Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 121 - Russo -Japanese War Part 3: The Voyage of the Damned

Episode Date: September 14, 2020

The Russian Navy sets off on a one way journey into naval history. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe and with me today is Nick. I was going to try to come up with a clever way of saying seaman, because we're talking about naval battles today. But I didn't want to call you Seaman Nick, but then I just did it. So hello, Seaman Nick. Trying to come up with something better than seaman? You can't ocean guardian wet soldier

yes moist our moist boy moist yes so everyone this is a part three of our russo japanese war series you can go back and listen to part one two and so you know what try not to get too horny.

So we know what you're talking about. Or you know what I'm talking about. Or you can just jump into part three, because this is probably the part that everybody couldn't wait for anyway. Are we peaking? This is definitely the peak of this

entire series. Are we climaxing? See, I'm always climaxing. That's my secret. Nice. That is, we're talking about the 2nd Pacific Squadron of the Russian Imperial Navy today. What might be one of, I can't say the, because someone will point out some part of history I have never heard of before and say, actually this is worse but this might be oh yeah don't you just hate those people no because we are those people actually guys we're i'm a little bitter because after what happened because i was sitting down i was trying to make jokes about fucking stalactites and all that

bullshit and then of course in the back um actually, stalactites and stalagmites. I was like, oh, well, fuck. Joke ruined. Fuck yourself. So you get for not being a geologist, you punk bitch. Yeah, and then he later said, yeah, my parents always had rocks laying around, so I just learned about them. That sounds very exciting. Yeah.

If we have any geologists out there, cool. Respectors. Your favorite rock. Yeah. Slide into our DM, cool. What's your favorite rock? Yeah, slide into our DMs and tell us what your favorite rock is. Mine's pet rock. Mine is base cocaine. And so today, let's just skip on past the crack talk. We are talking about the Imperial Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron, that being the Navy.

And it is probably one of the dumbest naval stories in military history. There will not be a naval story that we cover in the history of this show that is dumber than this one. I know that's a hot take, but I feel like it's apt. Nick, have you ever heard the story of the Imperial Russian 2nd Pacific Squadron? Never in my life. So it's probably the most notorious story in naval history, and I think goes down as one of the biggest fuck-ups in military history, naval or otherwise. and I think goes down as one of the biggest fuck-ups in military history,

naval or otherwise. And when I say fuck-ups, I don't mean like there was some unknown thing that fucked them all over or it was like just a terrible unforeseen thing that happened, like they were surprised and surrounded. Like this is not the Battle of Cannae or anything like that. It's just absolute insanity from inception until all of the boats ended up at the bottom of the ocean. I mean, now you have submarines. And admittedly, I have to say that this entire series started as this episode.

And then I remembered that this really doesn't make a ton of sense in context, like because there's just so much dumb shit from the Russian side during this war that it all deserved to be like spotlighted. But so here we are on part three. Now, in order for this to make sense, we do have to go back in time a little bit. When we. That was episode two so episode two was uh it ended with the fall of port arthur um now that is this is gonna happen for the most part before that occurred but there's no like we

can't this is not a game of thrones book i cannot run parallel storylines. The Russian squadron trapped in Port Arthur was the largest fighting force it had available in the entire region, which led to why the war kind of focused around there, that and the importance of the port. And most importantly, the

Russian commanders kind of knew that there was really no way they could win a war against Japan if they could not figure out a way to free the squadron from the Port Arthur area. There's no way. You could beat the Japanese on the land, which they didn't. But if you couldn't beat them at sea, they would just come back. So the winning at sea was definitely the most important part. Word.

So this whole plan was how to free this fleet. As we know, the Russian admiral, the second one that is, wanted to sit in port and wait for that relief fleet that was supposed to be the second squadron to come and save him. I'm going to use the words squadron and fleet interchangeably during this episode. That's mostly because I'm ignorant of naval terms and I made no attempt to learn them. I am not a naval historian. I've never claimed to

be. Leave me alone, you moist, moist soldiers here. So the admiral wanted to wait for the second squadron to come and save him. Now, we also know that he would die because the czar insisted that he and his battered, outnumbered, and outgunned squadron attempted to suicide Vladivostok at the Battle of the Yellow Sea. So he'll die, which thankfully means he won't live long enough to see the embarrassment that is the second squadron. But before that, with his Pacific squadron trapped, the Tsar would have to find another fleet of ships at his disposal to send up poor Arthur and rescue the first squadron. Fortunately for the Tsar, the Russian Empire was a very huge place and had kind of a large navy. Though unfortunately for the Tsar, that other Russian squadron could be found in the Baltic and Black Seas. Now anybody who's looking at a map might be thinking to themselves,

Wow, strange podcast, man. The Baltic and Pacific Ocean aren't even remotely close to one another. And yes, you would be very, very correct. And the only fastest way to get from one to the other is an 18,000 mile journey. Jesus Christ. So in case you can imagine, there's quite a few problems that come with sending a large naval fleet around, and this is not hyperbole, the entire goddamn world. That's fucking insane.

