You left out the best part, the Russians were scared shirtless as you said of Japanese torpedo boats so they shot at two fishing trawlers who were sent to deliver a message to the admiral of the fleet, before the even left the Baltic. Then they shot at small group british fishing vessels off the coast of Britain actually managing to sink one, while also damaging two of thier own.

Anyway, the best part after sailing around Africa having a few more incidents of opening fire on random fishing vessels along the way the fleet approached japan. Finally they came across an actual Japanese ship, who they promptly determined to be Russian. Completely revealing themselves to and then they were stomped by Japanese navy.

Also forgot to mention since they were kinda upset about having to sail around Africa they decided it would be a good idea to try and brighten their spirits, by stopping at Madagascar and bringing aboard a bunch of random animals including a fucking crocodile, and a venomous snake who bit a senior officer. And that's not even all the crazy shit that happened on this dumb voyage

You're a bit hyperbolic, but the actual Japanese losses are so minimal that the difference between 3 dead and the real damage is like a rounding error when comparing to the Russians.

117 dead, torpedo boats sunk for the Japanese. That's 255 tonnage in ships sunk.

5,045 dead, 26 ships sunk or captured including 11 battleships of various classes for the Russians. 143,232 tonnage in ships sunk.

43 times the casualties and 560+ times the tonnage lost. And I can't stress enough how devastating losing battleships was in those days. A battleship was a huge investment at the time. Not quite on the magnitude of if the US lost an aircraft carrier today, but maybe like 1/3 that.

This is arguably in the top 5 most decisive naval battles of all time, and yeah, very possibly the most lopsided. It was also the first major defeat of a major European power by a non-European power in modern history.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima

E: Typo

Japan lost 3 torpedo boats and 116 men at the Battle of Tsushima. Russia lost 8 battleships (and a whole bunch of smaller vessels) and 5000 men.

Although aside from this one engagement the whole war wasn't quite as lopsided. Over all Japan actually lost slightly more men than Russia did, and they lost two battleships as well.

TBF though, back then noone in the west thought that Japan would win this war (and probably not even Japan itself given that they offered a favorable peace deal to Russia early on). Russia had the fourth largest navy in the world at the time, after the UK, France and Germany. While Japan had only fought its first modern war a few years prior against Qing dynasty China which had failed in its attempts to modernize its military in the wake of the Opium Wars (where they had been completely subjugated by Britain and France).