The long and the short of it was that what happened to the fleet was it was largely sunk in the Battle of Tsushima after a long and arduous journey- seen in this map . The journey was a logistical nightmare for a Russian navy that was largely designed to fight in European waters. The inexperience of the fleet, coupled with panic over Japanese sneak attack led to various scares during the travel that the fleet was under attack. Some of this was comical, such as when the repair ship Kamchatka fell behind the fleet for engine problems off of Africa, and when she returned, mistakenly signaled she was under attack by torpedo boats. Other incidents were more serious, such as when at Dogger Bank, the fleet mistook a group of British fishing trawlers for Japanese torpedo boats and opened fire, killing three British fisherman. The logistical nightmare of operating a coal-powered fleet at such distances added further confusion to the fleet, as machinery broke down and men had to operate in tropical conditions they were not prepared for. The fleet's admiral forbid the opening of portholes for security against would be Japanese torpedo boats, and the result was the ships became sweatboxes. Not only men, but also officers often slept naked and the heat swelled the wooden furnishings on the ships. Fresh water was a scarce resource, so rainstorms became one of the ways for the crews to bathe and alleviate the rashes on their skin caused by the heat. Cleanliness and discipline often broke down, which was a shock to the fleet's commander Rozhestvensky, who was a more conservative flag officer.

But despite all of these problems, the fleet made it to East Asian waters after an eight month voyage, only to sail into the Japanese battlefleet. The naturally slow pace of Rozhestvensky's fleet made it easy for the Japanese to prepare to meet it, and Admiral Togo managed to put his fleet in a position where it could intercept the Russians. The resulting battle was quite lopsided, with the Russian ships being much less modern than the Japanese, and crewed by very tired men. The Russian fleet lost all of its eleven battleships, four of its eight cruisers, and six of its nine destroyers. In exchange, the Japanese only lost three torpedo boats.

So despite herculean efforts to get the Baltic fleet to fight the Japanese, the Russian ships were pretty much sunk by the time they arrived in Japanese waters.