There are quite a few materials in the press that in one way or another covered both the general state of maritime affairs on the eve and during the war with Japan, and the causes of the Tsushima disaster. The first place among these materials belongs, undoubtedly, to the testimony of persons who were direct observers of the events, the logical consequence of which was the death of our fleet at Tsushima. One of such impartial evidence is the letters published in this book to the father of the lieutenant of the Russian fleet, Pyotr Aleksandrovich Vyrubov. He, together with Lieutenant N.P. Bogdanov and ensign V. von Kursel-Werner and a handful of the crew accepted martyrdom for their homeland on the battleship “Prince Suvorov” that died in the Battle of Tsushima.