On October 16, 1904, the Russian Second Pacific Fleet finally completed the preparations that lasted half a year and officially set sail from St. Petersburg. On the day of the fleet's departure, Tsar Nicholas II personally attended the ceremony and delivered a short but impassioned speech to 12,000 officers and sailors. However, unlike the confident Tsar, the fleet from the commander Rozhdestvensky to the ordinary sailors were pessimistic in one way or another about this unprecedented expedition; The news of another defeat from the Far East enveloped the entire fleet in an atmosphere of pessimism and panic.

A month earlier, in order to prevent the Pacific Fleet from being burned to the ground by the fall of the siege of the fortress of Dalian, the Tsar had ordered Makarov to immediately lead the fleet to break through and sail to Vladivostok on the other side of the Korean Peninsula. However, since it was impossible for such a large fleet to break through quietly, Heihachiro Togo had already sensed the Russian fleet's preparations for action through the pervasive infiltration of Japanese spies. In response to this situation, Akiyama quickly devised an operational plan to appropriately divide the Combined Fleet into two to counter the threat of the Russian fleet from the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, respectively.

At noon on 22 September, when Makarov's four Russian battleships had just walked out of the harbor with a few younger brothers, just over three hours, the main force of the Japanese Combined Fleet, consisting of five battleships and five armored cruisers, appeared at the junction of the sea and the sky in the southeast. Seeing the extremely powerful Japanese fleet that had been lined up in a battle line and pressed towards him, Makarov's heart was half cold: even if the Russian Borodino-class battleships had extremely terrifying projections, it was impossible to make up for such a large number gap, and even more so, the Prince in this team was still in a hurry, and could only exert a small half of its combat effectiveness under normal circumstances. Now the only thing the Russian fleet can do is to run away, and the faster the better!

However, the purpose of Makarov's fleet to go to sea was not to fight a decisive battle with the Japanese fleet, but to break through the blockade and flee to Vladivostok, as long as he could successfully throw off the Japanese fleet, it would be a victory; The four battleships he led had a good speed of 18 knots, and the other four cruisers and 14 destroyers also had a speed not lower than that of the battleships, which was enough for him to maneuver quickly. Faced with the Japanese fleet, which had cut cross-cutting from the northeast and was about to forcibly occupy the T-shaped head of the Russian fleet, Makarov made a series of turning maneuvers, making it look like he was going to engage the Japanese fleet, luring the Japanese fleet to copy his return to his home port.

Where did Dongxiang know that Makarov had come to escape on this voyage? In his opinion, the current Russian war on the land front is not going well, Liaoyang has fallen, Dalian has been besieged; Therefore, Makarov's main force of the fleet was definitely aimed at sweeping away Incheon, the largest landing site for Japanese transport ships to transport supplies to the front, so as to improve the situation on the land battlefield. Under Togo's command, the Japanese fleet made two large-scale turns on the left and right, narrowing the distance between the two sides to 4.5 nautical miles; at this time, the two fleets were sailing in opposite directions at 260 degrees, and the Japanese fleet could guarantee at any time that if the Russian fleet chose to return to port, it would occupy the T-shaped head of the other side. Both sides then engaged in an artillery battle at this distance for one hour, but almost no hits were achieved due to the distance. Just when Togo thought that he could avenge the trap set by Makarov in the command of the fleet half a year ago, the Russian fleet made a maneuver that Togo did not understand at all: the Russian fleet in the south suddenly made an abrupt left turn, and they suddenly exerted force, and the speed increased to 16 knots of high power; The thick chimney spewed out a thick black soot and rushed away in a southeasterly direction.

It was only at this time that Dongxiang suddenly reacted: Makarov's trip was not at all for a combat cruise in the style of picking grass and beating rabbits, but to prepare to escape from Dalian Port! However, as a result of the one-and-a-half-hour maneuver and artillery battle that had taken place before, the positions of the two sides had already changed dramatically; By the time Togo gathered his fleet and prepared to catch up, the distance between the two armies had already opened up 15 nautical miles. This meant that the Japanese fleet, with a maximum speed of 18 knots, would not be able to catch up with the Russian Far East Fleet before dark, and after 10 hours of blind night, God knows where the Russian fleet changed course!

