Togo and Rozhestvensky brought different command strengths

Togo Heihachiro had accumulated combat experience from the Anglo-Satsuma, Boshin, Sino-Japanese, and Russo-Japanese wars. He had also forged a command team whose officers knew one another's abilities and obeyed a shared operational purpose. Zinovy Rozhestvensky possessed courage, gunnery knowledge, engineering skill, and organizational ability, but was not naturally a fleet-fighting commander. He received little time to work up the squadron and watched trusted senior officers die while weaker or politically connected replacements remained. The contrast is between a practiced battle team and an engineer-organizer forced to deploy an unformed instrument.