Dogger Bank incident

[5] The Russian warships involved in the incident were en route to the Far East to reinforce the 1st Pacific Squadron stationed at Port Arthur and later Vladivostok during the Russo-Japanese War.

[9] Torpedo boats, a recent development of the major navies, had the potential to damage and sink large warships and were very difficult to detect, which caused psychological stress to sailors at war.

[10] He also received an intelligence report from the Russian transport Bakan in the Langeland Belt of "four torpedo-boats which only showed lights on the mizenmast-head so that at a distance, they might be taken for fishing boats".

The cruisers Aurora and Dmitrii Donskoi were taken for Japanese warships and bombarded by seven battleships sailing in formation, damaging both ships and killing a chaplain and at least one sailor and severely wounding another.

More serious losses to both sides were avoided only because of the extremely low quality of Russian gunnery, with the battleship Oryol reportedly firing more than 500 shells without hitting anything.

The editorial of the morning's Times was particularly scathing: It is almost inconceivable that any men calling themselves seamen, however frightened they might be, could spend twenty minutes bombarding a fleet of fishing boats without discovering the nature of their target.

As the fleet left Tangiers on 5 November, one ship accidentally severed the city's underwater telegraph cable with her anchor, preventing communications with Europe for four days.

[16] Concerns that the draught of the newer battleships, which had proven to be considerably greater than designed,[18] would prevent their passage through the Suez Canal caused the fleet to separate after leaving Tangiers on 3 November 1904.

[20][21] On 25 November 1904, the British and the Russian governments signed a joint agreement in which they agreed to submit the issue to an international commission of inquiry whose proceedings were to be based on the Hague Convention.

[23] The report produced by the International Commission concluded that "the commissioners declare that their findings, which are therein formulated, are not, in their opinion, of a nature to cast any discredit upon the military qualities or the humanity of Admiral Rojdestvensky, or of the personnel of his squadron".

The memorial, approximately 18 feet high, shows the dead fisherman George Henry Smith and carries the following inscription: Erected by public subscription to the memory of George Henry Smith, (skipper) and William Richard Leggett, (third hand) of the ill-fated trawler "Crane", who lost their lives in the North Sea by the action of the Russian Baltic Fleet October 22nd 1904, and Walter Whelpton, (skipper) of the trawler "Mino", who died from shock May 13, 1905.