1895-1905. With a portrait of the author and drawings in the text. Posthumous edition. Kyiv. Printing house of the 1st Kyiv Printing Artel. 1910. XI, 150, [2] pp. Hardcover, good-quality modern reproduction, encyclopaedic format. 10 years have passed since the Tsushima tragedy, which took so many valiant heroes to their graves. Since then many materials have appeared in print that in one way or another shed light on the general state of Russian naval affairs before and during the war with Japan and on the causes of the Tsushima disaster. First place among these materials undoubtedly belongs to the testimony of people who directly witnessed the events whose logical consequence was the loss of the Russian fleet at Tsushima. One such impartial testimony is the letters to his father of Lieutenant Pyotr Alexandrovich Vyrubov of the Russian navy, published in this book. Together with Lieutenant N. P. Bogdanov, Ensign V. von Kursel-Werner and a handful of the crew, he died a martyr's death for his homeland on the battleship “Knyaz Suvorov”, lost in the Battle of Tsushima. These letters, covering 10 years of the life of P. A. Vyrubov, from his time at the Naval Cadet Corps to the eve of the Battle of Tsushima (the last letter was written on 20 April 1905), give, in a simple and unembellished account, a vivid picture of the life of a Russian sailor, while revealing many curious details about the Russian China campaign of 1900 and especially the recent war with Japan. It was chiefly this circumstance that prompted the publication of these letters. By their content they naturally fall into four parts, which explains the four sections of this book: 1) The Naval Cadet Corps. 2) The Far East, the China campaign. 3) The return voyage from the Far East to the Baltic, the torpedo classes and the eve of the war with Japan. 4) The war with Japan. The voyage of the Second Pacific Squadron to the Far East. The letters are illustrated with drawings, most of them taken from photographs by the late P. A. Vyrubov.