This would be hard now. It would require a large logistical effort on behalf of whatever navy would be doing this in 2020. But we're talking 1904 no sorry 1905 yeah uh yeah so where they had to breathe into their sails they didn't have wind now the first problem and like i i shouldn't have to say this but really only the czar thought this was a good idea ever like everyone. Everyone who had any military experience in the palace was like, no, you absolutely shouldn't do that. And the

Tsar was like, sorry, I'm the emperor around here. I'm going to slap a fucking fleet together and send it around the world, which the Russian Navy had never done before. And it is a trip that would have been hard for like the Soviet Navy to pull off, which was also largely held together by duct tape.

But the Russian Navy by the early 1900s is not exactly a juggernaut. And the first problem that he ran into were the ships themselves. 42 ships, including 11 battleships and 9 cruisers, as well as supported by a wide array of torpedo boats, gunboats, and destroyers would make up most of the squadron. But because the Tsar was literally running around in circles

trying to find anything that floated and he could attach a gun to, the ships that he found mission ready were absolutely not mission ready or remotely ready for this mission. Like some of them were okay for like sea duty, like the Baltic or Black Sea duty, but not a globetrotting naval rescue mission. Right. I thought you were going to throw fishing vessels at me. Yep.

Remember, these ships are made for the Black and Baltic Seas, where the seas are considerably calmer. Now, they will instead be sending these ships tens of thousands of miles, literally, across open ocean. That meant they had to carry weight differently. Guns were in different places. They were mounted lower because they didn't expects were in different places. They were mounted in lower because they didn't expect to be in rough seas. And they all around handled rough ocean

differently. By throwing these ships into the open ocean, that meant they would almost continuously have their shit rocked by waves, while manned by sailors that had no training or experience being anywhere other than these small seas. God. We'll talk a little bit more about these sailors

in a bit. Now you might be thinking, these ships were rated for calm seas, and that isn't where they're going to be, but at least they're functioning ships, right? That's a low bar, right Joe? Right? This is the part where I get to tell you that it gets worse. Nice.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, the Navy was scraping so low into the barrel that the Russian Navy had dug clean through the bottom and had found what was buried beneath the barrel and had settled for anything that might kind of float. Really? To be fair, they also found a lot of things that didn't quite float. Which, this might blow your mind.

That is an important part of being a ship. Is floating. Or sinking with style. Or something. I don't know. This included several older ships. And by older, I mean decades out of date. That needed to be emergency retrofitted so they could possibly kind of make the journey.

Unfortunately, those retrofits were not exactly done by anybody who happened to know what they were doing. In one case, they're not dry docked. They're floating in a harbor while these retrofits are going on. And one of the things that the ships did not have was armor. So the shipwrights, I guess, if you want to give them that title, simply cut through one of the walls of a ship so they could install new armor.

That made it sink in the bay where it was being repaired because he cut a hole in the ship while it was in water. You know what would be great if you're a new sailor just coming to the harbor like oh yeah i fucking love the navy and the dude goes that's your ship it's like a nice brand new spanking sweet ship and then it just moves out of the way like no no that's your ship behind that ship and it's fucking sinking already it's like when you're standing in pearl harbor and you just see the outline of the Arizona? There's your ship! So, another case like,

well, we are running out of actual battleships or things that could be considered part of a navy, right? So they had a fix for that. That was several members of the royalties pleasure yachts

so so they strapped naval weapons to pleasure yachts and which this caused these pleasure yachts which are meant just for like weird drunken fucking sessions for the nobility to flip over and sink because they installed naval cannons on them. But, like, I feel like they should be sunk anyway. Yeah, I mean, all yachts are bastards. Like, who is the

fucking Imperial ship guy for the Russian Imperial Navy? Is that fucking Wile E. Coyote? Did he install the Acme cannons on these pleasure yachts? I wonder how many cannons do they have to lose for them to realize, maybe this isn't a good idea. One?

You'd think. Unless they're salvaging them back up from the harbor. They were much better off at installing guns on fishing boats, which they did do. And those did not randomly sink on their own so that was good now there was also a small problem or an 18,000 mile long problem of supplying the ships is that a dick joke Nicholas Poseidon? I don't know.

Poseidon's dick is 18,000 miles long. It's now podcast canon. You're welcome. There's a small problem with supplying these ships. Even though most of them were falling apart, they still had to get coal and stuff to get from point A to point B because they're all coal-powered. It was a long trip, and these ships burned coal. Russia was not exactly well-liked in the world, and there was a long trip and these ships burned coal. Russia was not exactly well liked in the world. And there was a rule at the time where neutral nations at war did not have to let you stop there.

So like there wasn't really anywhere for Russia to stop. Everybody fucking hated them. And like they could stop in like Germany because like the Kaiser is cool with them. But that's like the very beginning of their journey. It's fucking awful. Jesus. So there's really no good places where they could dock it and resupply coal, leading to Russia to contract out to a private company known as the Hamburg America Line, a transatlantic shipping company with a proud history of horrible shipwrecks that killed hundreds of people.

