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Show I RUSSIANS DISPUTE TOGO'S OFFICIAL REPORT j ST. PETERSBURG. April 16. The claim of Vice-Admiral Togo, commander-in-chief of the- Japanese squadron, that he sank mines off Port Arthur at midnight on Tuesday, has elicited an authoritative statement that not a single sin-gle Japanese- torpedo boat approached the entrance to Port Arthur at that time. The Informant of the Associated i Press Jb In a position to have access to all official reports, but he admits he cannot explain the Petropavlovsk explosion. ex-plosion. An Admiral has given a version ver-sion of the affair confirming that of Vice-Admiral Togo. He -declares that Japanese torpedo boats came up the previous evening- and laid mines along the. shore south of the entrance to the harbor. He claims that the torpedo boats were seen to make off In a different differ-ent direction from that In which they fame. The Russian flagship, he says, drew out from the lino as the squadron re-entered the harbor, thus getting among- the Japanese mines. The theory' that the disaster to tho Petropavlovsk was caused by a submarine boat, which has been scouted by the Admiralty, Is revived by a statement published In the Novl Krai on March 24th, that a sentry cutter stationed in the roadsted saw what looked like a submarine vessel two miles off shore. The launches from a torpedo boat were sent out to Investigate, Inves-tigate, but found no trace of the vessel. The same issue of the NoW Krai contained con-tained reports that Japanese torpedo boats were firing- Whitehead torpedoes at a range of a mile, at the warships I guarding the entrance to the harbor,. Several spent torpedoes were picked up by the Russians. It is not impossible that one of these spent "Whitehead torpedoes exploded against the battleship Pobleda. |