Dogger Bank Incident - Incident

Incident

The Russian warships involved in the incident were en route to the Far East, to reinforce their 1st Pacific Squadron stationed at Port Arthur, and later Vladivostok during the Russo-Japanese War. Because of incorrect reports about the presence of Japanese torpedo boats, submarines and minefields in the North Sea, and the general nervousness of the Russian sailors, 48 harmless fishing vessels were attacked by the Russians, thousands of miles away from enemy waters.

However, the recently developed torpedo boats of the European navies, which did have the potential to wreck large warships, could also strike while nearly invisible. Torpedo boats created a psychological stress on sailors at war, and as early as 1898 during the Spanish-American War, American sailors had opened fire on ocean swells, trains on land, and rocks along the coastline, believing them to be enemy torpedo boats.

Accidents and rumors, which had also dogged the US Navy during their war with Spain in 1898, did not exempt the Russian fleet on their voyage, and there was general fear of attack among the sailors, which their command tried to quell by calling for increased vigilance and issuing an order that "no vessel of any sort must be allowed to get in among the fleet". This soon led to an incident near the Danish coast unrelated to the Dogger Bank disaster, when fishermen bearing consular dispatches for the fleet were fired on, but escaped unharmed.

The disaster of 21 October began in the evening, when the captain of the supply ship Kamchatka (Камчатка), which was last in the Russian line, took a passing Swedish ship for a Japanese torpedo boat and radioed that he was being attacked. Later in the night the officers on duty sighted the British trawlers, interpreted their signals incorrectly and classified them as Japanese torpedo boats, and consequently opened fire on the British fishermen. The British trawler Crane was sunk, and its captain and first mate were killed. On the other boats there were six fishermen wounded, one of whom died a few months later. In the general chaos, Russian ships shot at each other: when the protected cruiser Aurora (Aврора), which had yet to be involved, approached, she was taken for a Japanese warship, bombarded and slightly damaged. At least one Russian sailor was killed, another badly wounded. A priest aboard a Russian cruiser caught in the crossfire was also fatally wounded. More serious losses on both sides were only avoided by the extremely low quality of Russian naval artillery fire, with the battleship Oryol reported to have fired more than 500 shots without hitting anything.

The Russian fleet was barred from using the Suez Canal and British ports as a result of the incident. It thus proceeded around Africa to the Sea of Japan where it was defeated in the Battle of Tsushima.