That's not a good thing to be proud of. So I had to do some research on this company, which actually exists today under a different name. They did the time-old capitalist thing where if your product kills a whole bunch of people, you just rename yourself, like Blackwater did, and then it's all good.

So in less than a 50 year span they managed to kill 800 people via shipwreck. Jesus. That's not a good record. I looked it up, because this is like the year where most people if they traveled, were traveling by ship, right? It was either this or Overland.

You're not jumping on a Boeing at the time. And this is still a lot, even for that. Huh? Uh, also this kind of long distance resupply of coal had never been done before by the Russian Navy or Hamburg America. Uh,

another thing is that Russia was pretty much broke. Uh, and the, which was something of a, like they kind of like begged Hamburg America, which they kind of use their connections with the Kaiser to get something of a... They kind of bagged Hamburg America, which they kind of used their connections with the Kaiser to get something of a discount service when it came to supplies. Okay.

Unfortunately, this meant Hamburg America would only supply them with the lowest grade coal they could use and still power their ships. Lowest grade coal? Yeah. Is it like waterlogged coal? It burns badly. It burns really more dirty than other coal. It happens

to not be stored great, which we'll talk about in a little bit. It's all bad. So not only was the supply network completely and totally backwards, so was the ammunition supplies, which is important because you're going to fight a war.

Right. Makes sense. We have talked a little bit before about the Russian Empire's dire supply problem when it came to facilitating the transport of pretty much anything. This included ammunitions for the various ships going on this mission. One of the problems at the base was all of these cannons were different sizes. They didn't really have a standard and especially because they were out of date. They were even more strange and rare.

Now they've literally slapped every kind of cannon in every which way, meaning they've only made their supply problems worse. I wonder what they put on the fishing boats. Smaller cannons. I was hoping the biggest one they had. Just a ship-sized bayonet. I wonder what they put on the fish fishing boats. Uh, smaller cannons. Uh, that really did. I was hoping like the biggest one they had.

Just a ship sized bayonet. Fire ships. Um, now the czar appointed Admiral Zinovi Rostov-Yansky, uh, to this incredibly dumb suicidal mission. Uh, pretty much only on the recommendation other than Kaiser Wilhelm.

the czar was not entirely familiar with xenobia at the time um and he was a decent enough naval commander but not nearly as experienced and respected as the other two commanders that the japanese had already killed um so like he's uh i guess he's on the podium like he's top three. He's up there now. Yeah. Congratulations. You're commander by default. We give you two weeks. He was also a bit of an, like an unhinged drunk who would get like incredibly hammered and begin beating the shit out of his staff when they made him unhappy.

And we have done what? Probably 30 hours of podcasting and the Russian military throughout time now between the Soviet-Afghan war, Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and now this. And that's something I've just accepted as standard operation procedure in any Russian leadership position is getting drunk and physically abusing people. But like… It checks out. Yeah, I mean, literally literally we've covered three wars involving russia now and every single one involves a physically abusive drunken command it's amazing as long as they're consistent and i will got a show yeah i mean say what you will about imperial

russia and the soviet union but they had consistency uh and i will argue that the sailors of this fleet which we will talk about more had a lot if you drop them in afghanistan during the soviet war they'd fit right in oh that's fucking great uh though it should be pointed out that his sailors still kind of liked him um because because when he wasn't drunk he was very nice nice. And he also was not corrupt, which is incredibly rare at the time. And if you're in the U.S. Navy, having an admiral who's not corrupt is exceedingly rare now. What up, Fat Leonard? Like when Zinovi was put in charge, he attempted to make sailors' lives a little bit more bearable.

And the sailors knew that, but he just like stuffed by uh like russian bureaucracy at every turn uh and like really couldn't do anything except get them a slight raise so that's nice i mean that's something yeah uh drunk as he was he knew the crews uh that were going to be manning his new squadron were not exactly the best ones in the russian navy he knew that because the black sea and baltic fleets of the day were something of a dumping ground for the biggest fuck-ups in the navy at my kind of place yeah i think ed fitting great um most of the sailors were untrained conscripts from the interior of russia of russia who had never seen an ocean until they arrived for duty um this is a problem uh at at the time most navies were staffed by coastal

areas because people are familiar with sailing and using boats in general. Being able to swim would be nice. These are all things I know these guys know how to do. You don't need to. You got a boat. He also discovered that most of the officers just left their ships and went ashore

to drink all day, returning only to assault their sailors or bring sex workers aboard into their quarters. Like, there was no commanding going on. The state of the second squadron is probably best put by one Russian officer who said,

quote, one half of this lot needed to be taught everything because they know nothing and the other half also needed to learn everything because they had forgotten everything. That's awesome. That's a good sign. Seeing this, the new commanders knew that they needed to train

all these drunken and untrained idiots up to the task of fighting the Japanese Navy. A Navy which, remember, by this point, had ethered the fucking Russian Navy at every turn. But that brings us back to the ammunition problem. The Tsar had only allocated enough ammunition for the coming battle at Port Arthur. Nothing extra was added for training.

