All through the operations, however, there was a new influence which tended to confuse the precision of the old methods.  Needless to say it was the torpedo and the mine.  Their deflective pressure was curious and interesting.  In our own operations against Sebastopol, to which the Port Arthur case is most closely comparable, the old rules still held good.  On the traditional principle, dating from Drake’s attack on San Domingo in 1585, a landing place was chosen which gave the mean between facility for a coup de main and freedom from opposition; that is, it was chosen at the nearest practicable point to the objective which was undefended by batteries and out of reach of the enemy’s main army.

In the handling of the covering squadron Admiral Dundas, the Commander-in-Chief, gave it its dual function.  After explaining the constitution of the transport squadron he says, “The remainder of my force ... will act as a covering squadron, and where practicable assist in the general disembarkation.”  With these two objects in mind he took a station near enough to the landing place to support the army with his guns if it were opposed, but still in sight of his cruisers before Sebastopol, and at such a distance that at the first sign of the Russians moving he would have time to get before the port and engage them before they could get well to sea; that is, he took a position as near to the army as was compatible with preventing interference, or, it may be said, his position was as near to the enemy’s base as was compatible with supporting the landing.  From either aspect in fact the position was the same, and its choice presented no complexity owing mainly to the fact that for the first time steam simplified the factors of time and distance.

In the Japanese case the application of these principles was not so easy.  In selecting the nearest undefended point for a landing, it was not only batteries, or even the army in Port Arthur, or the troops dispersed in the Liaotung Peninsula that had to be considered, but rather, as must always be the case in the future, mines and mobile torpedo defence.  The point they chose was the nearest practicable bay that was unmined.  It was not strictly out of mobile defence range, but it so happened that it lay behind islands which lent themselves to the creation of fixed defences, and thus it fulfilled all the recognised conditions.  But in so far as the defences could be turned by the Russian fleet a covering squadron was necessary, and the difficulty of choosing a position for it was complicated by the fact that the objective of the combined operations was not merely Port Arthur itself, but also the squadron it contained.  It was necessary, therefore, not only to hold off that squadron, but to prevent its escape.  This indicated a close blockade.  But for close blockade a position out of night torpedo range is necessary, and the nearest point where such a position could be secured was behind the defences that covered the disembarkation.  Consequently, in spite of what the strategical conditions dictated, the covering squadron was more or less continuously forced back upon the army and its supporting force, even when the support of the battle-squadron was no longer required.