Retvizan in special circumstances, it distributed its attentions, and every Russian ship was more or less damaged. The resources of Port Arthur dockyard were not sufficient to put these ships into fighting trim again, and so, though they sank no ships and captured none, the Japanese reaped a material advantage. Of course, Port Arthur might have been a first-class dockyard, in which case, after some two or three months, the Russians might again have emerged; but taking all things into consideration, it seems apparent that a policy of general damage rather than an attempt to destroy one unit absolutely paid best in this particular case.
Now, out of these two battles is it possible to draw any deductions likely to be of future use? We can draw from Round Island the lesson that too much concentration may be worse than too little, from the Suffren action the exact reverse. Had some of the Russian hits on the Mikasa been on some other vessels the sequel might, it may be argued, have been different. The Mikasa was hit amidships around the funnel bases several times. The first hit did all the possible mischief, and the others were to that extent wasted. Similarly, the Japanese wasted some effort on the Tsarevitch, though later they gave attention to other vessels.
Here, then, is another case interesting to compare with those already mentioned. Taken by itself it might well be used to show that the first statement