So no training would be conducted. You don't need it. I feel like you're telling me an underdog story. And it's like the build-up right now. Yeah, this is like an underdog story. Like, this is like the Mighty Ducks, but instead, if they didn't win, they all died in a bus accident towards the end of the movie.

Meaning this, so this meant that the second squadron, which had just been slapped together and simply renamed the Second Pacific Squadron, would be sent into battle despite many of them not even knowing how to pilot a ship or use any of the guns that had been mounted on them. This will become a very obvious problem shortly. So on October 15th, the glorious second Pacific squadron set for battle. And the flagship immediately ran aground while another cruiser lost its anchor and drifted off into the distance. Holy fuck. Like, the flagship

should be the one ship that knows what it's doing. Because it has Zenobia on it. I honestly can only imagine the ship just drifting off and everybody going bye-bye if that wasn't bad enough the second day a destroyer ran into a battleship well like the actual two warships like two of the rare warships in the fleet but damage them both bad enough where they had to return for repairs they would not return to the fleet. I think it's because they didn't know how. Also, not a bad move.

Yeah, that was a solid... Imagine the captains of those ships. If we keep going, we're all going to die. Let's just crash into one another. You think he was talking to the other dude with flags like, hey, let's do this? Yeah, that Russian captain who did that is actually somewhere in the US Navy now off the coast of Japan. After a few hiccups that nearly tanked the entire that Russian captain who did that's actually somewhere in the U S Navy now off the coast of Japan. Um,

after a few hiccups that nearly tanked the entire mission, the squadron finally got moving again. And their first resupply mission went about as well as you could imagine. The contracted coal ship sailed out to meet them and the clueless Russian sailors drove right into them. In another case, a Russian supply ship began floating off in a different direction ignoring the admiral's order to return to the fleet so he shot at it he damaged it bad enough for it also had to return home and he still didn't get their supplies

that's fucking awesome if that wasn't bad enough soon rumors began to pop up. They started to spread through the ranks of the ship's inexperienced and probably terrified sailors now that they're on the water for the first time in their life. The Japanese Navy is waiting to ambush them. Now, this might sound like it makes a lot of sense because they're at war, but they

were off the coast of Denmark. What? Tens of thousands of miles away from Japan. Fuck that. That did not really register to them. The Admiral himself brought up the idea that the Japanese attack was in fact imminent.

Oh. So even the Admiral fell for it. A small side note here of history, the British were building Japanese warships which they pretty much supplied most of building japanese warships uh which who they pretty much supplied most of the japanese warships for the war but they were also not housing thousands of japanese sailors to suddenly crew them and ride them into battle so that is absolutely not a real fear um and besides a japanese fleet sailing up the coast of europe would have fucking

raised some eyebrows yeah like, like, you're really far away from where you probably should be. Yeah, and like, even though there's a lot of countries that were kind of, sort of friendly to Japan, you have to remember how racist they all are. An Asian fleet sailing up the fucking English channel

would have brought some attention. Now, acting on these fears, an order was given to the squadron that no ship would be allowed to pass between the ships of the squadron. No matter what flag they happened to be flying, they would be forced to go around or shot at. Jesus.

Pretty much as soon as this order was given, a fishing vessel approached the squadron, leading the crews to open fire on it. Jesus Christ. Thankfully for the fishing vessels, the Russian gunners literally could not aim, meaning it's their inexperience and ineptitude saved the fishermen's lives and they hit nothing.

But they could hit their own supplies. Yes. So they could hit themselves in the toes. Something that will become obvious during the course of this episode is the Russians are a far greater threat To themselves than anyone else That's what it's looking like

Now this vessel happened to be A contracted fishing vessel That was carrying word from the Tsar that the Admiral Had been in fact promoted to Vice Admiral He almost killed his own promotion That's fucking awesome The next day, russian armed supply ship the kamchaka uh was the last ship in the squadron during travel uh so it then opened fire on a swedish fishing vessel claiming it was under attack it wasn't and thankfully they couldn't shoot for

shit so the swedes were able to escape they They're really paranoid that far away. Yep. Jesus. After this, the squadrons seemed to be getting their shit together. They went a few days without a boat randomly exploding or whatever other cartoonish insanity would be inflicted upon them next. That was until they got to Dogger Bank off the coast of

Kingston-upon-Hall, a very stupidly named British city. A fleet of British trawlers being like fishing trawlers were sailing out doing, you know, trawler stuff. These ships were very well lit. They had like spotlights on them and they were armed

with fishing nets. They were also flying British flags and were very clearly marked. They were immediately confused for Japanese torpedo boats. What? The Russian Navy opened fire while the ships descended into absolute chaos. Sailors reported

that their ships had been hit and they were taking on water. Other sailors grabbed life vests, convinced the ship was going down, and jumped into the sea. Still others grabbed rifles, knives, and any other weapons they could find and screamed that they were being boarded one man was shot what honestly they could have been taken on water but let's be honest with that they probably

were by default they were probably already taking on water that's fair but that's fucking we're being boarded into just you shoot your bunk mate once they hop out of the bunk and not only did they manage to sink a british trawler and damage four more they also managed to shell themselves killing the squadron priest what this madness went on for 20 minutes before the admiral was able to get the fleet under control

he's taking a nap to his credit he immediately knew something awful was happening and was running around trying to control everything but quickly learned he could control nothing so in the end one British civilian was killed along with two Russian sailors.

