action, had determined the outcome of the
battle. The ultimate outcome of the battle had, of course, been
accelerated by the fact that the first shells had created such fearful
havoc in the fore-parts of three of the American ships, quantities of
water pouring in which caused the ships to list and made it necessary to
fill the compartments on the opposite side in order to restore the
equilibrium.

Admiral Kamimura was less fortunate at first with the second squadron.
He was led astray by the wrong interpretation of a wireless signal and
did not sight Admiral Crane's fleet till towards evening, and then it
was not advisable to begin the attack at once, lest the Americans should
escape under cover of darkness. Kamimura, therefore, decided to wait
until shortly after midnight, and then to commence operations with his
eight destroyers and apply the finishing touches with his heavy guns.

Admiral Crane's squadron consisted of six battleships--the three new
battleships _Virginia_, _Nebraska_ and _Georgia_, the two older vessels
_Kearsage_ and _Kentucky_, and, lastly, the _Iowa_. Then there were the
two armored cruisers _St. Louis_ and _Milwaukee_, and the unprotected
cruisers _Tacoma_ and _Des Moines_, which, on account of their speed of
16.5 knots and their lack of any armor, were as useless as cruisers as
were their sister ships in Admiral Perry's squadron. One single
well-aimed shell would suffice to put them out of action.

It was a terrible surprise when the Japanese destroyers began the attack
under cover of the night. Not until dawn did the Americans actually
catch sight of their enemy, and that was when Kamimura left the field of
battle, which was strewn with sinking American ships, with his six
practically unharmed battleships headed in a southwesterly direction to
join Togo's fleet, who had already been informed of the victory. The
work of cleaning up was left to the destroyers, who sank the badly
damaged American ships with their torpedoes. The hospital ship
_Ontario_, attached to the yellow fleet, and a torpedo boat fished up
the survivors of this short battle. Then the _Ontario_ started for San
Francisco, while the leaking _Farragut_ remained behind.

The Americans had been able to distinguish, with a fair degree of
certainty, that Kamimura's squadron consisted of the _Shikishima_, the
battleships _Iwami_ (ex _Orel_), the _Sagami_ (ex _Peresvjet_), and
_Tumo_ (ex _Pobjeda_), all three old Russian ships, and o