r upper works ablaze in several places. The
four stately battleships at the head of the line had then to face the
concentrated attack of the enemy. The "Orel" was suffering like her
consorts. Though her armour was nowhere penetrated, the shells burst their
way into her unarmoured superstructure, and reduced everything on her upper
decks to tangled wreckage. Five minutes after the "Ossliabya" sank a shell
wrecked the after-turret of the "Suvaroff," tearing the after-bridge to
pieces with the flying fragments. Her steering gear was temporarily
disabled, and she drifted from her station at the head of the line. One by
one in quick succession the heavy steel masts and two huge funnels crashed
down. The upper deck was impassable from end to end. In the midst of the
confused wreckage handfuls of brave men fought the fires with buckets as
they broke out now here now there. Most of the guns were silent. "She no
longer looked like a ship," says a Japanese account.

When the "Suvaroff" swerved out of the line at a few minutes before three
o'clock her steering gear had been disabled, and probably for a few minutes
before the crisis she had not been answering her helm. The course of the
fleet, while she led it during the fight with the Japanese armoured fleet,
had been due east, but, as she lost her direction, it turned slightly to
the south. When she drifted away from the line the "Imperator
Alexander III" became the leading ship. Captain Buchvostoff, who commanded
her, led the fleet in a circle round the disabled "Suvaroff," first running
southwards, increasing the distance from the enemy, and then sweeping round
as if trying to break through to the northward. Togo followed on a parallel
course until the Russian fleet seemed to be going due south, then he
signalled an order, and, as accurately as if they were performing a
practice evolution at manoeuvres, his twelve ships turned simultaneously
through half a circle, thus reversing the direction and changing the order
of the fleet so that the last ship in the line became the leader. As the
Russians swept round to the north Togo was thus ready to cross their bows,
and the "Alexander" received the concentrated fire of several ships.

She turned eastwards, followed by her consorts in a straggling line, and
then drifted out of her place at the head of it, leaking badly, and with
her upper works ablaze. On a smoother sea the "Tsarevitch" had been hit
once below the armour belt on 10 Aug