The Russian Navy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Voyage



In a situation that may seem familiar to listeners today, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 Russia was finding itself humiliated, unexpectedly struggling against a nominally less powerful, less significant power. With Russia’s Pacific naval fleet mostly decimated by the Japanese, Russia decided to move its Baltic Fleet out to the Atlantic, around the southern tip of Africa, and across the Indian Ocean to join the fighting. The voyage turned out to be a grim comedy of errors, one of the most disastrous decisions in naval history.

What else should have happened to the Russian Baltic Fleet along its way?
The Kamchatka lobs one perfect shot, knocking the binoculars right out of Rozhestvensky’s hands – https://www.patreon.com/torscabinet/membership
The ships encounter a mysterious town home to all major fast food chains, with smooth jazz playing in the streets, in the middle of the ocean – https://x.com/parsons_tor
The sailors get addicted to Mr. Beast – https://www.reddit.com/user/MrSluds/
They discover that the Kamchatka has, in fact, been a Japanese torpedo boat all along – https://www.instagram.com/tor.in.oregon/

This episode was edited by the incomparable Hemloxx, who created those fantastic map graphics. Everybody thank Hemloxx in the comments! If you don’t thank Hemloxx, I’ll send Thimble the Doll after your ass!

Most of this episode is sourced from the book “The Fleet That Had To Die” by Richard Hough, © 2009 Birlinn, ISBN 978-1841580449. Other sources include:
https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2022/february/drifting-toward-tsushima
– “Epic Sea Battles” by William Koenig, © 1977 Octopus Publishing, ISBN 0-7537-1062-5
https://web.archive.org/web/20081013053322/http://www.worldcourts.com/ici/eng/decisions/1905.02.26_doggerbank/index.htm

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25 thoughts on “The Russian Navy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Voyage”

  1. Sir, we must humbly request.
    One not Discount Homers Works as mere fantasy. That Secular opinion of Myth is ignorant to the gold that lies within. Simply because the gods repersent particular things of the Human experince beyond their ordinary description.

    There lay a core of history behind many a Myth, a person at the heart of it, someone who was real.
    And subject to a simple game of telephone, amoung people who trained their memory and minds and took pride in an unbroken Oratorical Tradition…
    But hey modern people simply understand things better and surely must not be any less ignorant then ever before.
    Were so Materialisticly Wise now afterall

    Reply
  2. The last food for thought about how the wars shaped our personal history made me think bc im from germany, and that would actually be crazy to even attemt to think about how different things would be… if any of the wars had happened different. And the russian- japanese wasnt even on my radar for that. Truly fascinating. But also futile sure but it is funny to think about that my parents would never have met if the wall had went down earlier, or later

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  3. 31:51 a HUGE mistake: in court, Admiral Rozhestvensky was found completely innocent as having been seriously wounded in battle; at the same time, he himself asked the court for a death sentence for him – largely to mitigate the punishment of his subordinates.

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  4. extremely underrated channel, love your presentation and script writing, the wide variety of video topics is also fun for people who love a bunch of random different facts (like me). try not to burn yourself out though!

    Reply
  5. You are going places dude. Reminds me a lot of Frederik Knudsen's video on the Battle of May island, if a whole lot lighter in tone. Something so funny, frustrating, and harrowing about these military catastrophes caused by truly vast amounts of human error.

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  6. Anyone who thinks the war was started by Russia is an idiot or lying. We have spent the last 30 years pushing them and breaking every promise we ever made to them. Stop with the "Ukraine war was unprovoked" It wasn't and thinking it was means you are dumber than a nog in AP classes.

    Reply
  7. ðis is an amazingly superb video, and i like ðe Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day reference, but i loaðe ðe faux cyrillic in ðe þumbnail wiþ a burning passion

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  8. >Democritize
    So being poor af , having 2 civil wars going on and selling out ?
    Nice democracy , not defending Put in , but don't asslick the Drunk idiot.
    So wasn't Nickolas , he was an idiot from the start, Funny enough the Japan showed the need of modernization , yet nothing hase been learned and then ww1 broke out. Which if we look at it , could have ended actually well for Russian Empire if the revolution (promoted by germany) didn't happen.

    Reply

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