Rare Russian Photographs Added to Portsmouth Peace Treaty Exhibit -- PORT ARTHUR FUNERALS

Left: Admiral Makarov's Flagship Petropavlovsk was destroyed by a mine off Port Arthur.


June 24, 2015 marked the anniversary of a dramatic moment of reconciliation between Russia and Japan almost a decade after the two nations went to war in the conflict now known as World War Zero. That war ended with the signing of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on September 5, 1905. The Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum has added a collection of rare photographs from this event. 

In April 1904 during the Japanese blockade of Port Arthur that began with the start of the Russo-Japanese War in January 1904, Admiral Stepan Osipovich Makarov and his flagship the Petropavlovsk, while trying to return to the harbor, hit a Japanese mine. Eyewitnesses said the ship sank within minutes, with all hands lost. A famous Japanese print, displayed in the Treaty exhibit, shows a valiant Makarov on the deck as his battleship sank. The Japanese retook Port Arthur in January 1905.



Nine years later, in June 1913, the Japanese Government sent a team of divers to recover the remains of those who perished on the Petropavlovsk. Admiral Makarov, who had been blown off the deck by the force of the explosion was not among them; but the bodies of several officers (identified by their uniform insignia) and Russian sailors were brought to the surface and given a full-honors military burial attended by Russian Orthodox clergy and the relatives of those who died. Photographs from a rare book document the Petropavlovsk funerals on June 24, 1913 in Port Arthur. The images were presented by the Alexander Solzhenitsyn House of the Russian Emigre Community in Moscow through the Consul General of the Russian Federation in New York to the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Forum with permission for exclusive display in the Treaty exhibit for the 110th anniversary.

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