Koreets

Koreets

According to the official war report Varyag lost 130 people of which 33 killed and 97 wounded, Koreets was not damaged at all and did not lose a single crew member. Obviously the Japanese had focussed on Varyag and they planned to finish off the gunboat Koreets once they were done with the cruiser.

In all, the cruiser was hit by 12 to 14 large explosive shells. Although the armour deck was not destroyed and the ship remained in operation, it should be admitted that by the end of the battle Varyag had lost almost all its combat capabilities for resistance due to large losses in personnel and multiple instances of severe damage.

The commander of the French cruiser Pascal Victor Senet who came onboard the Varyag cruiser immediately after the battle said later: “I will never forget this shocking scene before my eyes. The deck was drenched in blood, corpses and body parts were scatted all over the place. Nothing escaped the destruction: spots hit by the shells had the paint charred, all metal parts were pieced, ventilators lying on the deck, the boards and beds were burnt. In a place where so much heroism was shown, everything was turned into rubble, broken into pieces, riddled with shell fragments, and what remained of the bridge was hanging sorrowfully. The smoke was coming from all holes in the aft and the list to port was aggravating”.

Naturally, all this damage could not be fixed using their own resources in the besieged port. Besides, the morale of the crew that had come under the Japanese explosives underwent major changes by the end of the battle. Making people go back into the battle without the slightest chance of success was a difficult proposition.

French Cruiser Pascal

French Cruiser Pascal

Rudnev took a French motorboat and went to the British Talbot in order to make arrangements for transporting the Varyag crew to foreign ships and send a message about the possibility of destroying the cruiser right inside the roadstead. Captain Bailey of Talbot was against blowing the Varyag cruiser up, referring to close proximity of other ships sitting in the roadstead.

At 1.50 pm Rudnev came back to Varyag. He summoned the officers, told them about his intention and got their support. After that, they immediately back to transport the wounded and all of the crew members to foreign ships.

At 3.15 pm the Varyag commander sent warrant office Balk to Koreets. Belyaev immediately summoned the military council and the officer made the following decision:

“The battle due in half an hour is uneven, and will result in unnecessary bloodshed…without causing any damage to the enemy, therefore we need…to blow up the boat…”.

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