A Hobbit on the Western Front: JRR Tolkien's First World War

Note: This post was originally supposed to go up on September 22nd, Hobbit Day. Due to an injury I was forced to postpone until today. 

I am a huge JRR Tolkien fanatic. Since first reading The Hobbit as a child, I have become nearly obsessed with the world created by Tolkien. I've read all of the works he published during his lifetime, as well as all of those published by his son Christopher after the author's death. The older I get the more fascinated I become not just by his works, but by the man himself. Tolkien was many things; an Oxford scholar, a linguist and philologist fluent in dozens of languages, a fantasy author, a caring husband and father, and for a brief period during the First World War, a soldier.

Twenty four year old Tolkien in 1916

Our story begins in 1911 while Tolkien was attending King Edward's School in Birmingham, England. Like many high school aged boys, Tolkien kept a tight circle of friends who in 1911 formed a club, the "Tea Club, Barrovian Society" or TCBS. Named for the fact that the group met for Tea at a local store called Barrows, the group consisted of a core group of Tolkien and his three closest friends, Christopher Wiseman (Tolkien's best friend and namesake of the author's son), Geoffrey Bache Smith, and Robert Gilson. Additional members were included in the periphery; Ralph Payton, Sidney Barrowclough, Thomas Barnsley, Vincent Trought, and Wilfrid Payton. The group was close until they moved on to their college careers, and continued corresponding, sometimes with gaps, for the next several years.

Gilson, Tolkien, Wiseman, and Smith in military uniforms

Tolkien then attending Oxford, where he began studying languages and, inspired by his intellectual friends,

Edith Tolkien

began writing poetry. In a poem written September 24, 1914 Tolkien first used some of the themes and words which we would later find in his Middle Earth writings. It was also at this time that Tolkien became secretly engaged to his lifelong love, Edith.

When the war broke out in 1914, Tolkien faced a difficult decision. He was only a year away from being able to graduate, and Tolkien felt no particular hatred for Germany or any great level of particular patriotism. His ancestors had originated in Saxony, and Tolkien was already by this time fascinated by Germanic languages and mythology. On the other side of the coin, he faced immense pressure to enlist immediately. Nearly all of his friends did so, and he might be publicly shamed and mocked by many in the British public who believed any young man refusing to fight was simply a coward. This is a fascinating topic all on its own and I hope to one day to a full post on it; public pressure for young men to go fight was staggering. It came from all walks of life; family members, friends, and the clergy. Groups of women formed a "white feather" movement, and would shame men they met in civilian clothing by handing them a white feather, a physical symbol of cowardice. Tolkien himself would later write "In those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly."

Public pressure to go to war was immense

As a compromise, Tolkien entered into a program similar to today's ROTC: he would defer his enlistment until graduation, but would receive limited military training while still in school with the idea that he would join the Army as an officer at graduation. In April 1915 this finally came to fruition; Tolkien graduated at the top of his class from Oxford. While a great success all in its own right, the class was small - only 8 men and 17 women sat through their exams. The rest had joined the war effort.

Upon graduation Tolkien was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Lancashire Fusiliers. Many of Tolkien's friends and academic colleagues, including G.B. Smith, had joined a "literary" unit of officers in the

A Webley revolver, the only weapon Tolkien regularly
carried throughout the war. 

Regiment's 19th Battalion, nicknamed the "Salford Pals" after the fact that the officers and enlisted men were mostly groups of friends who had signed up for the war together from the town of Salford. By the time Tolkien graduated however this unit was full, and so he was assigned to train with the Regiment's 13th Battalion in Staffordshire. Tolkien hated army life, and took as many opportunities as he could to visit friends or Edith.

Because of his skill in linguistics, Tolkien was assigned to become a signal officer. These were the men responsible for sending and receiving messages while a unit was at the front, and as a result they had to have some familiarity with cryptology and code words. It was also, luckily for Tolkien, a relatively safe job as these men spent most of their time in command dugouts. In early 1916 it became obvious that Tolkien was being shipped out, and he and Edith married.

