The Tsar’s Doomed Armada: 18,000-Mile Voyage of Blunders, Paranoia, and Disaster to Tsushima

Russia sent a battle fleet halfway around the world to restore an empire's honor. It nearly started a second war before leaving European waters.In 1904, with Russia reeling from Japanese victories, Tsar Nicholas II ordered the Baltic Fleet on an 18,000-mile voyage to the Far East. What followed was one of the strangest military expeditions in modern history: phantom Japanese attackers in the North Sea, British fishermen caught under Russian guns, desperate coaling stops, tropical disease, diplomatic crises, rebellious crews, exotic animals aboard ship, and an admiral watching his impossible mission grow worse with every mile.By the time Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky's exhausted fleet entered the Tsushima Strait, Japan's Admiral Tōgō was waiting.The Tsar's Doomed Armada is a meticulously researched, darkly witty account of imperial pride, human endurance, catastrophic misjudgment, and the spectacular naval disaster that exposed the weaknesses of Nicholas II's Russia.For readers who love true history so astonishing it feels invented.