divisions of the Squadrons (battleships and cruisers) are written thus:—First Division, Third Division. Divisions of destroyers or torpedo-boat flotillas are expressed in ordinary numerals and without capitals, thus:—2nd division, 10th division. Army divisions are distinguished by roman numerals and capitals, thus:—IIIrd Division, VIIth Division.

As to the method and plan of the work it will be found that an attempt has been made to deal with the events in chronological succession and to embrace the events in all theatres of operation, whether naval or military, in one progressive narrative. Though this is a departure from the course usually taken in staff histories it is felt that, in spite of the difficulties it entails, it is the only way in which a clear impression can be given and retained of the inter-relation of the various parts of the struggle and the only way in which justice can be done to commanding and directing officers, in that by no other means can we justly appreciate the subsidiary and external deflections by which their decisions and conduct were necessarily influenced.

For similar reasons the usual method of reserving comments till the conclusion of the narrative has been discarded, and the aim has been to weave criticism into the narrative as it proceeds, so that the significance of each step in the development of the war may, as far as possible, be apprehended as it takes place and that each decision or operation may be judged more correctly in the light in which the officers responsible saw the situation at the moment. The method has the further advantage of enabling officers to consider for themselves the criticism offered while the facts are fresh in their minds. Comments, moreover, made in this way will always be more direct and concrete and, therefore, easier to weigh, while those reserved till the end must always tend to be vitiated by a tendency to facile generalisation and to what is even more fertile of error, a tendency to ex post facto judgments.

The only exception to this rule of procedure is the case of the staff arrangements and their working. With these questions, specially important as they are in amphibious war, it has been found impossible to deal fully as they arise, for lack of information. We have nothing authoritative or definite from either belligerent and for the Japanese side at least this is specially to be regretted. The relations of the Imperial Staff and the Naval and Military Staffs, both with each other and with commanding officers, raise questions of the highest importance to ourselves. In this case, therefore, it has been thought better to reserve full consideration until a complete study of the whole of the relevant facts may possibly enable an approximately just appreciation to be made.

MARITIME OPERATIONS IN THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR.

N.I.D. 944.

ERRATA.

Page 48, line 28, for Vitgeft read Stark.

Page 158, line 7, for Second Army read First Army.

RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR, 1904–5.

INTRODUCTION.¹

NAVAL ASPECTS OF THE FAR EASTERN QUESTION.

[Map A.]

AMONGST the many features which give the struggle between Japan and Russia a peculiar interest for ourselves the most striking are the geographical conditions out of which it arose. The physical relation of Japan to the continent of Asia is almost identical with that of Great Britain to the continent of Europe. As the United Kingdom is a group of islands separated from the Atlantic coast by a narrow sea and a strait, so is Japan a group of islands separated in like manner from the Pacific coast. What the North Sea and the English Channel are for ourselves, the Sea of Japan and the Straits of Korea are for the island empire of the Far East.

The influence of this condition upon our own history can scarcely be exaggerated. It has given the dominant note to our foreign policy ever since we can be said to have had one as a nation in the modern sense. From the middle ages onward the bulk of our diplomatic and military activities have been more or less concerned with securing the control of those intervening waters and particularly with efforts to prevent any great continental power from obtaining a footing on the Dutch or Flemish coasts.

From the time of the battle of Sluys in 1340, through the period of the Barrier Treaties in the eighteenth century, down to the opening of the Great War, this national instinct for self-preservation has expressed itself in a continuous series of treaties and wars; and the survival of Holland and Belgium as independent states is the living result.

Similarly from the dawn of her history as a nation the attitude of Japan to Korea had been the counterpart of our own to the Low Countries. In her case it was even intensified, for at the south of the Korean peninsula, in the very jaws of the Straits, lay the finest natural harbour in the East. If, indeed, we seek a point on which the foreign policy of Japan had always turned, both before she became a closed country and after she resumed external relations, we must look for it in Chinkai-wan or Sylvia Basin, as it is known in our service. There had been the headquarters of the old Korean Navy, when Korea could still aspire to be a rival of Japan, just as the Texel and the Maas had been for Holland in the days when she had been our rival on the sea. There Japan in battle with the Korean fleet had won her first great naval victory, thence her new fleet issued to win its Trafalgar, and there she has since established an important naval station.

