Fleet to the Far East in the war of 1904–5 was very like that of the Spanish Armada as it actually occurred. The Russian fleet was numerically very powerful. Unlike the Spanish Armada it had no transports with it, but its many store-ships formed something of an equivalent.
It had more conceptions as to the orthodox theory of Sea Power than had the Spaniards: that is to say its definite object[1] was to defeat the Japanese fleet, cut off the invading army in Manchuria and so reduce it to defeat or surrender from lack of supplies, and then at some future date convey an invading army of Russians to Japan. In this last, its objective was very similar to Medina Sidonia's—an army was to be picked up near the scene of conflict, and a defending fleet existed — conditions which have obtained in countless wars, in fact in every war in which both sides have had ships and either has attempted oversea operations.
The end of the Baltic Fleet was destruction, more complete and absolute than that of the Spanish Armada, but in both cases the most obvious cause of destruction was that the force employed was insufficient for the particular task before it. Had Eogestvensky been a Scipio Africanus, had the Japanese fleet been no more
- ↑ Presumably its object—Admiral Nebogatoff (Fighting Ships, 1906) proves clearly that had evasion been desired there was nothing to prevent the La Pérouse passage being selected; whence it is to be inferred that Eogestvensky selected the Tsushima passage with a view to fighting there. Nebogatoff proves quite clearly that the idea that coal scarcity compelled Tsushima is purely fanciful.