One June 4,1916 Tolkien was shipped overseas, the last of the TCBS to do so. At this point in the war the Western Front was already a meat grinder, and Tolkien did not expect to survive the war. He would later write: "Junior officers were being killed off, a dozen a minute. Parting from my wife then... it was like a death."  The day before, on June 3rd, Tolkien learned that his best friend Christopher Wiseman had been aboard the battleship HMS Superb at the battle of Jutland; thankfully though Superb had received no hits and Wisemen survived. However, morale across the British military took a blow as a result of the battle; the invincible British navy had been fought to a draw by the Germans and Tolkien left for France in an even worse mood than he would have been otherwise.

HMS Superb

Tolkien hoped to serve overseas with the British 32nd Division, of which G.B. Smith's 19th Lancashire Fusiliers were a part. Tolkien was needed elsewhere however, and was assigned to serve with the 11th Lancashire in the 25th Division. He was now sure he would not be serving with any friends, and to make matters worse his luggage had been lost in transit and he was forced to purchase substandard replacements, including new bedding. Tolkien would then spend days in Etaples, the British base for new recruits on the continent while he awaited orders from his new unit. He was equipped with a gas mask, helmet, and rifle, and spent the days bored and exhausted. During this time he created a code made up of dots to bypass military censors who might be reading his mail so that Edith could keep track of where he was.

The reason for the holdup in orders was apparent by the middle of June; the British would be launching a great offensive which, it was hoped, would end the war. Tolkien arrived northeast of Amiens to join his unit two days before the offensive was set to begin. Many of the men in Tolkien's unit were new recruits, and the next couple of days were spent training, trying to get them up to speed for the planned attack. Most of the enlisted men were working men from Lancashire whom Tolkien soon grew to admire. However, most of the officers were career soldiers whom Tolkien found gruff, uneducated, and rude and unlike many he made few friends in the army. To his immense relief, during training, Tolkien learned that his unit was being used as a reserve, and would not be used in the first wave of attacks. On July 1st, the Battle of the Somme began.

On the first day of the Battle, Tolkien's close friend and TCBS member Rob Gilson took command of a

British soldiers overlooking "Sausage Valley", near
where Robert Gilson was killed in action

platoon in the Cambridgeshire Battalion. After going over the top his unit fell under heavy fire, and Gilson was killed by an exploding shell. Of 16 officer's in Gilson's unit, only one returned from the attack alive and unwounded. Rob Gilson was the first of Tolkien's close friends to die on the Somme, but he was not the last.

On July 3rd Tolkien came under enemy fire for the first time while stationed in the ruined village of Bouzincourt, three miles behind the front line. German artillery bombarded the town, but every shell missed the British troops sheltering there. After finally being cleared to move out of cover (German aircraft, artillery, and balloons were a major threat even this far behind the line) Tolkien's unit was assigned the grim task of digging graves for the thousands of men killed so far on the Somme. On July 6 Tolkien's unit moved out for combat, but he remained behind to assist the 25th Division's signal corps. The same day G.B. Smith arrived in the village, having seen heavy combat in the last few days; more than half of his battalion had already been killed or wounded. They spent the next few days discussing poetry and literature, wondering what had happened to Gilson (neither knew of his death yet), and trying to keep each other distracted.

Tolkien was ordered to move out with the 11th Lancashire on July 14th. That night they arrived at the destroyed village of La Boisselle and moved into former German lines which had been taken in a previous assault. Here Tolkien saw bodies, German and British, strewn across the barbed wire and the mud of no-man's land. At 2 AM the next morning the 11th Lancashire took part in an assault on German positions. During this time Tolkien stayed behind the main body of men, working feverishly to maintain communications between this new front and British lines. Despite their best efforts though, the British were soon beaten back.

The rest of that weekend the Lancashire men and Tolkien were involved in repeated attacks on the Germans at Ovillers. Late in the day Sunday they led a final charge which forced the Germans to surrender, and Tolkien spent the next day, Monday, July 17th sleeping near the front. He had been in constant combat for the last 50 hours and had just taken part in the Capture of the Schwaben Redoubt, one of the few major British victories during the Somme. Upon arriving back at Bouzincourt, Tolkien learned that Gilson was dead.