Dominating as this consideration is in the struggle we have to consider, it must not be exaggerated. In maritime wars at least—such as ours have always been either wholly or in part—the causes cannot be traced to so clear a point. The issues are necessarily complex. Besides the main strategical issue—which is usually concerned with a naval position—there are generally three others which deflect or intensify the purely naval and military outlook, and which may or may not be recognised as an integral part of the Government’s policy.

In the first place we may expect to find the influence of an object that is commercial or colonial—and this will invariably be a factor in the official programme.

Closely allied to this there may be, secondly, a source of deflection which is not national and is not officially recognised. It arises from the influence of great capitalists who may have a commercial interest in the war apart from that of the Government, and to whom the Government is to some extent bound from its need of financial support or otherwise.

Thirdly, there is the national spirit which, independent of any material gain, may be emotionally bent on realising some inspiring ideal. The impulse may be political or it may be religious, or it may be no more than an uncontrollable aspiration for a higher standing in the world.

We ourselves have made war for all these motives, and, excepting the religious motive, all of them either on the one side or the other played a part in the breach between Russia and Japan.

In the case of Russia, if her attitude and conduct is to be understood, it is particularly necessary to keep in view these diverse symptoms in what may be called the pathology of the war. Once we speak of her policy we begin to go astray. Her policy was not one thing, but three, each pulling against the others, with a violence to which her form of government afforded neither check nor balance. Each, as we shall see, became in its turn the official policy, and there existed a condition of unstable equilibrium dependent for its balance on the steadiness of a single human mind, which is the peculiar danger of autocracies.

Under the comparatively democratic constitution of Japan there was greater stability. Leading statesmen, it is true, sometimes differed widely as to the best course to pursue, but the Diet always served as an escapement which prevented the official policy from swinging in either direction beyond the limits of the old national tradition. The difficulty of defining the Japanese policy is indeed not due to any instability, but to the relative importance of its constituent elements. Her attitude to Korea was not merely strategical—not merely a question of the control of a vital naval position; it was also colonial and commercial.

Japan had long looked upon Korea as a special field for her surplus energy. It was the natural outlet for her trade as the Low Countries were for our own. But it was more; and here we touch a vital and far-reaching difference between her situation and our own in the North Sea. Korea was a peninsula, a seagirt country easy to defend by maritime action and difficult to attack by continental operations. It was, in fact, an appendage of the Asiatic continent rather than an organic part of it, and it was therefore an area into which an insular and naval power could expand without incurring to any grave extent the responsibilities of a continental existence. For ourselves the Low Countries had no such aspect. Both Holland and Flanders were organically part of the European continent, and we could not absorb them without becoming a continental Power and losing the advantages of our insular position.

Their absorption then was never a part of our national policy; and even when at a specially sanguine period of our expansive activity they offered federation, the offer was refused. For Japan the case was wholly different, and before her there was always the vision that when the fruit was ripe it must fall into her lap. Here, then, was another powerful influence which made her peculiarly sensitive to the interference of any other Power with the land of promise.

With these fundamental conceptions as a guide it becomes comparatively easy to trace the origins of the war and to determine with some precision what was the influence of the sea factor and what the functions of the fleet.

It will suffice to mark two incidents in the previous period which gave a warning note of the existence of two deflecting influences each destined to have a profound effect on the whole course of the struggle.

The first happened at the dawn of Japan’s awakening. While England and France were oppressing China for commercial purposes from 1857 to 1860, Russia posing as her friend had been able to extract from her those territorial cessions in Northern Manchuria which by adding to the Tsar’s Empire the Amur and Maritime Provinces carried it to the Sea of Japan and gave it within that sea the port of Vladivostok. No sooner was the cession complete than a suspicion arose that Russia was bent on annexing the island of Tsushima, which dominated the Straits of Korea and formed a necessary complement to the possession of Vladivostok.

