Battle of Port Arthur
At the start of the Russian-Japanese War, the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a pre-emptive strike on the Russian fleet anchored at Port Arthur, initiating the Battle of Port Arthur. At the time of the attack, Starck was holding a birthday party for his wife on the deck of his flagship, the battleship , and the crowd attending the party mistakenly thought the exploding Japanese ordnance was fired in honour of the birthday party.