Thank you for posting the link. I collect music of this type (among many others), and the "Hills of Manchuria" is new to me. Very evocative.
And regarding the subject itself, yes, the poor beggars who shipped out on a wartime voyage (that would make the longer, later peacetime voyage by the US "Great White Fleet" truly the greater achievement) were, in hindsight, as doomed as any fleet in history.
The Armada may have been more certain of defeat before leaving Cadiz as a function of its flawed design based on an equally flawed vision of how to invade England, but the Russian Baltic Fleet, a more nearly coastal navy to start, with all the flaws of an ancient state reluctantly and fitfully moving towards Western modernity, just wasn't up to the astonishing task it was set to.
Mostly foreign, largely French built ships of eclectic designs, of extreme metacentric heights, had other features which worked against them. Edwardian Era opulence in hand carved woodwork in the Officer's Quarters, and elsewhere, for example, made wonderful fuel for shipboard fires.
These vessels were officered by men who simply didn't think with the professionalism of their Japanese enemies and made error after error. Japanese ship's woodwork was disassembled and stored away. Russian was not. Just prior to the last run towards Vladivostok, Admiral Rhozdestvensky ordered his fleet to coal up to the maximum--a wise enough precaution--but then to load extra coal and store it on the decks, in companionways, in compartments, etc. This not only added to the vessels' weight well above the waterline, but when the Japanese HE began raining down, and the inevitable fires broke out, the almost perfect secondary fuel was everywhere….
His fleets' keels fouled by 11,000 miles of weed, barnacles, and rust, Rhozdestvensky's top battle speed was about 10 knots, whereas Togo's own war worn fleet could still average about 15, more than enough to have equivalent in Nelson's age of the Weather Gauge over his enemy wherever they met. If the Russian didn't know that exact ratio, he knew his own speed, and he knew there were other, less direct--and obvious--routes to Vladivostok.
Very likely, no fleet of any navy could have successfully made that run from Kronstadt to Vladivostok working under the limitations Rhozdestvensky, his ships and men faced. Ultimately the responsibility for what happened to all those sacrificed should fall on the Tsar and his Government who pressed the war in the first place, so sure that the Little Yellow Men would collapse after the first few battles in direct confrontation with their Russian/European (White) "betters."
If this was the first test of that supposition, by the time the test papers were turned in, it was also largely the end of it.
… And A LOT of Russian ships and Sailors over the course a nightmare day in May, 1905.
TVAG
's first experience with 1:4800 scale naval models.
