It troubles me that there's a new fangled game called "Ghosts of Tsushima" and it's NOT about how the Japanese Navy demolished the Russian Battleships that had been sent all the way from the Baltic as soon as they arrived in the Far East 1905.

I'm no gamer; but it troubles me even more that I'm one of the very few people who might be troubled by this frankly rather minor annoyance.

The story goes something like this...
It's 1904 and back then, nations liked to show their military prowess with battleships, and Russia was getting a bit alarmed by this upstart country Japan, who had seemingly come from nowhere as a technological power.

And as is the way of such things, territorial rivalries over Manchuria and Korea, and the desire of Russia to keep an ice-free port in the East led to war.
Adm. Togo launched a surprise attack on Port Arthur in 1904 (like Pearl Harbour in Dec 1941 but with torpedo-boats.)

2 Russian battleships and a cruiser were heavily damaged and Port Arthur was blockaded. And when the Russians sent 2 battleships out to break the blockade they both struck mines!
Things like this were not supposed to happen. Battleships were big and expensive and powerful! (?)

The flagship, the Petropavlovsk sank; killing the talented Admiral Makarov. The other ship, the Pobeda had to be towed home. After this, land-based artillery sank more of the Russian ships and things were looking very grim for Russia.

But the Japanese didn't have things all their own way.
The Russians used the same tactics of offensive mine-laying and sank the battleship Yashima and damaged the Hatsuse.
But the Russians decided to send more battleships out to the Pacific from their Baltic fleet.

Now, it's a pretty long way, and no sooner had they left but they fired upon some British fishing-vessels in the North Sea (the infamous Dogger Bank incident) due to rumours of Japanese spies. It sounds odd now, but the UK nearly went to war with Russia in 1904 over this.

Nonetheless the Baltic fleet continued thier journey around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa to the Pacific. It took them 7 months, picking their way round various coal-fuelling stations as they went. Seven months. October 1904 - May 1905

By the time they got there, Port Arthur had fallen. Only Vladivostok remained in Russian hands. And when they finally reached the Sea of Japan, they were spotted and Admiral Togo with 5 battleships (+ various lesser vessels) immediately went into action.

The Russians under Adm. Rozhestvensky had eight battleships, but Togo was clever and experienced, the Japanese crews fresh. The fighting was intense; but the Russians lost SIX of their 8 battleships, and the defeat was profound. All Russia was shocked and sued for peace.

This humiliation of Russia and specifically the Russian Navy led directly to the mutiny aboard the famous Battleship Potemkin in June 1905 and the series of rebellions ending in the October Revolution of 1917 and the desmise of the Tsarist regime.

Whereas the Battle of Tsushima marked a new era of naval tactics, with wireless telegraphy and long range gunnery that few foresaw, but led to the age of the Dreadnoughts and the naval arms-race bewteen the UK and Germany prior to the Great War.

(I always call it the Great War - the War to End All Wars - just in case I find myself in the 1920s talking to someone who doesn't know what happens next...)

/END