Annihilation of the Russian Baltic Fleet (1905)

This image shows the damage caused to a Russian battleship after the Battle of Tsushima – a major naval battle fought between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. It was naval history’s first decisive sea battle fought by modern steel battleship fleets, and the first naval battle in which wireless telegraphy (radio) played an important role. It has been characterised as the “dying echo of the old era – for the last time in the history of naval warfare, ships of the line of a beaten fleet surrendered on the high seas.”

The battle was fought between May 27-28, 1905 in the Tsushima Strait between Korea and southern Japan. In this battle, the Japanese fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachiro destroyed two-thirds of the Russian fleet under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, which had traveled over 18,000 nautical miles to reach the Far East. In London in 1906, Sir George Sydenham Clarke wrote, “The battle of Tsushima is by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar.”

The destruction of the Russian navy caused a bitter reaction from the Russian public, which induced a peace treaty in September 1905 without any further battles.