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Editorial Note: The dates cited in Eugene Politovsky’s account are from the old Russian Orthodox calendar, which is 13 days behind that of the (Gregorian) calendar system used in this article.
A recent War on the Rocks article on the failure of the Spanish Reserve Fleet to prepare for war with the United States in 1898 offers a useful point of entry into what may be the most significant issue of poor fleet readiness ahead of a major battle. Fought on May 27, 1905, the Battle of Tsushima ended in the destruction or capture of nearly the entire Russian Baltic Fleet, dispatched to the Far East after the collapse of Russia’s earlier Pacific force at Port Arthur.
Even before that fortress fell, Russia sought to restore its naval position in East Asia by sending the bulk of its Baltic Fleet on an extraordinary interoceanic deployment. The outcome of what later became known as “the voyage of the damned,” or “the fleet that had to die,” is well established: Russian battleships were sunk or captured, supporting ships were lost or interned in neutral ports, and fleet commander Vice Admiral Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky was taken prisoner after being found unconscious aboard a destroyer attempting to escape the battle. Thousands of Russian sailors were killed or captured, and Russian naval power in the Pacific was shattered for decades.
The origins of that defeat are captured in the account assembled by the wife of Baltic Fleet engineering officer Eugene S. Politovsky, who served aboard the flagship Kniaz Suvorov and perished when she sank at Tsushima. Drawing on her husband’s letters, Madame Politovsky reconstructed the fleet’s troubled passage from the cold waters of Reval to Madagascar and, ultimately, to destruction in the Tsushima Strait after nearly seven months at sea.
The volume reflects the racial and gender assumptions of its era, but it nevertheless provides a vivid and often persuasive record of a fleet in progressive institutional and operational decay. Politovsky’s observations reveal five indicators of a force unfit for battle: excessive political interference in operational decisions, inadequate training, poor material readiness, insufficient concern for sailor welfare, and a pervasive sense of fatalism that settled over the squadron. Some of these problems were rooted in culture and in the technological limits of the early 20th century. Even so, the broader lessons remain relevant for modern fleets, which are asked to sustain long, uncertain, and strategically ambiguous deployments. The Russian Baltic Fleet looked ready for battle — in practice, it was anything but. Politovsky’s own words often tell the tale.
“Your mission is not to reach Vladivostok with a few ships, but to master the Sea of Japan,”
—Tsar Nicholas II to Vice Admiral Rozhestvensky, Feb. 21, 1905
Rozhestvensky did favor sending the Baltic Fleet east, but only under conditions that offered some prospect of success. The original concept envisioned a force built around modern ships, especially the four newly completed battleships of the Borodino class, supported by relatively recent cruisers and torpedo craft. Tsar Nicholas II, however, overrode practical military considerations in favor of a larger but far less effective formation. Officers returning from the destroyed Pacific Fleet persuaded the tsar that numbers mattered more than readiness, leading to the inclusion of old and slow vessels that, as Politovsky later observed, could make only five to eight knots. Matters worsened when the imperial government added Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov’s even older coastal defense squadron after Rozhestvensky had already begun the voyage. These ships reduced the fleet’s overall speed, delayed its progress, and complicated operational planning when they joined the main force in French Indochina on May 9, 1905. Rozhestvensky’s contempt for Nebogatov’s command, which he called “archaeological rot,” was crude but not misplaced. Political meddling had converted a difficult mission into a deeply compromised one before the battle even began.
“This will be our first firing practice since Revel.”
—Eugene Politovsky, Feb. 26, 1905
Naval training a century ago differed less from current practice than one might assume in that it was time-consuming, disruptive, and often subordinated to schedule and movement requirements. Gunnery training dirtied ships that crews worked constantly to keep clean, while engineering and seamanship drills competed with the practical demands of a long voyage. The Russian Baltic Fleet suffered from exactly these pressures. Politovsky described a steering drill aboard Suvorov in which a poorly executed shift between steering methods nearly caused the flagship to ram the battleship Orel. The episode was resolved without catastrophe, but it revealed a fleet whose crews were practicing basic procedures without mastery and at considerable risk.
Gunnery performance was worse. On Jan. 26, 1905, the fleet conducted what Politovsky described as its first firing practice since departing home waters. Rozhestvensky judged the results “too shameful to be mentioned.” In daylight, Russian ships failed to hit practice targets intended to represent Japanese torpedo boats. His bitter question was telling: What was the point of keeping gunners at their stations through the night if they could not hit targets in broad daylight?