However, the god of luck favored this diminutive old man, who was promoted by the Japanese Navy Minister Yamamoto Gonbei as the commander of the Combined Fleet because of his "good luck". In order to catch up with this breakout, the Russian battleship Prince did not undergo a much longer complete repair; Its power system malfunctioned at this critical moment, forcing the entire Russian fleet to stop and wait for its repairs, and the Japanese fleet caught up with what had certainly been out of reach. Seeing that the Japanese fleet was approaching with murderous vigour, and that the Crown Prince had no sign of repairing for a long time, Makarov had no choice but to choose a strong man to break his wrist and abandon this best battleship in the Russian Navy except Borodino. The tall freeboard gave the battleship excellent capsizing ability, and by the time the Japanese fleet arrived, the Taizi, who had been rescued by the officers and men, had already capsized on the sea like a dead fish, and there was no chance of salvage; And the Russian fleet, which was still retreating at a speed of 18 knots from 8 nautical miles away, was not a rhythm that the Japanese fleet could keep up with.

In the war, the Russian Far East Fleet suffered heavy losses again, the battleship Taizi with a displacement of 12,900 tons was sunk, and along with the losses, there were also 4 mine-striking ships that sank during the dogfight of light battleships. A few days later, the Essen fleet was also defeated by another Japanese fleet, and if it were not for the German-made patrol of the Grombowie, which was equipped with eight 203-mm guns, the old armored Russian patrol would have repeated the mistake of the sinking of Rurik half a year earlier. The disparity in the hard power of the two sides at sea was vividly demonstrated in this battle, so that from the moment the Russian fleet met the main Japanese forces, there was no idea of engaging them head-on; And Makarov once again showed his excellent command ability to face the enemy, without the constraints of those transport ships, the performance of the first admiral of the Russian Navy is indeed better than that of the middle and upper posture of Togo.

Although Makarov managed to break through the Japanese encirclement and reach Vladivostok a week later, the ordinary Russian sailors did not think so. In their opinion, the Far Eastern Fleet was forced to flee in embarrassment by the Japanese, and with all their might it escaped to another base, losing a capital battleship on the way!

Even the main forces of the Far East Fleet of 10 battleships led by General Makarov have been defeated one after another under the heavy artillery of the Japanese Navy, and less than a third of the main force remains at present, so what is the use of this fleet now on an expedition to the past? The successive defeats on land and at sea had cast a heavy shadow on the Russian officers and men, whose demoralization had subconsciously exaggerated the combat effectiveness of the Japanese navy, and even gave rise to many absurd and grotesque fears: for example, they suspected that the Japanese would set up an ambush on the North Sea on the other side of the world! The clumsy pursuit of the Russian intelligence services further aggravated the panic of the Russian officers and men, and even affected the commander of the fleet, Rozhdestvensky: the intelligence officers said that the British were helping Japan build a large number of torpedo boats, and that there were hundreds of Japanese officers and soldiers waiting to receive them; As soon as the Russian fleet appeared in the North Sea, these torpedo boats launched torpedo attacks on the Russian fleet. All these factors are combined and superimposed, and this gives rise to the strangest psychological hallucinations in military history. In the early morning of 19 October, while the Russian expeditionary fleet was still sailing in the Baltic Sea, they were nervous and bombarded a small German freighter looming in the mist as a Japanese torpedo boat. The Russian gunners learned the lesson of this unsuccessful defeat, and finally had the opportunity to show their skills three days later.

At midnight on the 22nd, the Russian fleet crossed the Great Belt Strait in the northern section of Denmark and entered the North Sea, and the bright moonlight fell like water, making the microwave rippling North Sea like a layer of silver veil. Suddenly, a pair of Russian lookouts staring at the 2.0 vision noticed an anomaly in the distance: there were several small ships floating not far from the fleet, which must be the Japanese torpedo boats mentioned in the intelligence! In an instant, the piercing sirens sounded throughout the Russian fleet, and a large number of sailors scurried around on the deck bridge like rats out of holes, and the battleship "Orel", which took the lead, took the lead in taking action, and two 12-inch heavy guns in the bow burst into a thunderous sound of thunder against those "torpedo boats"; Immediately after that, hundreds of large-caliber guns of the entire Russian fleet began to roar violently, and large flaming red shells rained down like meteors and thunderbolts towards those poor "Japanese torpedo boats". In the midst of the confusion, Rozhdestvensky's battleship detachment even regarded its own protective cruiser "Aurora" as a Japanese cruiser, and the 12-inch and 10-inch heavy guns slashed at it in the face and beat it in the face; And the Aurora, which was attacked, was not to be outdone, and immediately returned the color with cannons. For a while, the artillery roared above the North Sea, and the red light exploded, which appeared more majestic and amazing in this calm and peaceful night.