In the summer of 1861 a Russian corvette appeared there, and in spite of the protests of the local Prince began to establish a settlement on shore. Such an act was in breach of her own treaty with Japan, and on its coming to the ears of the British Admiral he sent a cruiser to ascertain what was going on. It was found that a pier and a number of wooden buildings had been set up, including a hospital, a workshop and quarters for men, and the Russian flag was flying over them. A firm remonstrance was at once presented pointing out how bad would be the effect for all the Western Powers, if such a violation of Russia’s engagements continued. The reply of the Russian officer was that there was no intention to make the settlement permanent. It was merely a temporary expedient to enable him to do the repairs which his ship needed, and he had received the necessary permission from Tokyo. But as he had only just left Nagasaki and the protests of the local authorities had been met by force of arms, the explanation was not convincing, and the British cruiser remained on the spot to give weight to the Admiral’s protests; nor did she leave till an assurance was received from the Russian Commodore that the offending vessel had been given another destination. How far the action of the corvette captain was authorised by his Government is not known, but the affair closed at the end of September by his handing over the buildings to the local authorities and taking his departure.²

The second incident occurred some twenty years later when the Japanese revival was in full swing.

The newly awakened national spirit had kindled the old ambitions in Korea, and amongst the most advanced leaders arose a burning desire to demonstrate the new vigour by immediate action. For them the absorption of Korea stood for all that Alsace-Lorraine did for re-awakened Germany, and for what Italia irredenta was at that very time for the new Kingdom of Italy. The Japanese Government, however, knowing the new-born strength was not yet ripe, was able to enforce a more prudent policy, but the Head of the Army and all the advanced Ministers resigned and retired to the country to form centres of impassioned discontent. Year by year it grew, and when in 1877 the great Satsuma Rebellion plunged Japan into a disastrous civil war and for the better part of a year threatened to bring the hopeful revolution to ruin, Korea became the most stirring party cry, and the ex-Commander-in-Chief a popular hero.

Though the policy of expansion was not, in fact, one of the main causes of the rebellion, it left upon Japanese statesmen an indelible impression that for a large part of the people the salvation of Korea was a symbol of the new national spirit and that sooner or later that spirit must have its desire or consume itself. It was not till 1894—so serious had been the set back—that the Government felt the hour was ripe for action. In that year began the war with China. It was fought to preserve the integrity of Korea against Chinese penetration, and its success could only emphasise the intensity of the national aspiration. Not only was the independence of the country affirmed by the Treaty of Shimonoseki, with which the war terminated, but Japan received the material guarantee of Port Arthur with the whole of the Liautung Peninsula stretching from the Yalu frontier of Korea to the treaty port of Newchwang at the mouth of the Liau River. It was a position which gave her the power of controlling the Yellow Sea in the same measure that she controlled the Sea of Japan. It is comparable to one we should have obtained if in a hypothetical struggle with Russia for the integrity of Holland we had obtained Denmark and Copenhagen.

The wisdom of the terms which Japan had exacted may be doubted, seeing how far it involved her in a continental position and how little developed her strength then was. But she was still young and inexperienced in international relations and had not yet learnt the lesson, so familiar to ourselves, that when a treaty of peace gives the victor excessive power it will assuredly raise up new enemies. She found herself immediately confronted by France, Germany, and Russia, all of whom had aspirations with which her new position were irreconcilable. Before their united pressure she was forced to give way and the Liautung Peninsula with Port Arthur was given back to China. Of all the new territory she had acquired by the war Japan retained nothing except Formosa and the Pescadores, which prolonged her Archipelago to its natural limit southward at the gateway of the Far Eastern seas.

So much she might have borne in patience, since the sacrifice