German trenches on the Somme. Tolkien's unit were responsible for capturing
the Schwaben redoubt, on the top right of this photo. 

Tolkien would remain, apart from bouts with illness, at the front until October, and took part in several British attacks on German positions. At one point he bedded down with a Anglican chaplain, who would later describe the lack of sleep that he and Tolkien suffered from due to constant attacks by lice and other vermin which infested the trenches. Tolkien's war finally ended on 27 October, 1916. The lice had given him trench fever, and he was invalided back to England the next month. He spent the remained of the war either in hospitals or in garrison or training duties due to his shattered health. He was made a First Lieutenant in 1918, and was finally discharged from the army in 1920.

During the war nearly all of Tolkien's friends were killed. In addition to Gilson, G.B. Smith was killed on December 3, 1916, when he died of his wounds four days after being hit by shrapnel on the Somme. On July 22nd Ralph Payton was killed in unknown circumstances just a few miles from where Tolkien was stationed; his body was never found. Thomas Kenneth Barnsley was killed on August 1, 1917, in Ypres Belgium. The year before, shortly before being promoted to Captain, Barnsley had been buried alive by an artillery strike but had survived. Wilfrid Payton was killed, also in unknown circumstances, on July 22, 1916.

The war had killed all but one of Tolkien's close friends, Christopher Wiseman. Tolkien himself had survived the war, but carried the scars of it for the rest of his life. He would write late in life "One has indeed personally to come under the the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression... by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead."  Tolkien continued to be occasionally hampered by ill health for the rest of his life, before dying in 1973. By this point he had become a knight, an influential scholar, and a world-renowned fantasy author.

The war had quickly aged Tolkien. He is photographed here near the publication of the Hobbit in 1937

Tolkien's distaste for war and all things "evil" can be seen throughout his writing. In later life he would make more friends, including CS Lewis, nearly all of whom had also survived the terrors of the Great War and who would live through the Second World War as civilians. These experiences surely affected their outlooks and, to one degree or another, shaped their written works.

There are a few good books on the subject. By far the best is Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-Earth by John Garth. The book explores Tolkien's early years through the end of the war in great detail, and gives detailed examinations of his written works during this period. Garth gives way more detail and depth to this topic, and I can't recommend this book enough.

A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War: How JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918 by Joseph Loconte came out last year, and I haven't had a chance to read it, but it has gotten excellent reviews and it's at the top of my reading list.

And finally, if you haven't , read some of Tolkien's work!

That's it folks, I'll see you soon!

Bushi-NO: The Myth of the Samurai Chivalric Code

You've probably heard of Bushido, the Japanese samurai "Way of the Warrior". Maybe you come across it in a film like The Last Samurai (more on that in a future blog), or encountered it while watching a Japanese anime or reading a manga. If you're like me, you're a huge fan of Akira Kurosawa, who made numerous classic films exploring Samurai themes where the tenants of Bushido occupy a central role.

Kurosawa's Ran

Even if you've never come across it in popular culture, you may have learned about Bushido in school or at a museum. It was the code that inspired Samurai to take their own lives after a defeat. The code which launched the Empire of Japan and saw the Japanese military commit unspeakable atrocities. It even inspired Kamikazes to sacrifice their lives by flying their aircraft into American ships during the Second World War. There's just one problem: it never existed. 

Okay, that's not entirely true. It existed; it exists now afterall. But it was never a single unified concept during the Samurai period. Infact, the concept of Bushido as it's known now, and even the word Bushido is almost entirely an invention of the late 1800's. 

Modern Kendo practitioners

So just in case you're not familiar with the concept, Bushido is a Japanese word meaning "the way of the warrior". It is often compared with the western concept of chivalry; it was supposedly a code which governed the behavior of Samurai. It encouraged them to be loyal to their lord, practice military disciplines, to be respectful of superiors, etc. Today it is most commonly encountered in popular culture, discussed among martial arts instructors and practitioners, or read about in history books. There have even been books written about "professional" or "corporate" Bushido. 

