SENSATIONS OF NAVAL FIGHTING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8353, 8 February 1907, Page 3

SENSATIONS OF NAVAL FIGHTING.

Captain Vladimir Semenoff, one of the survivors of the battle of Tsu Shima, has set down his experiences in a remarkable little volume translated by Captain A. B. Lindsay, says the Daily Mail. As a record of how it feels like to be in a sea fight under conditions the book is invalu- • able. Captain Semenoff was on board the Suvaroff, the commander-in-t chief's flagship. t Captain Semenoff refers to "the stupor which seems to come over >men, who have never been in action before, when the first shells begin to fall. A stupor which turns easily and instantaneously, at the most insignificant external shot, either into uncontrollable panic, or into unusually high spirits, depending on the man's character." After the Suvaroff was fairly alight, and completely riddled, Captain Semenoff discovered "the danger creeping towards me," and only realised it on finding himself enveloped in an impenetrable smoke. "Burning air parched my face and hands,while a caustic smell of burning almost blinded me. Breathing was impossible. . . . How did I get out of this hell? Perhaps some of the crew who had seen me on the bridge dragged me out. How I arrived on the upper battery, on a well-known spot near the ship's image, I can't remember and I can't imagine.' Finding a few signalmen, Captain Semenoff set to work with an undamaged piece of hose on the fire. Occasionally a man fell wounded. No attention was paid to him. What mattered it? One more, one less! Then Lieutenant Danchich came up. "Haven't we any stretchers?" he said. "For whom?" asked Semenoff. "Why, for you; you are bleeding." Looking down he saw his right leg was standing in a pool of blood. But the leg felt sound enough. Danchich seemed to-be making "an unnecessary fuss." He wanted to go with Semenoff. "Who wants to be accompanied?" said Semenoff, angrily, and started to go down the ladder, not realising what had happened. When a s,mall splinter had wounded him in the waist at the beginning of the fight it had hurt him, "but at this time I felt nothing," he writes. "Later, ,in sthe hospital, when carried there on a stretcher, I understood why it is that during a fight one hears neither groans nor shouts. All that comes j afterwards. Apparently our feelings have strict limits for receiving external impressions, being even, deeply impressed by an absurd sentence. A thing can be so painful that- you feel nothing, so terrible that you fear nothing." Rojdestvensky behaved well. Captain Semenoff says that, although wounded in the head, back,- and right leg (besides several- smaller splinter wounds), he bore himself most cheerfully, going off to look for a place rom, which he could watch the fight Proceeding to the starboard turret, he received another wound, which caused him much pain. A splinter struck his left leg, severing the main nerve, and paralysing the ball of the foot. He was carried into the turret •and seated on a box, but still had sufficient strength at once to ask why the turret was not firing, and to order a captain to fall in the crews and open fire. A rumour that one of the enemy's ships had been sunk restored every one's confidence in a remarkable manner. > Men who had been sulking in corners, deaf to the commands of their officers, came running, asking they could be of use. "They even joked and laughed," says Semenoff. - , i