Even in April 1905, only a month before battle, the squadron remained unprepared for combat at night. Politovsky noted that the crews were still not accustomed to general night alarms. Officer proficiency was no better. The battleship Alexander III repeatedly submitted inaccurate coal consumption reports, and one such error forced Rozhestvensky to abandon an attempted high-speed dash to Vladivostok by the squadron’s newest ships. Watch officers also misidentified fishing and merchant vessels as warships, a failure that echoed the North Sea incident of Oct. 21–22, 1904, when Russian ships fired on British trawlers they mistook for torpedo boats. Most consequentially, at the opening of the Battle of Tsushima, Rozhestvensky’s battle line mishandled a basic turning signal, throwing the formation into disorder and preventing some ships from bringing their full armament to bear. The central lesson is straightforward: a fleet that cannot execute elementary peacetime training tasks is unlikely to perform well under fire.
Collisions between ships were common and fleet maneuvering practice was often disastrous. In February 1905, while still trapped in Madagascar waiting for Nebogatov’s ships, Rozhestvensky staged a mini-wargame and maneuvering drill for his ships. His subordinate admirals played the opposing force (red team), but got lost and could not even find Rozhestvensky’s blue force. The admiral spent the rest of the training day schooling his subordinates in the most basic ship maneuvers. This lack of training would, in many ways, doom the Russian squadron at Tsushima four months later.
“Several days will be necessary for his (Nebogatov’s) ships to repair defects before the voyage to Vladivostok.”
—Politovsky diary entry, April 28, 1905
The Second Pacific Squadron combined some of Russia’s newest battleships, including the Borodino class, with elderly cruisers such as Vladimir Monomakh and Dmitrii Donskoi. Several auxiliaries intended to support the force instead became liabilities. Politovsky spent considerable time repairing systems aboard the transport Malay, the refrigerator ship Esperanza, and the notoriously unreliable repair ship Kamchatka, which generated more maintenance problems than it solved. Esperanza had to be detached after repeated breakdowns, while Malay was sent back to Russia carrying medical cases, disciplinary problems, and men deemed unfit for further service. Even the fleet’s newest battleships had been rushed into commission without sufficient trials to expose post-construction defects. Politovsky, who had overseen aspects of the construction of Borodino, understood these deficiencies intimately and worried that documenting them would create enemies in St. Petersburg. They mattered because the cumulative effect of poor maintenance, inadequate trials, and heterogeneous ship performance translated directly into reduced tactical speed and inferior battle effectiveness.
“How can we fight Japan when they cannot arrange such a simple matter as sending the mails?”
—Eugene Politovsky, March 11, 1905
Although the early 20th century brought improvements in naval food, safety, and habitability, accidental deaths and shipboard hardship remained common. The Baltic Fleet’s deployment — at the time, the longest undertaken by a steam-driven squadron — exposed how poorly prepared the Russian navy was for sustained operations in tropical conditions. The ships had not been designed for prolonged hot-weather service. Ventilation was inadequate, temperatures regularly exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and engineering spaces became nearly uninhabitable. The voyage imposed severe physical costs on sailors as well as on machinery.
Politovsky’s account suggests that dozens of sailors died during the voyage from accidents, heat injuries, alcohol abuse, poor food, and what would now be called friendly-fire incidents. While officers and enlisted personnel lived under very different conditions, Russian officials ashore and afloat alike often showed inadequate regard for the health, comfort, and morale of the squadron as a whole. Logistical support was centralized under Ginsburg Inc. of Odessa, a contractor with little experience sustaining a force of this size absent a forward base. The results were predictably poor: food quality declined, clothing replacements were scarce, repair parts arrived slowly, and mail was delayed for months.
Politovsky noted one absurd instance in which correspondence for the battleship Alexander III was instead delivered to the Electrotechnical Institute of Emperor Alexander III in St. Petersburg. The French refrigerator ship Esperanza was intended to preserve meat and dairy supplies, but recurrent failures forced its detachment and left sailors to subsist on an unpopular salted meat paste. At Madagascar, the crew even dumped spoiled meat overboard, attracting sharks to the anchorage. By the time the squadron neared Vietnam, shortages had become acute and morale had fallen sharply. These logistical failures materially reduced the likelihood that the squadron could reach Vladivostok in fighting condition, much less contest control of the Sea of Japan.