The first Samurai came to power after the Genpei War in the 1180's CE. Samurai were not, contrary to popular western opinion, honorable warriors living by a strict code. Especially early on they were little more than well-armed mercenaries, fighting for the richest lord. During times of peace, lower ranking Samurai could be dangerous; they were unpredictable and the threat of them turning against their overlords frightened the Daimyo, the lords of the powerful clans. Some of these lords began introducing house codes; lists of rules or books outlining the behavior of their Samurai. But throughout the entire Samurai period there was no unified "handbook" of Bushido; in fact the word would have been entirely unknown. And make no mistake, these codes were needed. Samurai had no problem murdering, stealing, killing their own lords, resorting to assassination, These codes were an attempt to impose some sort of order of the Samurai, to varying degrees of success. 

17th Century decorative screen showing a scene from the Genpei War

In addition to these house codes, over time numerous myths and legends which revolved around the early Samurai began to appear. In part these were inspired by Buddhism, and in part by the desire to maintain discipline by the lords in their domains. Over time, similar to the Arthurian legends in Europe, these became more and more popular and began to idealize the past. 

Fast forward to the 1700's. The Samurai were living in one of the most peaceful periods of human history under the Tokugawa Shogunate. For over one hundred years Japan hadn't seen a single major

Woodblock print showing drunken Samurai fighting over a woman

war or disturbance, and for the time being the Shogun's sealing of the country had left the nation isolated. The Samurai warrior class had lost their purpose. They were prohibited from most professions, and most turned increasingly to running martial arts schools, writing poetry, or simply turning to drunkeness. They neglected their military duties, allowing their armor to fall into disrepair and their skills to slacken. Some Samurai took exception to this, and a number wrote manifestos against this. Perhaps the most famous was the Hakagure written by Yamamoto Tsunetomo written in the first two decades of the 18th Century. However, these again were not handbooks or manuals; instead they were manifestos against what they saw as an existential crisis facing the Samurai class. These were rarely widely circulated; Hakagure itself wouldn't be published widely until the close of the next century. 

Perry and the Americans arrive in Japan. Polite looking group, ain't they?

Another century later the Americans arrived and Japan was changed forever. The Shogunate proved itself incapable of defendign Japan from western powers. The Japanese leanred of the fat that China was suffering against colonial powers, and worried they might be next. A group of Domains, made up mostly of traditional enemies of the Tokugawa Shogunate, began advocating for a new government and a return to the power of the Emperor. These groups claimed that Japan would have to return to the old glory of the Samurai talked about in the hold house codes and myths to survive. They advocated a return to Imperial power, as in the glory days before the first Shogun had come to power. 

Interestingly, these men were all Samurai themselves, but quickly advocated for the end of the Samurai class and traditions. In their minds the only way to save Japan was to westernize fully, and to

Colorized photo of Meiji-period Samurai in traditional dress

do it quickly. Some of these leaders believed something extreme might be required; a few even felt that Japan would have to abandon its language and adopt English as a native tongue to survive in this new world. In 1868 the Meiji Emperor was restored and westernization took off fully; swords and traditional Samurai hairstyles and dress were banned, and European manners and technologies began to be adopted. Some of the old Shogunate loyalists fought back (contrary to many popular depictions, they also used western military technology and advisers, and the image of medieval Samurai charging Gatling Guns is a modern myth). These were all crushed. 

In the late 1880's a new generation of leaders began to come to power. They had been born in the last years of the Shogunate, and harbored none of the resentment towards the old system that their parents and grandparents had. Many were worried that Japan was losing its self identity and moral compass. A number of thinkers began to try to find a middle way; to discover how western nations had preserved their unique cultures and self-identities while still becoming world powers they began to travel abroad. 

Ozaki. Where can I get a hat like that?

