Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Tshushima in 1905. It was the final naval battle of the Russo-Japanese War, fought on 27–28 May 1905 in the Tsushima Strait. A devastating defeat for the Imperial Russian Navy. The battle was described by contemporary Sir George Clarke as “by far the greatest and the most important naval event since Trafalgar”.
The battle involved the Japanese Combined Fleet under Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō and the Russian Second Pacific Squadron under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky, which had sailed over seven months and 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 km) from the Baltic Sea. All 11 Russian battleships were lost, of which seven were sunk and four captured. Only a few warships escaped, with one cruiser and two destroyers reaching Vladivostok, and two auxiliary cruisers as well as one transport escaping back to Madagascar.
The battle had a profound cultural and political impact on the world. It was the first defeat of a European power by an Asian nation in the modern era. It also heightened the alarm of “The Yellow Peril” as well as weakening the notion of white superiority that was prevalent in some Western countries. Mahatma Gandhi , Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Sun Yat-sen and Jawaharlal Nehru were amongst the future national leaders to celebrate this defeat of a colonial power.
Painting by Tōjō Shōtarō depicting Admiral Tōgō on the “Compass Deck” above the bridge of Mikasa at the start of the battle. The signal flag being hoisted represents the letter Z, a special instruction to his fleet.
Some old-time funk from Chaka Khan and Rufus with a great chorus… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm_cFzVAoo8