Despite the fishing trailers lacking the ability to fire anything in self-defense, more Russians died. That means even when an unarmed group of people accidentally finds themselves in front of the Navy version of a firing squad,

the Russian Navy is a much bigger threat to itself than anyone they happen to be shooting at truly that was probably far probably some of the best sailor stories ever in my life truly incredible i hope all of them get the fucking i don't know order of the czar or whatever it was called before the czar got and his family got owned the russians apologized for the incident but nobody was buying their excuse One newspaper summed up the situation very accurately, saying, quote, It is almost inconceivable that any men calling themselves seamen would be

as frightened as they might be, could spend 20 minutes bombarding a fleet of fishing boats without discovering the nature of their target. Would it have been awesome if the fishing vessels had started shooting harpoons at them and started sinking ships? It would have been a rout and the fishermen would have won. Oh yeah.

The British were incredibly pissed at this and mustered the entire Channel fleet to shadow the squadron. The Channel fleet also happened to be larger than the entire Russian navy. The British commander joked that he would only use four of his battleships to destroy the entire squadron just to make things fair.

That's a fucking... Those are shots fired. That's a flex. That's fucking awesome. And probably 100% correct, I'd have to say. Eventually, cooler heads prevailed because the British were very close to declaring war on Russia over this. Really? Yeah.

Because remember, they're allies of the Japanese as well. So like, you know, how much different would, would history be if, if, you know, England sallied out and completely own the Russians with the Japanese.

Cause like if the Brits and the Japanese teamed up, I don't think they would have, uh, the, like the purpose to end the war when they did. But you know, he didn't. Instead, cooler heads prevailed, and the Russians agreed

to leave the people that they thought were responsible for the incident at the Spanish port of Vigo to be taken care of by British investigators. Who did they give up? It was like a handful of people, and to be fair like the the admiral

definitely thought they were responsible though i mean technically because they all fell under his command he was also responsible he happened to not turn himself over for investigation i mean would you nope exactly look you don't make it go turn over like the most useless people and then say oh the masterminds. Look, you don't become an admiral by being an ethical person. Now, after leaving the Spanish port, the convoy pulled out of Tangiers, Algeria. And one of the ships dragged its anchor across the seafloor,

severing the underwater telegraph cable, severing all communications between Algeria and mainland Europe for four days. These guys are just going through the waters fucking up everything they can get their hands on. I think the prize that goes to the Kamchatka, the supply ship, because the convoy lost contact with our friend, the Kamchatka. Which brings us to the small side story of this lovely little supply ship that attempted to start a world war.

While the second squadron nearly started a war with the British Empire, the Kamchatka decided they would one-up that and try to start a war with the rest of Europe. Over the next three days, the supply ship would fire wildly at anything that came near it, including a French, German, and again, Swedish ship. They fired over 300 rounds and apparently hit nothing. Holy fuck. You think that they want to save up ammo for, like, you know, the war? To be fair, they saw the war everywhere.

That's true. That's deep. The true war was within the Kamchatka's heart this entire time. After this, the ship was ordered to take the lead of the convoy because nobody trusted them enough to wander off and attack somebody else. After this, they were off to the coast of Africa where they met with more contracted coal ships.

Because this process was costly and time-consuming, the ships were ordered to take as much coal as they could possibly fit on board, badly overloading them. Also, because they weren't designed to take as much coal as they could possibly fit on board, badly overloading them. Also, because they weren't designed to hold this much coal, there were specific storerooms set aside on ships to store coal that were ventilated correctly, because coal dust is incredibly, incredibly dangerous. Oh, yeah.

Well, the storerooms were immediately filled. This required them to store these sacks of coal literally anywhere that there was room. That meant like hallways, bunk rooms. Fucking bunk. Fucking literally. Just sleeping on coal. Yeah, like literally anywhere.

Now, in case you're not aware, because I wasn't, when coal is not stored correctly, the coal dust is explosively flammable. Really? And it will leak out and cover everything in a fine dust. This effectively turned every ship in the squadron into a sailing bomb waiting for a spark. Wow. This also had another downside. The squadron was making its way down the African coast

and hit very humid air. This mixed with the coal dust, which the men then breathed in, and it created a thick, tar-like substance with the air, and it was now covering their lungs. Soon... Go ahead. This is awful.

Soon, dozens of men were dropping dead from respiratory failure. I mean, when you're not getting killed by your own crewmates, the air's killing you. Thankfully, they were then hit by a giant storm that killed dozens of more people. But the storm surge cleaned away most of the coal goo. Oh, that's good.