One of these was Ozaki Yukio, today known as the father of the Japanese constitution. While traveling in England he encountered an idea which he immediately took a liking to; the concept of the English Gentleman. England was similar to Japan in many ways; it was goverened by an ancient monarchy, inhabited an island, and across a narrow expanse of sea it had a massive continental rival. However, while Japan was struggling to catch up to the west, Britain had build the largest empire the world had ever seen. Ozaki came to believe that one of the keys to this success was the concept of English morality and the gentleman ideal. The English gentleman was brave, kind, maintained a stiff upper lip, was humorous and slow to anger, but was terrible once his temper was sparked. Perhaps most importantly, this was an ideal that cut across class lines (at least in Ozaki's mind). Every Englishman endeavored to be a Gentleman regardless of his class or social standing. 

Ozaki began to think of ways to apply these principals in Japan, and he soon found a way. The concept of the Gentleman had developed out of the European code of Chivalry. Chivalry was the way of the knight, and Ozaki reasoned that the Samurai had simply been the Japanese version of knights. His ideas soon spread and began to gain traction; if the Japanese could lock into their own ancient warrior code, they might just find some of the success the west enjoyed. 

I think Ozaki may have been looking at things through rose-colored glasses...

Japanese intellectuals were soon running with this idea; all of the great western nations had followed an ancient warrior code to some degree, so why shouldn't Japan? One famous early work, Bushido: Soul of Japan became famous in America because it was written in English by a Japanese man living in the United States. The work wasn't translated into Japanese for many years, and when it was it was actually criticized in Japan for being "too American" in outlook! Despite its response in Japan, the book formed many of the ideas about Bushido and the Japanese character many American still harbor today. 

A problem would arise though; unlike Chivalry, Bushido had never really been a set code. There was

And you thought I was done picking on the Baltic Fleet

no handbook on how to be a Samurai. Authors began using the new concept to push any viewpoint they wished (Ozaki himself had actually used it to prove the validity of his liberal ideals). As the Japanese empire began to grow, especially after the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War (discussed in my last post!). The west began looking for the key to Japan's success, and Japan's leaders, inspired by the intellectuals writing on the subject in their own country, found that the key lay in Bushido. The concept began to permeate Japanese thought. It could be shaped to inspire loyalty in the Emperor (and by extension, the government and later, military), and it explained Japan's unqualified success, even against a major western power. 

Around this time (the late 19th and early 20th century) Bushido began to be used more and more by the government. It appeared as a concept in important works, such as the Imperial Rescripts of Education and on Soldiers and Sailors. These all encouraged loyalty to the death and helped the military, increasingly becoming more powerful in the government, to tighten their hold on power. Leaders looked back to the most extreme cases of Samurai loyalty (like the case of the 47 Ronin), and began to promulgate the idea that these hadn't been extreme cases; they were the norm. 

USS Bunker Hill after being struck by Kamikaze aircraft piloted by Ensign
Kiyoshi Ogawa, pictured Below

This leads us to the World Wars and Japan's military empire in the early 20th Century. Japanese soldiers and sailors were urged to be loyal unto death like the Samurai of old (who, like I said, never really existed). I won't get into all of it here, but suffice to say you know how this turns out for Japan; a brutal war and a major bombing campaign later, Japan lay defeated. Authorities in both the US and Japan distanced themselves from the old regime, and as a result, from Bushido for a time. But by the mid-1950's the concept was coming back, again in a new form. Its ideas were again reinterpreted (thanks to there being no set system in the first place) to

Engisn Kiyoshi Ogawa

encourage personal excellence and good citizenship. These ideas seeped back into the public education sector, the business community, and the martial arts community.

And that's where the concept as you probably recognize it today comes from. Because the system hadn't really existed in the first place, it was easy to interpret however one wanted to fit with the times. It's incredibly useful; it can simultaneously be used as a scapegoat for all of Japan's past crimes as well as used to explain its many modern successes. As a concept, it has just as much to owe to the European knight and the English Gentleman as it does to ancient master swordsmen and Asian mystics. Perhaps because of its malleability, and its mysteriousness, it has persevered to this day. 

