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Updated: June 1, 2025
This mishap involved an absence of the Kasanumi from our rendezvous for ten days; but, as events proved, it did not matter in the least; for the Admiral, doubtless for good and sufficient reasons, now permitted a period of inaction to occur, during which nothing happened beyond the usual watching of Port Arthur harbour.
Then we slowed down our engines and proceeded to take stock of our injuries. So far as the Kasanumi was concerned, we had got off pretty lightly, although there was a period of about three minutes when we were hotly engaged by two Russian destroyers at the same time.
There was just comfortable time for us to re-bunker the Kasanumi before six o'clock, at which hour we got under way, the expedition as a whole being under the command of Rear-Admiral Misamichi, who knew the locality well, having carefully reconnoitred the whole of the western coast of the peninsula a week or two earlier.
This matter settled, I made my way back to the Kasanumi, and there prepared for my somewhat hazardous adventure by carefully tying up a marked and figured copy of the map of Kinchau and its surroundings in a piece of thin sheet rubber, to protect it from the wet. Next, I divested myself of all clothing except a pair of swimming drawers and a pair of thin canvas running shoes.
My next task was to accurately fix these several positions by as complete a series of cross bearings as possible; having accomplished which, there was nothing more to be done until after midnight. Meanwhile, the Kasanumi, with her engines stopped, was lying hove-to some sixty miles to the westward of Kinchau, in the Gulf of Liaotung, waiting for nightfall.
Our preparations were completed late in the afternoon of 26th March; and we immediately weighed and proceeded to sea, escorted by a flotilla of destroyers and torpedo-boats, among which was the Kasanumi, temporarily under the command of my subordinate, young Hiraoka, who had already proved himself to be a very capable, discreet, and courageous lad.
Then, as I turned to leave the room, the Admiral said: "When you have had a good look at your ship, Mr Swinburne, come to me aboard the Mikasa, where I shall be all the morning." I found the docks without difficulty, and in the smaller graving dock lay the Kasanumi, my first command!
It was at first thought that possibly the Kasanumi might be saved, and Ito did his utmost in that direction, working for more than half an hour upon the stricken craft.
The change was greatly the better for me; for whereas my quarters aboard the Kasanumi were cramped and of Spartan simplicity, the captain's cabin of the Koryu was a spacious and almost luxurious affair, handsomely and comfortably furnished, with all the accommodation that a reasonable man could wish for.
Now, it happens that I have one destroyer the Kasanumi, one of our best boats for which, thus far, I have been unable to find a suitable commander; your arrival comes therefore at a most opportune moment, for the perusal of your record convinces me that you are the very man for whom I have been looking.
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