“When I slept last night, the rats began to gnaw my toes. I am heartily tired of this kind of life, with its dirt and hardships.”
—Eugene Politovsky, May 21, 1905
Taken together, these pressures produced a fleet that was not merely strained, but psychologically depleted. As the squadron closed on its inevitable encounter with Admiral Togo Heihachiro’s Combined Fleet, confidence eroded further. Politovsky’s account indicates that suicides occurred after the fleet departed Madagascar, further damaging morale. Sailors also appear to have consumed cigarettes contaminated with opium while the fleet was in Cam Ranh Bay. Senior leaders were no less affected. Rozhestvensky reportedly intended to relinquish command upon reaching Vladivostok, an indication of how profoundly the voyage had worn him down. The cumulative burden of exhaustion, uncertainty, and despair became an operational factor in its own right.
Yet much of this internal deterioration remained invisible to outside observers. After the notorious North Sea incident with British trawlers, the squadron later passed Singapore in apparently respectable order on April 8, 1905. Its ships were slow and reportedly burning poor-quality bituminous coal, but they navigated the passage without visible disorder. From a distance, the force still looked coherent. That appearance of competence is central to the larger argument: fleets can project readiness externally long after their underlying effectiveness has begun to erode.
The danger of that illusion was reinforced by the fleet’s apparent paper strength. Russian heavy-gun firepower slightly exceeded that of the Japanese, with more than 32,000 pounds of broadside weight concentrated in 26 12-inch and 15 10-inch guns. The Japanese total was lower, roughly 28,400 pounds, though distributed across a more effective and better-handled force. Russian officers did consider alternative routes that might have avoided the Tsushima Strait, but poor fuel economy — especially among older ships — made such options impractical. Once Port Arthur fell on January 5, 1905, Vladivostok became the only viable destination. The fleet therefore entered the decisive theater burdened by structural weaknesses it could neither conceal in combat nor remedy at sea.
“How much the war depends on its success or defeat! The hope of victory is small, but if it comes, everything will be changed at once.”
—Eugene Politovsky, March 26, 1905
The lessons of the “voyage of the damned” are stark. First, political interference in operational matters rarely produces better military outcomes. Had Rozhestvensky sailed with the modern force he originally sought, he might have retained enough speed and logistical flexibility to reach Vladivostok without decisive engagement. By insisting on the inclusion of obsolete ships and by delaying the squadron in Madagascar while waiting for Nebogatov, the Tsarist government ensured that the Russians would face a fully prepared Japanese fleet under deeply unfavorable conditions.
Likewise, in the present, the insistence of the U.S. Congress in keeping aged U.S. warships in the fleet when they should have been retired, or in the reverse, dispatching too few aircraft carriers to strike Iran during Operation Epic Fury, are also examples of not getting force levels right in search of political ends. Better maintenance documentation by the Navy might have led to better outcomes for the failed cruiser modernization program, and improved funding over multiple past presidential administrations might have allowed for more deployable carriers, as was the case in Gulf War 1 (1991), where six carriers were deployed, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, where five large flattops supported operations. At least these political choices did not result in battles lost and sailor lives squandered. Tsushima stands as an enduring example of the costs imposed when political authorities substitute numerical appearance for operational effectiveness.
Second, inadequate training can nullify even substantial material strength. On paper, the Russian squadron compared favorably with its opponent in ship numbers and heavy guns. In practice, it was a force whose officers struggled with maneuver and identification, whose gunners could not deliver accurate fire, and whose crews were insufficiently prepared to maintain complex equipment under deployment conditions. Numerical strength without operational proficiency is a poor substitute for combat readiness. The U.S. Navy surface fleet neglected the kind of training designed to prepare it for war at sea in the wake of the end of the Cold War, and its recent return to such training in the form of the Warfare Tactics Instructor program may have played a key role in the surface force’s success in anti-missile and drone battles in the Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz. Other nations have not been so attentive, as evidenced by the lack of ability of the Danish frigate Iver Huitfeldt to engage missile and drone threats in the Red Sea, and the British Royal Navy’s lack of software to use HMS Diamond’s 4.5-inch gun to engage drones. The “long lee calm” of 1991 contributed to poor training for many Western navies, and only with the return of sustained anti-missile and drone combat in the Middle East have navies really awakened to the need for continued training for combat.