A couple of excellent sources are available on this topic. One is Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan by Oleg Benesch. Benesch gets into WAY more detail than I was able to here, and if you can find a copy online or at your local library (I found it free on Google books!) I highly suggest it. 

The Hakagure, discussed earlier, is a great look at the things Samurai of the Tokugawa period found important. A deep reading of the book also makes clear that there was no set standard for Samurai behavior, even at the late period of its publication. 

For a deeper look into the development of modern Japanese culture (and Bushido< check out Eiko Ikegami's The Taming of the Samurai: Honorific Individualism and the Making of Modern Japan. 

That's it! 

Literally the Worst (Fleet)

History is full of stories of incompetence, negligence, and plain bad luck. Many of these are tragic, some a humorous, and a handful manage to be both. The story of the Russian Baltic Fleet during the Russo-Japanese War is my personal favorite in the last category.

Borodino, Lead ship of her class and one of the newest Russian Battleships at the beginning of the war. 

This war is really, really interesting and far more important than many people are aware of. If there is interest, I would LOVE to do a post on it by itself, it's that important. For now though, I'll just provide you with the bare minimum of information to set up this story. The next couple of paragraphs aren't terribly interesting, so if you like, you can skip down a little bit. Otherwise, read on for a little bit of background.

In February 1904 the Imperial Japanese Navy launched an attack on the Russian Pacific Fleet which sat at anchor in Port Arthur (today's Lushunkou, People's Republic of China). The reasons Japan attacked are somewhat complex, but can largely be boiled down to the Imperial rivalry between Japan and Russia. The attack was a smashing success: three Russian capital ships were crippled and the Russians were temporarily paralyzed. The attack was such a boon to the Japanese war effort that it helped inspire the planning for Pearl Harbor nearly 40 years later.

Makarov featured on a Soviet Stamp

Russia deployed their greatest living admiral, Stepan Makarov, to fix the situation. Makarov was internationally renowned as an explorer and fleet commander, and Russian morale began to improve.  Unfortunately for the Russians, however, he was killed after his ship struck a Japanese mine. With their famous commander dead and Japanese troops now beginning a land siege of Port Arthur, what remained of the Russian fleet was ordered to try to break the blockade and escape to the Russian port of Vladivostok. Ultimately the attempt failed and the fleet would eventually be sunk, still at anchor and impotent against the power of the Imperial Japanese Navy.

While the siege around Port Arthur tightened, Czar Nicholas II began to worry. If the Japanese had free reign in the Pacific, they would be able to finish off the Russian military in Manchuria and win the war before Russian troops could arrive overland across the Trans-Siberian railroad. Apart from it's now trapped and partially destroyed Pacific Squadron, Russia possessed to more fleets; one in the

Admiral Rozhestvensky

Black Sea, and another in the Baltic. The Black Sea squadron was the best of the three in case of aggression from the Ottoman Empire to the south. This fleet was trapped though; the Ottomans refused to allow Russian entry to the Bosphorus which meant they were confined to the Black Sea. The Baltic Fleet was far less attractive of an option; its veteran sailors had been sent to the Black Sea of Pacific fleets and they would have to travel thousands of miles just to enter hostile waters. With no other options though this fleet was designated the "Second Pacific Squadron" and put under the command of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky. Its mission was, on paper, quite simple: they would steam to the Pacific, engage the Japanese fleet, and prohibit the Japanese from supplying or reinforcing their armies in Manchuria. This would buy time for Russian ground forces to arrive and sweep the outnumbered Japanese aside. In reality though, the mission was doomed.



This is where things start to go horribly wrong for the Russians, and start to get interesting. 

