Two badly damaged warships of the Russian Far East Fleet lie in Port Arthur sometime in the middle of 1904.
Admiral Robert Reinhold Viren (born 1856 Julian) was of Finnish descent. His four sons all served in the navy.
Russian naval officer who commanded the remnants of the Port Arthur Squadron in the last four months of the siege of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War and was a leading figure in the Imperial Russian Navy after the war. At the outbreak of the war, he was in command of the armored cruiser Bayan and made a name for himself as a daring and successful commander. After the death of Rear Admiral Vilgelm Vitgeft in the battle of the Yellow Sea, Rear Admiral Pavel Ukhtomskii took command briefly but did not gain his peers’ support for appointment as the new commander of the naval units in Port Arthur. As no other naval officer could reach the besieged fort, Captain Viren emerged as the only naval officer capable of leading the remnants of the fleet. He was consequently promoted to rear admiral and appointed commander of the Port Arthur Squadron on 4 September 1904. During the following four months until the surrender of the fort, he underwent continuous bombardment from land and blockade from the sea.
Realizing that another escape was impossible, Viren stripped his warships of all movable guns, which were then dug in on the perimeter of the city defenses. The once impressive warships were slowly sunk at anchor by the Japanese land bombardment, while their crews fought on land as infantry. Before the collapse, Viren ordered Captain Nikolai Essen, commanding officer of the battleship Sevastopol, to steam out of the harbor and then to sink the ship in deep water. In all, Viren’s contribution to the defense of Port Arthur was made on land rather than at sea. After the war, his career was not hurt by the general disaster of the Pacific Fleet. In 1907, by then a vice admiral, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Black Sea Fleet. In 1909 Viren became the commander of the naval base of Kronstadt, a position he held in World War I until his assassination by revolutionary sailors in 1917 following the February Revolution.
KRONSTADT.