Third, long deployments magnify material weakness. The mixed quality of Russian ships, the incomplete condition of even the newest units, and the unreliability of supporting auxiliaries were all worsened by sustained operations without adequate maintenance infrastructure. That dynamic remains familiar. Older platforms are more vulnerable to major failures and extended deployments impose cumulative strain on both systems and crews. The technologies differ, but the institutional problem is recognizably modern.
People and equipment have breaking points in the present as well. A recent spate of fires on multiple U.S. Navy ships suggests that keeping one-third of a fleet of less than 300 ships constantly deployed — and in some cases in persistent combat — takes a toll on people and ships. The U.S. Navy surface fleet is more homogenous in its adoption of the AEGIS combat system than was its 1904 Russian counterparts, but also allowed its maintenance infrastructure to be run down and replaced with commercial contractors, a process the Russian Second Pacific Squadron had to undertake to keep its ships underway toward the Sea of Japan.
The U.S. Navy’s return to shore-based intermediate maintenance assistance after allowing those to run down is a welcome return, but the U.S. Navy in the Pacific still plays an “away game” far from shore-based repair, much as did the Russian fleet of 1905, and lacks the ability to repair ships damaged in combat in forward areas. The fire on the carrier USS Gerald R. Ford suggests that even new ships will have challenges if pushed too long and beyond what their maintenance schedule allows.
Fourth, sailor welfare is not peripheral to combat effectiveness. Rozhestvensky’s men lacked even reliable mail service, much less the more robust support systems available to modern deployed forces. Poor food, inadequate resupply, and persistent uncertainty undermined morale throughout the voyage. Sustained neglect of crew well-being does not remain a human-resources issue for long — it becomes an operational liability. This is also true in the present. Having internet access for sailors, and the occasional special meal of steak and lobster is certainly an improvement, and the U.S. Navy has always led efforts to make life at sea better for sailors.
Reports of food shortages on U.S. Navy ships during Operation Epic Fury proved false, and U.S. ships have high standards of cleanliness well beyond those of the early 20th century. All that said, sailor welfare is not something to treat for granted. The now canceled Constellation class frigate was going to replace the standard navy berthing compartments with 30 or more sailors to a series of six-person berthing rooms; a significant upgrade from the sort of mass sailor accommodations that persisted for hundreds of years. For a volunteer force like the U.S. Navy, the need to make the sailor experience more in line with civilian living will only continue.
Finally, strategic ambiguity and prolonged hardship can generate a corrosive sense of futility within a force. Politovsky’s account makes clear that foreboding and despair permeated the squadron, from senior officers to ordinary sailors. Port visits and temporary respite did little to restore confidence because the fleet lacked a compelling sense of purpose and a credible path to success. Modern forces are not immune to the same problem. When missions appear disconnected from achievable strategic objectives, morale degrades and retention suffers. In the Russian case, the human cost was immediate and severe, as almost 5,000 Russian sailors died at Tsushima, and the broader disaffection of Russian sailors helped fuel the revolutionary unrest that followed. The U.S. Navy is not facing the level of despair that seemed prevalent in Rozhestvensky’s squadron, but sailor morale can never be taken for granted and the missions the Navy undertakes must be understandable to all and presented with professionalism. Good order and discipline are earned and can be quickly squandered in anger.
The failure of the Russian Second Pacific Squadron was not simply the result of defeat in battle. It was the culmination of political interference, shifting aims, weak logistics, inadequate training, poor material condition, and disregard for the welfare of the sailors expected to conduct the mission. In that sense, Tsushima was less a sudden catastrophe than the final exposure of a long-developing fiction of readiness.
Theodore Roosevelt drew part of the opposite lesson by sending the Great White Fleet on a peacetime world cruise to demonstrate that sustained global naval operations were possible under better conditions. That contrast remains useful. As contemporary fleets are asked to do more with fewer ships, tighter maintenance margins, and uncertain strategic purposes, the history of the Russian Baltic Fleet is a reminder that readiness is not a posture to be displayed but a condition to be sustained. When institutions neglect that distinction, war reveals the difference with unforgiving clarity.
Steven Wills is the navalist at the Center for Maritime Strategy at the Navy League of the United States. He holds a Ph.D. in military history from Ohio University. A former career U.S. Navy surface warfare officer, his interests include U.S. Navy strategy and policy, as well as shipbuilding and force design.
Image: Tōjō Shōtarō via Wikimedia Commons