The Baltic Fleet was poorly suited for its mission. It would have to steam south (partially through the Suez canal, but for complicated geopolitical reasons mostly all the way around Africa) along a route which would see the fleet spending months in the tropics. The ships of the Baltic Fleet were not equipped for this; they spent most of the year iced into their ports, and were designed to keep their crews warm for a short period of time (in the winter months they would live in land barracks). The crack sailors in the squadron had been sent east at the outset of the war, and the replacements were, in a word, inadequate. Most of them were peasant conscripts, men who had never seen a boat, much-less the ocean, and Rozhestvensky constantly complained about their quality. They frequently forgot orders, and they were totally unused to hot weather (which will be an issue later). He also had issues with his officers; in one case he referred to his second in command as a "shit sack". Geography was another issue; they were going to have to sail 18,000 miles, under coal power. Back then, these coal powered ships would have to stop regularly to refuel due to coals lack of efficiency. Unfortunately for the Russians, they had no coaling stations along the route, and for complicated reasons I won't get into, no other nation would offer their coaling stations to Russian use. This meant that the fleet would have to meet coal ships from the German-Hamburg-America line 30 times, in the open sea, to refuel. Finally, the battleships the admiral had, while new, were not very effective. They had taken a long time to build and had been constantly retrofitted during this time. They ended up being so top-heavy that during combat in high seas, they were unable to fire some of their weapons due to the fact that they would be under water! They were SO top heavy, the fleet would not use signal flags in rough seas for fear that the ships would become unstable!

The route of the Russian Squadrons. Seriously.

Almost immediately after leaving port the fleet had several disasters. The battleship Orel and Rozhestvensky's own flagship Knyaz Suvorov ran aground and had to be towed back to deeper water. Later that day a torpedo boat accidentally rammed the battleship Oslyabya, causing somewhat significant damage to the ship. A few days later a Danish coal ship was acidentally rammed and nearly sank. At this point the fleet wasn't even out of the Baltic.

Orel, only hours before running aground. 

Shortly after, the fleet entered the strait between Denmark and Sweden, and things get just downright ridiculous. The fleet received word that Japanese torpedo boats were in the area disguised as European fishing boats. The Russians honestly believed that Japan had sent small torpedo boats 18,000 miles to fight them. They were so paranoid about enemy vessels this early on that they nearly blew a small rowboat out of the water as it attempted to deliver a telegram to the Admiral's flagship from the Russian consulate. As they exited the straits into the North Sea (taking care to, I'm not making this up, avoid a nonexistant Japanese minefield) the supply ship Kamchatka signaled that she was under attack from eight Japanese torpedo boats! When it became apparent that no such ships existed, Kamchatka's skipper simply signaled that he had seen the Japanese vessels off! 

That night things got really ridiculous. The fleet entered Dogger Bank, a region of open sea between Great Britain and Denmark. There several small boats were spotted in the dark, and... immediately

Artist rendering of the incident

mistake for Japanese torpedo boats, again. The Russian fleet opened fire immediately, bringing the small "enemy" fleet under the fire of several Russian Battleships. The small boats were not Japanese though, the Russians had just opened fire on a British fishing fleet from the city of Hull! One of the British fishing boats was destroyed,several others were damaged, many of the fisherman were wounded, and three were eventually killed. In the chaos of the "fighting" the Russians began mistaking one another for enemies, and soon began firing at each other as well, with the battleships Aurora and the Dimitri Donskoi being hit several times. The Chaplain of the Aurora was ripped apart by the fire and in the end Russia lost two men; they had achieved a 3:2 kill ratio against an unarmed fishing fleet! They had expended a large portion of their ammunition, and apart from to one another, had caused little damage: Orel had fired around 500 shells and had hit nothing except open water. Several of the Russian ships, including Kamchatka, claimed to have been hit by "enemy" torpedoes. During the incident the Russians even believed they were being boarded, with sailors onboard Aurora drawing swords to repel the boarders.

Damaged fishing boat and very shaken fishermen

To his credit Admiral Rozhestvensky realized something was amiss and ordered his panicked crews to stop firing. They were so panicked that the Admiral himself was forced to knock one of his gunnery officers overboard to get him to stop firing! The Russians soon figured out what had happened and promptly fled. Some of the fleet, including Kamchatka, were scattered but the rest fled south. When she finally returned to the fleet, her captain reported that she had engaged THREE MORE Japanese torpedo boats and fired a further 300 shells! Another vessel, while leaving Tangiers, severed an underwater telegraph line, cutting communications between Africa and Europe for four days. The fisherman reported what had happened, and the British flew into outrage. TWENTY EIGHT British battleships and dozens of battleships were sent in pursuit of the Russians. At this time Britain was the most powerful empire in the wold, with a navy fleet more powerful than France and Germany's combined. The Russians pulled into port in Vigo, Spain, and here Rozhestvensky was ordered to return the officers responsible for the incident to Russia for punishment (the government of Russia also paid a large indemnity to the fisherman and their families). The admiral took the opportunity to free himself of several problem officers.