Yeah, like someone somewhere was like, please, can we just get rid of all the coal? And somewhere a monkey paw finger curled inward like typhoon we got you the ships were ordered to keep their gun ports closed because of the imaginary threat of japanese torpedo boats uh that being like when the ports were open it was easier to be sunk if you're hit by a torpedo uh now these ports were the main way to cool the ships during travel through hot areas because you know air conditioning had not been invented yet. This meant soon that everybody on board was butt-ass naked and covered in several layers of coal dust and ass sweat. Oh, that's good.

It soon became so hot that men began getting rashes. Now, this is probably made worse by the filth everywhere. is probably made worse by the filth everywhere and and their only means of getting fresh water for like drinking or otherwise was from the rain which is not nearly enough to go around so nobody was bathing and soon we were drinking water from the sea and violent getting violently ill and dying cool this is not so much of the underdog story i was thinking This is a fucking plague fleet. You know, have you ever seen Charlie Brown? Like the peanut show Charlie Brown? I am familiar. Like the dirty kid that walks around

and has the dust cloud behind him? Pigpen, yeah. Yep, that's the fucking fleet. The whole fleet of pigpens. Just naked, covered in a thick layer of coal dust. It's behind every single sailor and behind the ships itself. Now, at this point, the Admiral had begun losing his motherfucking mind.

Whenever he got mad, he'd go to the edge of the ship, point towards the ship that he happened to be mad at, and throw his binoculars into the sea in its direction. Oh. I thought you... I want that ship sunk right now. It probably wouldn't hit it. That's true.

Though this was... How many binoculars did this guy have? So, funny story about that. This is apparently something of a common occurrence throughout his entire career, and his aides made sure to bring a crate of 50 binoculars with them. That's awesome. He would also only refer to his ships over the radio by curse words.

Like, every ship was a very specific curse word. It was no longer whatever their name was. He would fly off the handle and begin screaming at anyone for any reason, as well as physically assaulting people as they walked by him while randomly renaming his ships after people's buttholes or whatever. They eventually

arrived at French Madagascar where they finally learned that Port Arthur had fallen to the Japanese which means that their entire mission for which they have been at sea for months now, had been completely pointless. So many people

had died from coal. They have the worst fucking luck ever, dude. Kim Chotka is like, you guys want us to start another war? We could probably start another war. Yeah, we could make something happen right now. This caused morale of the men to plummet.

Because, like, of course it did. Oh, it already wasn't down? I'm surprised people aren't committing suicide by the dozens at this point. It's like, there's no one on board that realistically believes they're ever making it back to Russia. Like, there's no fucking way. I feel like there's always the few happy dudes that are like, oh, yeah, for the cause.

Someone, like, in the bowels of some ship covered in eight layers of shit and coal dust is like, this isn't as bad as back in the old Navy. Yeah. God damn it. So the commanders had to think creatively about a way to bring morale up. the commanders had to think creatively about a way to bring morale up. And that was for some reason, shipping tons of exotic creatures aboard from around the surrounding islands.

This included a talking parrot, which the Admiral befriended and began flying around and screaming swear words at everyone. That's awesome. That's good. That's a morale booster right there. But it also included large amounts of venomous snakes,

which killed the captain of a ship. A group of chameleons that quickly bred and overran the ships. And a goddamn crocodile. These guys are fucking idiots. What the fuck? You know what would make the stink ass

fucking metal floating casket better? A crocodile. Just loose that motherfucker on board. only is do we have to worry about the plague and like the coal thing guys we could also worry about the wildlife which we didn't have to worry about 10 minutes ago just a crocodile stalking people through the ships which is exactly what happened um it fucking up balls and it's just hiding in the cold. The crocodile was brought aboard the cruiser Aurora, as well as a few very, very venomous snakes. Unfortunately, these bastards ate the ship's rat population pretty much overnight,

leading the men to be so afraid to sleep for fear of being eaten that they just jumped overboard and slept ashore. Meaning that they ceded control of an entire cruiser to a crocodile. That's fucking awesome. The tropical environment, animal infestations, and a few other things

led to the Admiral and his second-in-command getting violently ill. And to the point that they were in a coma for a while. I mean, that's probably the best thing that happened to somebody there. Yeah, that's probably the best thing to happen to somebody there. Yeah, that's the least worst way that anybody on this ship had died yet. But while they recovered, nobody was left in command. So the squadron just kind of stayed at port and without leadership.

So the soldiers were just like deserting the ships to run through the brothels of Madagascar and soon acquired countless untreated STDs that swept through the crew of every ship. Nice. I feel like the ship kind of turned into its own like LA where it has just a bunch of gangs in the hallways. You don't go down this hallway at certain times.

That's the crocodile's hallway. You don't go down there. Yeah. A small church forms to worship the venomous snakes that have infested your bunkhouse. A small church forms to worship the venomous snakes that have infested your bunkhouse. So eventually these floating infested slums cause several men to die of disease. During one of the funerals aboard the Kamchatka, they use a live round to fire a salute to a dead man, which hit the ship Aurora, killing a few people.

