At 1 a.m. on February 25 some destroyers, which were covering the advance of a blocker[5] towards the narrows into the harbour, attempted to torpedo the Retvisan. The battleship sank one destroyer, while the blocker was set on fire, and ran on the rocks of Tiger Peninsula. Here she lay blazing close to the Retvisan, a source of extreme danger, as she might at any moment blow up. Later on the enemy's fleet appeared on the horizon. The Bayan, Novik, and Askold, lying in the outer Roads, at once moved out and engaged it. From the hill I was on, I watched that rare picture, a fight at sea; but it did not last long. In face of a force four times their own strength, our ships were finally forced to seek shelter under the guns of the Fortress. Just at the end of this fight one of two of our destroyers, returning from night reconnaissance, was forced by the enemy's cruisers to beach herself. This was entirely due to the unfortified state of Liao-tieh-shan. On February 28 a remarkable order by St?ssel was published in the Novy Kry. It was also telegraphed all over the whole world, and presumably redounded to the credit of its author:
[Pg 18]
'The troops know well, and I now make known to the civilians, that there will be no retirement; in the first place, the Fortress must fight to the last, and I, as its Commandant, will never give the order to retreat; in the second, there is no place to which to retreat....'
As a matter of fact, St?ssel, qua Commandant of the Fortress, never did give an order to retreat, because the question did not arise; but, as Officer Commanding the Kwantun District, which district he abandoned within two months, he surrendered the Fortress, despite the protests of the then Commandant, General Smirnoff, and the whole of the Council of Defence.
In spite of the extensive range of subjects touched upon in the literature issued in the shape of orders, it was astonishing how little was said about the defences proper of the Fortress, which were still in the most incomplete state, or of the Kinchou position, where practically nothing had been done. It was only in an order of March 7 that the works were mentioned for the first time, and then it was the Central Wall—already mentioned as a monumental folly—which called for attention! The cost of this folly in cash was ￡20,000; its cost in work left undone elsewhere cannot be estimated.
As we were not disturbed by the enemy from February 25 to March 10, we had time in Port Arthur to attend to home affairs. About March 4 St?ssel received a wire from a certain General Bogdanovitch. In this the sender congratulated him on his victories, and expressed the hope that Arthur would give birth to new Nakhimoffs, Korniloffs, and Istomins. The telegram was quite genuine. It was thought that such a siege would certainly produce some heroes. Smirnoff and Kondratenko were not then known, and Bogdanovitch's kind wishes evidently referred to St?ssel and his assistants, whose names had been well before the public since the Boxer[Pg 19] campaign. Lieutenant Prince Karseladse of the 25th Regiment, who knew very well what was really going on, sent a reply wire to Bogdanovitch, to the effect that:
'There are no Nakhimoffs here; there is nothing but miserable incompetence.'
This wire was not despatched, but was handed over to St?ssel. As a result, a District Order upon the subject of official telegrams was issued, and the sender of this message was placed under arrest and tried by court-martial. He was sentenced to some days' arrest. For reporting well on the prisoner, the report being made at the request of the court, Colonel Selinen, who commanded his regiment, was deprived of his command by St?ssel, and immediately left for Russia.
One morning towards the end of February, I was informed by an aide-de-camp that St?ssel wanted to see me. He received me very affably, but at once gave me to understand, not rudely, but in unmistakable terms, that he was General St?ssel and I was only Nojine. On my asking to what extent the defences were ready, and in particular those stretching for miles on the land side, he said:
'I must tell you that I am a fighting infantry General, and don't understand anything about the Fortress or its surroundings. I am here temporarily. As you know, I have been appointed to command the 3rd Siberian Army Corps, which is on its way to the Yalu, and am only waiting for the new Commandant to arrive. He will soon put everything in order.'
'And under whom will Kinchou be?'
