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Let me add to this list the English cruiser "Hermes" near Dover, the "Niger" off the Downs of the English coast; the Russian cruiser "Pallada" in the Baltic; and a great number of other English torpedo boats, torpedo boat destroyers, as well as auxiliary cruisers and transports. All this was achieved before the end of 1914.
Then came our old friend of the five funnels, the Askold, followed by the Pallada and Diana, with a hospital ship, flying a Red Cross flag, bringing up the rear but well astern. On the port beam, but well to the rear of the line of battleships, was the cruiser Novik easily distinguished by her three funnels with a single mast stepped between the second and third funnel and seven destroyers.
On August 28, 1914, the day after the raid on Libau by the German cruiser Augsburg, the date of the battle of the Bight of Helgoland, the two Russian protected cruisers Pallada and Bayan, while patrolling the Russian coast in the Baltic Sea, were attacked by German submarines.
But, in addition to these, the Pallada, cruiser, and the volunteer cruiser Angara were also hit, and were obliged to be beached to save them from foundering.
But although this assertion was undeniable, the grumblers forgot a little group of very important facts, the chief of which was that the five Russian battleships and the protected cruiser Pallada which succeeded in regaining Port Arthur harbour were so desperately damaged that they were practically reduced to the condition of scrap iron, inasmuch as that, despite all the efforts of the Russians to repair them, none of them was again able to leave Port Arthur until they fell into the hands of the Japanese when the fortress surrendered.
These battle-ships were the most powerful vessels in the Russian squadron, and the Pallada was a first-class protected cruiser of 6630 tons' displacement. The Japanese destroyers had left Sasebo on the 6th of February and they returned thither uninjured, having materially weakened the Russian fleet.
On 6th December the Poltava was sunk by the Russians to save her from destruction by the Japanese fire. Next day the Retvisan met a like fate, while a fire broke out aboard the Peresviet, and on the 8th she and the Pobieda were at the bottom of the harbour, while the Pallada was obviously following them.
She made up for this by having still at large the cruiser Karlsruhe which damaged a great amount of commerce, and by the exploits of her submarines, far outshining those of the Allies. Russia had lost the armored cruiser Pallada, and the Jemchug, a third-class cruiser, and the losses of the French and Austrian navies were not worth accounting. With regard to interned vessels both sides had losses.
At the moment when the confusion created by the erratic movements of the Tsarevich was at its height, the Peresviet displayed a signal from her bridge and, sheering out of the melee, headed away back in the direction of Port Arthur, followed by the Sevastopol and Poltava, while the Askold, Admiral Reitsenstein's flagship, followed by the cruisers Diana, Pallada, and Novik, broke away from the rest of the fleet and, under every ounce of steam that they could raise, headed away in a south-easterly direction, followed by the Asama and six other cruisers.
The Pallada was engaged in patrolling the Baltic with the Admiral Makarov when attacked by the submarines. She opened a strong fire on them, but was blown up by a torpedo launched by one of the submerged craft, while the Makarov escaped. On October 15th, while the British cruisers Hawke and Theseus were patrolling the northern waters of the North Sea, they were attacked by a German submarine.
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