And hopefully taking out the crocodile do you think the aurora is like ah again and they they shot off their rounds for their funeral i'm convinced that it was an inside job uh like the the venomous snakes of the kamchatka took over the guns and fired at the crocodile to try to take the ship back this is against all the reptiles that have legs wildlife so it's a that's a fucking in-house wildlife war where the snakes were jealous of the crocodiles for having legs um so they went to war and also there's just chameleons everywhere during all of this. I feel like I needed to point that out again, because there's just so many chameleons.

I mean, at least they're not... I guess you could eat chameleons. Yeah, I feel like eating the chameleons is the best way to survive at this point, because they've already lost the ship to the crocodile, and the snakes have taken over everything else. So the only things that the Russian sailors are able to defeat on one-on-one combat

is a chameleon. Even then the chameleon put up a strong fight. A Russian had to run up behind it and stab the chameleon in the back. Now, stranded in the tropical heat and being driven mad by untreated syphilis, the men began to revolt. One man claimed to be Jesus or God,

and they began regularly murdering one another. Holy fuck! This is exactly what I pictured. There is accounts of one naked man running between ships and wildly slashing at people with a sword while giggling and asking if people were afraid to die. Ah, I see you too have joined the snake cult. If that wasn't all bad enough,

the Russians also discovered something else that Madagascar had. A flourishing opium trade. So add crippling opium addiction to all of these other problems. I don't know what the captain's gonna do when he wakes up from his coma. I honestly don't know what he could do. He just lost control of the ship. His doctor's just a crocodile smoking opium.

Yeah. And the doctor has a stethoscope. Who also has syphilis. Who fucked the crocodile? The crocodile has a stethoscope. That'd be the best part. Finally, the Admiral recovered from his illness and received new orders.

The squadron was meeting up with the surviving Russian 1st Squadron, which there wasn't really one that they knew of. But they didn't know that. And they were going to meet the Japanese fleet in open seas and defeat them but because they had spent so much time

dicking around and firing off thousands of shells and accidentally starting wars they needed to resupply before they could go back to war so when the supply ships did show up to the cheering of the absolute crack brain syphilis infested crocodile soldiers

sailors whatever they were depressed to find the ships did not in fact have ammunitions but instead had brought hundreds of crates of fur coats to the tropical island of madagascar amazing uh some like the the chameleons like yes yes give us a coat yeah you if nothing all the shit that just happened if none of that made you mad the fur coats would send you overboard like the one person who's still holding it together like no I'm just glad to be doing my duty for the czar and then the

fur coats show up you're like that's it I'm fucking the crocodile it's gone too far it's hungry eyes have been staring at me and I'm really into teeth. I've been holding this temptation for a while. I can't hold it any longer. Run that tail, girl.

As the squadron left, the crews began to refuse to follow orders and wander off, eventually being brought back to the convoy being threat of being shot at. That is when they were joined by the so-called Russian 3rd Pacific Squadron, as they were in French Indochina. When the Admiral saw the 3rd Squadron, he was horrified.

It was even older and more obsolete than his own, though probably with significantly less syphilis and animal infestation. I can imagine the crewmates talking to one another, Hey, did you go to Madagascar place is wild dude you got any opium no we ran out so we're smoking the chameleons

upon upon hearing the state of his reinforcements the admiral tenured his resignation from the Russian navy to the Tsar at sea did he just shoot himself I think that's how he was probably tenured his resignation from the Russian Navy to the Tsar at sea. Did he just shoot himself?

I think that's how he was probably meant to resign. The Tsar refused to acknowledge his resignation, meaning he was forced to stay there. Oh, he did the old ghosted. You can't fire me. I quit. Or I'm not gonna get fired. I resign in

protest. Knowing he had no choice but to tackle this mission with a ramshackle pile of shit that the Tsar called a fleet, he did so in what became known as the Battle of Tsushima in May of 1905. Now,

I'm not gonna go into much detail in the battle, because there's not a lot um unfortunately for the russians their incredibly slow fleet during the eight month journey as well as the constant intelligence being fed to them by the british and the united states meant that the japanese do exactly what the what the russian fleet was doing the entire time and they also knew exactly where they were going. Between May 27th and May 28th the Japanese fleet would outclass the Russian Navy in every conceivable way

and it was clear within the first hour of the battle start that the Russians had no hope. There's this thing in naval combat called crossing the T. So the Russians were coming in a convoy, like a line effectively right like a vertical line and the Japanese crawled like came across them

horizontally meaning they could bring all of their guns to bear right and there's not a lot of guns on the front of the Russian ships right like this is before the modern battleships most people picture world war two where like turrets move around and stuff like that uh those were a thing not a lot of them and most of the guns are on the side because they were still especially these old russian ships were suited for like the broad broadside style of war in the old fucking days when these ships were new, right? So when the Japanese crossed the T, they literally devastated the fleet

almost immediately. Like, within an hour, the battle was over, but it continued for hours because it turns out ships are kind of hard to sink, especially armored metal battleships made out of steel, which is the first time in history that an armored warship had been

downed by another enemy warship's cannons. Really? Yeah, within just a few hours, several battleships on the Russian side were sank. Notice I didn't say anything about the Japanese side because none of them were sank. One Japanese

sailor stubbed his toe in the battle. We'll talk a little bit about the Japanese casualties simply because there was not many. The Admiral was hit in the head by a flying piece of metal and knocked unconscious. Fuck, again? Within

just a few hours of combat. I thought it was like the first volley. It was pretty soon after the battle started, and it left the entire battle in the hands of Admiral Negaboktov, who could do nothing to stop his entire fleet from turning and running for its life.