'Under him—under him. He is a most competent and clever officer. The papers say he has passed through almost ten academies. Why, he'll be a walking encyclo[Pg 20]p?dia. My duty is to fight, and not to run a fortress. Lord! what a deuce of a lot of money has been spent on it! How can the Japanese, yellow-skinned little devils that they are, get into the place?' He then went on to threaten me with the awful things that would happen to journalists generally, and to me in particular, if we were not careful, and ended by saying that in the Fortress the Commandant was 'both God and the Tsar.' Only one thing comforted me as I left, and that was that St?ssel was not long destined to be the Commandant of Port Arthur.
While we in the Fortress exhausted our energies on the useless Central Wall, Rear-Admiral Loschinsky, who had arrived on February 11, organized a mine defence of the Liaotun Peninsula, paying particular attention to Dalny, where the enemy might land. He then drew up a scheme for mining the Port Arthur waters, and every place which seemed suitable for a landing. Unfortunately, after the sad accident to the Yenisee and Boyarin, the officer commanding the fleet was very sceptical about the value of submarine mines, more especially as he believed that three months would see us again in command of the sea. On March 8 Vice-Admiral Makharoff, who had just been appointed to the command of the fleet, arrived, and great naval activity was at once noticeable; the dockyard literally hummed with work. After many attempts, the Retvisan was on the same day successfully floated off the shoal at Tiger's Tail, and taken to the western basin, a coincidence which made a great impression. The officer to command the balloon park also arrived; but there were neither balloons nor materials of which to make them, as when the Manchuria was captured in the beginning of the war they fell into the hands of the enemy, together with a large quantity of ammunition. We used later on to watch with great interest our own balloon float[Pg 21] up from behind Wolf's Hills. It spent much time in the air, but not for our amusement; for while it, our own balloon, was watching, our own shells were shrieking on their way towards us.
pic
ADMIRAL LOSCHINSKY.
In the early hours of March 10 our destroyer division went out scouting. At dawn they were engaged by the enemy, and we lost the Steresguschy, which was sunk. At 8.18 the enemy's fleet appeared off Liao-tieh-shan. At 8.30 three battleships and two light cruisers separated from the rest and took up their position about a mile from that hill, whose cliffs ran at right angles to our shore front. None of our batteries could fire on them, and Liao-tieh-shan had on it, as already stated, instead of guns, a lighthouse. They were in 'dead water.' It was impossible for us to use high-angle fire, controlled from the highest point of that hill, against these ships, for the gun-mountings in the seaward batteries did not allow of enough elevation or of all-round fire. Telephone connexions to the observation-posts also were then only in the process of construction. This simple man?uvre of the enemy rendered us absolutely helpless.
At 8.45 a.m. an incessant roar commenced, followed by the detonation of 12-inch shells in the New Town. It was galling to see these shells falling and no action being taken on our part. The Fortress Staff every moment were receiving information of the damage being done to the New Town, but could do nothing to drive off the enemy's ships, which lay in three lines under shelter. The first line fired systematically and deliberately, evidently trying to hit our ships and the harbour, for several of the shells struck the port workshops, and fell into the western and eastern basins. At 11 the firing suddenly ceased, and our observation post reported that the first line was steaming off, their stations being taken by the battleships in the second line. At 11.25 they started again. This time all[Pg 22] the shells fell in the inner harbour; some even struck the ships, but did not stop the work. About 1 p.m. the enemy steamed off in a south-easterly direction and disappeared. From 9.30 a.m. to 1 p.m. the Japanese had fired 208 12-inch shells, and none of us will ever forget our humiliation that we should have been shelled by a fleet which could come right up to our shores, but which we could not touch.
From March 10 all work on the armament of the place came to a standstill, save for guns being dragged up and mounted on Liao-tieh-shan. In the fleet and the port alone was work hurriedly pushed on, for the artificers from the Baltic yards began to arrive from St. Petersburg. These, under the immediate supervision and direction of that energetic and clever engineer Kuteynikoff, set to work to repair the ships, and things hustled.
While work was thus being feverishly carried on in the port, the military garrison, bored by the want of occupation, got out of hand, and soldiers took to highway robbery. This became so common that private persons feared to go out alone.
pic
COLONEL KHVOSTOFF.