Monument to the fisherman killed in the "battle". 

One of these, after returning to Russia, was put in charge of organizing reinforcements for the Baltic fleet. Having a chip on his shoulder for being sidelined by Rozhestvensky, this captain pulled together the worst vessels he could. Rozhestvensky had been aware of these ships, but refused to depart the Baltic with them due to their age and poor state of repair. He bitterly designated them the "Sink by Themselves" squadron, but these were the vessels sent to reinforce him!

As the fleet traveled south, men began to go mad from the heat and from the filth of the extra coal the ships were storing on board, with several men committing suicide or having to be confined to quarters. At one point Kamchatka once again reported that it had spotted torpedo boats, increasing the stress the sailors were under. On many ships sailors began taking pets on stops in African countries, including a Crocodile! These were unsuited for shiplife, and simply stank up the decks of the already overcrowded vessels. At Cape Town Rozhestvensky learned that Port Arthur had fallen, and that the "Sink by Itself" fleet was on its way. Hoping to avoid these unwanted reinforcements, he quickly steamed away, but after being ordered to Madagascar to await orders, they miraculously caught up. I say miraculously, because the fleet's commander had been given only one order: find the Second Pacific Squadron, whose location and heading was unknown!

The weeks waiting at Madagascar were terrible on the fleet. Men suffered from malaria and other diseases, including the Admiral; his chief of staff was partially paralyzed from a brain hemorrhage. Funerals became a daily occurrence, and the men's discipline became even more lax.  During one funeral, the Kamchatka accidentally fired a live shell during a salute, striking the Aurora once again. Gunnery practice was difficult because after Dogger Bank the fleet was low on shells (one of the supply ships meant to rearm them turned out to be carrying cold weather survival gear instead of shells). Officers were drunk, and one had accidentally purchased several thousand opium-laced cigarettes and passed them around the fleet. During one of the rare gunnery practices only one hit was scored, on the cruiser pulling the target ship. On one vessel the main gun became unusable when a large snake coiled itself around the gun and the sailors were unable to dislodge it. The sailors were an an awful mood: they knew the first Pacific Squadron had been destroyed, and that even with their "reinforcements" from the Sink by Itself fleet they were heavily outnumbered. The fleet was ordered to try to make its way to Vladivostok; perhaps they could be of some use there. 

The rest of the story doesn't end well for the Russians. Their fleet was caught by the Japanese in the straits of Tsushima, between Japan and Korea. I won't get into the details of the Battle of Tsushima, but it was a catastrophe for Russia. They lost 7 battleships and nearly 10,000 casualties. Admiral Rozhestvensky was captured, and after being sent home to Russia was blamed for the entire fiasco. Only one yacht and two destroyers made it to their destination; the rest of the Russian fleet was gone or captured, and the only vessels left to the entire Empire of Russia were those bottled up in the Black Sea. Japan had only lost three torpedo boats and instantly became recognized as a world power. Russia, as you can probably guess, lost the war. The loss of the Russian flee to the well organized Japanese navy soon led to a naval arms race. Russia was so humiliated that the balance of power was soon thrown off balance. These factors ended up being major contributors to the beginning of World War I and the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, but that is a story for another time. 

Czar Nicholas has a nightmare about his men returning home after the war in the Japanese woodblock-printed propaganda piece. 

Great Naval Blunders , by Geoffrey Regan has probably the single best narrative of the entire sojourn of the Baltic Fleet. You can also check out the University of Hull's narrative of events surrounding the Dogger Bank incident here.  

That's it for now, see you next time!