DEVELOPMENTS
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 Stössel was published in the _Novy
Kry_. It was also telegraphed all over the whole world, and presumably
redounded to the credit of its author:
'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, Stössel, _quâ_ 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
Stössel 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 Stössel and his assistants, whose names had been well before the
public since the Boxer 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 Stössel. 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 Stössel, and immediately left for Russia.
One morning towards the end of February, I was informed by an
aide-de-camp that Stössel 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 Stössel 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 encyclopædia. 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 Stössel 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 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.
[Illustration: 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 manoeuvre 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 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.
[Illustration: COLONEL KHVOSTOFF.]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: A blocker is a ship which is intentionally sunk so as to
block up the entrance to a port or a channel.--E.D.S.]