On February 9, 1904, an unequal battle between the cruiser Varyag and the gunboat Koreets took place with the Japanese squadron
By the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, the armored cruiser "Varyag" and the gunboat "Koreets" were located as "stations" in the Korean port of Chemulpo (now a sea suburb of Seoul, the capital of South Korea). "Stationaries" were then called military ships that stood in foreign harbors to support their diplomatic missions.
For a long time, there has been a political struggle between Russia and Japan for influence in Korea. The Korean king, fearing the Japanese, hid in the house of the Russian ambassador. The cruiser "Varyag" and the gunboat "Koreets" in these conditions guaranteed the power support of our embassy in the event of any provocations. At that time it was a widespread practice: in the port of Chemulpo, next to our ships, there were "stationary" warships of England, France, the USA and Italy, defending their embassies.
On February 6, 1904, Japan severed diplomatic relations with Russia. Two days later the gunboat "Koreets", which left Chemulpo to deliver a report from the embassy to Port Arthur, was attacked by Japanese destroyers. They fired two torpedoes at it, but missed. The Korean returned to the neutral port with the news of the approach of the enemy squadron. Russian ships began to prepare for battle with superior enemy forces.
The captain of the "Varyag" Vsevolod Fedorovich Rudnev decided to break through to Port Arthur, and in case of failure to blow up the ships. The captain addressed the team: “Of course, we are going for a breakthrough and will engage in battle with the squadron, no matter how strong it is. There can be no questions about surrender - we will not surrender the cruiser and ourselves, and we will fight to the last opportunity and to the last drop of blood. Perform each of your duties accurately, calmly, without haste."
On February 9, 1904, at 11 o'clock in the morning, Russian ships left the port to meet the enemy. At noon, the Varyag sounded the alarm and raised the battle flag.
Our sailors were opposed by superior enemy forces - 6 cruisers and 8 destroyers. Later, military experts and historians calculated that the weight of the salvo (the weight of the shells fired at once by all the ship's guns) of the Japanese cruisers was almost 4 times greater than the weight of the salvo of the Varyag and Koreets. In addition, some of the Japanese cruisers had better armor and speed, and the old guns of the slow-moving Koreyets had a shorter range and rate of fire compared to guns of a similar caliber on Japanese ships.
At 12:20 the Japanese opened fire on our ships. In 2 minutes "Varyag" and "Koreets" fired back. In total, our ships had 21 guns with a caliber of 75 mm versus 90 Japanese similar calibers.
"Varyag" and "Korean" go into battle, February 9, 1904. Photo: wikipedia.org
The superiority in forces immediately affected the course of the battle. The Japanese literally threw heavy shells at the Varyag. Already 18 minutes after the opening of fire, a 152-millimeter projectile from the armored cruiser Asama, hitting the right wing of the Varyag's front bridge, destroyed the front rangefinder and caused a fire. The loss of the rangefinder sharply reduced the ability of the Russian cruiser to conduct aimed fire.
The distance between the opponents was less than 5 km. In just 25 minutes of combat, the Russian cruiser received a whole series of hits: one 203-millimeter shell hit it between the nose bridge and the chimney, 5-6 152-millimeter shells hit the bow and central part of the ship. The last was the hit of a 203-mm projectile in the aft part of the Varyag.
As it turned out after the battle, fires caused by the hits of enemy shells damaged one sixth of the ship. Of the 570 people of the Varyag team, 1 officer and 22 sailors were killed directly during the battle. After the battle, 10 more people died from their wounds over the course of several days. 27 people were seriously wounded, "less seriously wounded" - the commander of the cruiser Rudnev himself, two officers and 55 sailors. Over a hundred more people were slightly injured by small shrapnel.
Since the Japanese significantly outnumbered the Russian forces during the battle, their losses and damage were much less. During the battle from the "Varyag" we observed a hit and a fire on the cruiser "Asama", the flagship of the Japanese squadron. Both during the war and after the Japanese stubbornly denied any losses in the battle at Chemulpo, although about 30 dead bodies were taken from them upon returning their ships to the base in Sasebo.
The damaged "Varyag" and the gunboat "Koreets" retreated to the port of Chemulpo. Here Captain Rudnev, who was wounded in the head and concussed during the battle, but did not leave his post, decided to destroy the ships so that they would not get to the enemy.
At 16 hours 5 minutes on February 9, 1904, the gunboat "Koreets" was blown up by the crew and sank. On the Varyag, after the evacuation of the wounded and the crew, the Kingstones were opened: at 18 hours 10 minutes, with a still ongoing fire in the stern, the cruiser capsized on the left side and sank to the bottom.
The surviving officers and sailors from the "Varyag" and "Koreyets" returned to Russia through neutral countries. The remains of the Russian sailors who died in that battle were transferred to Vladivostok in 1911 and buried in a mass grave at the city's Sea Cemetery.
The battle of the Varyag with the superior forces of the Japanese squadron was later assessed differently by military experts, more than once speculative theories were put forward that the enemy could have inflicted greater damage. But public opinion not only in Russia, but also in European countries immediately highly appreciated the feat of the Russian sailors, who boldly moved into a hopeless battle.
So, the Austrian poet Rudolf Greinz, who was previously far from both Russia, and even more so from the Far East, soon after he learned about the heroic battle of the Russian cruiser, under the impression of the bravery of the Varyag team, wrote a song that immediately became, as they would say today, “hit "and" hit ":
Auf Deck, Kameraden, all 'auf Deck!
Heraus zur letzten Parade!
Der stolze Warjag ergibt sich nicht, Wir brauchen keine Gnade!
Already in April 1904, Der Warjag was translated into Russian, and to this day these words are known to almost everyone in our country:
Upward, comrades, everyone is in their places!
The last parade is coming!
Our proud "Varyag" does not surrender to the enemy, Nobody wants mercy!