Let's go back to Madagascar. The fleet broke and ran without orders, so the Japanese Admiral Togo sent in waves of fast-moving torpedo boats to attack and harass them, sinking even more of them. And this is where the only Japanese ships got sank were those torpedo boats. Just I think it was four of them.

By the 28th, Nabokov, or whatever his name is, had only six ships under his command and was cornered by the japanese fleet off the coast of takashima he ordered the last few ships to surrender and and like ran down the russian flags and flew up a flag knows the xge which at the time was the international symbol in naval warfare for surrender um though one ship in his fleet ignored this and just hauled ass and tried to run away. It died. It died real bad. Making a break for Madagascar, I'm telling you. I gotta get back for the opium. Togo actually had a similar situation happen to him when he was fighting in China,

where an imperial Chinese fleet ran surrendering colors and then shot at him. So he didn't believe the Russians' sign sign of surrender and he kept shooting at them. Fuck. The Russians panicked and ran up the colors of the Japanese Navy instead. Remember a couple episodes ago when you said, well, what do you do? Just put up the Japanese flag?

And I said, you wait for that. Yeah, that's what happened. Yeah. And that's what finally got Togo to accept their surrender. by the end of the battle the russian navy was utterly destroyed over 5 000 people were dead with another 6 000 wounded as well as a full 11 battleships being sank holy fuck uh the japanese for their effort lost only a little bit more than a hundred men gee Gee, I... A small, strange...

A close battle. Yeah, had them right where they wanted them. Now, the war was effectively over at this point, but we do have one more episode to go. But a small side note of history here. There is a junior officer named Isoroku Yamamoto who was nearly killed by a misfiling cannon during the battle.

I know who that is. He would go on, of course, to command the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yeah, his cannon exploded in his face and he almost died. Fuck. Yeah. That's crazy. I didn't know that. The Japanese and Russian admirals would eventually meet as the Russian was recovering from his head wound in a Japanese hospital.

Togo shook his hand and told him, quote, Defeat is the common fate of the soldier. There's nothing to be ashamed of it. The great point is whether we both performed our duty. Of course, he said that because he won one of the greatest battles in naval warfare history. I'm sure if he was at the receipt to get to that, he wouldn't feel so great. Probably would have killed himself with the sword. He's like, what, did I fall asleep again? Imagine, like, seeing a bright flash and waking up and your entire navy's dead. Last time I woke up, my entire navy was fucked up.

Yeah, last time I woke up was bad enough. Where's the crocodile? I'm sorry, sir, the crocodile didn't make it. The Camille hints fire off a fucking gun salute for him. Crocodile. I'm sorry, sir. The crocodile didn't make it. The chameleons fire off a fucking gun salute for him. Snakes act as pallbearers. The two Russian commanders would be brought up on charges for surrendering the Russian fleet.

Despite our boy, Genovi, being unconscious when all of this happened, and not knowing what was going on around him, they were both sentenced to death, a sentence that was overturned, but both of their careers were completely ruined and would spend the rest of their lives penniless and completely embarrassed.

I believe the word they used for Shinobi was destitute, which is not great. Now, this battle would kind of lead directly to a major subplot that would guide the world into world war one yet again there are several british observers with the japanese navy during this battle during which time they saw the effectiveness of the two navies their suggestions

on changing the navy to better suit this new kind of long-ranged armor naval combat would would lead directly to the creation of the HMS Dreadnought, which would trigger the naval arms race between Germany and the British Empire, a major contributing factor to the coming World War. So, yep, again, because nobody learned shit,

a whole bunch of inbred fucks led to a world war that killed tens of millions of people. Way to go. And that is where we'll pick up next week with the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War and the Battle of Mukden. Even though technically that battle is already over. We're going to go

back in time again. Yeah. Unreliable narrator. It's hard. This is why I could never do World War II or something. You didn't disappoint. Good episode. You know, I knew going into this, I was like, when I was writing this script, I

said, this is going to be one of the best episodes we've ever done. It's fucking hilarious. I stand by it, and I stand by the fact that no matter how long this show goes on for, there will never be a dumber story in naval history. And there's some dumb ones out there, but it's hard to compare

God that was awesome so Nick thank you for joining me on this much heavier crocodile based episode than I originally intended I'd like to thank everybody for joining us

and for supporting the show and making everything that we do possible. Until next time, don't get syphilis. That's a good one. That's a good one. That's a really good one. That's a good way to end this up. Don't get syphilis and don't have sex with crocodiles.

Later.