She continued to serve as a yacht for the Imperial household from 1901 to 1903 to ports around the Baltic Sea. Russo-Japanese War After the start of the Russo-Japanese War in 1904, Grand Duke Alexei offered the use of Svetlana as part of the reinforcements to be sent to the Russian Pacific Fleet on 15 March 1904. Svetlana was refitted with a new rangefinder and wireless system, and four of her Hotchkiss guns were replaced with 75-mm cannon. Assigned to the Second Pacific Squadron under the overall command of Admiral Dmitry von Fölkersam, she was greatly overloaded with stores and extra coal for the long voyage via the Suez Canal and Indian Ocean to the Pacific. At the Battle of Tsushima, Svetlana led a squadron with the yacht and the auxiliary cruiser . At the start of the battle, the squadron fell back to protect the support vessels; however at around 1500 hours, Svetlana was hit severely in the bow, putting her electrical system out of action. That evening, Svetlana initially joined the and under the overall command of Vice Admiral Oskar Enkvist in an attempt to evade the Japanese fleet and to flee to Manila. However, unable to match the speed of the more modern Russian cruisers, Svetlana then attempted to sail north for Vladivostok in the company of the destroyer Bystry. The pursuing Japanese caught up at daybreak close to the Korean coast, and Bystry was run aground, where her 82 crewmen (including 10 men rescued from ) were captured. At 0930 hours, the Japanese cruisers and , along with the destroyer had closed to within gunnery range of Svetlana. By 1035, Svetlana was on fire, and began to sink at 1050. Her final position was southwest of the island of Ulleungdo. As the Japanese cruisers continued north to pursue more reported Russian warships (which turned out to be Norwegian whalers), the Japanese support vessel America Maru rescued the 290 survivors from Svetlana, of whom 23 were wounded. An estimated 169 crewmen of Svetlana were lost in the battle. Footnotes References Corbett, Julian S. Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-1905. Naval Institute Press (1994 reprint), Pleshakov, Constantine. The Tsar's Last Armada, Basic Books, New York (2002), Naval ships of Russia 1896 ships Cruisers of the Imperial Russian Navy Shipwrecks of the Russo-Japanese War Maritime incidents in 1905