THE RUSSIAN NAVY.
Its origin under Peter the Great—Early victories of the
Varangians, or Normans, and Cossacks—Row-boats more useful
in the Baltic than large vessels—The navy under Catherine
II.—English instructors—Difficulty in manning the fleet—No
mercantile navy—Organization of the Russian fleet—No
marines—Oak for navy—Food of sailors—Russian vessels on
foreign stations—Only one Russian foreign merchant—Greek
influence diminished in 1844—“The Twelve Apostles”—“The Teredo
Navalis”—The affair of Sinope—The Paixhans shell system—General
observations.
The[94] Russian navy, like the army, was the creation of Peter the Great,
who, when he came to the throne, found his empire without any port except
Archangel, and when he died, after a reign of sixteen years, left a fleet
of sixteen sail of the line in the Baltic, and his name feared as a naval
hero on the Black Sea and the Caspian. In the ideas of that great man
the army was intended to be merely supplementary to the navy, and Russia
was to be a great commercial and maritime power instead of a military
one. “It is thus,” he says in his will, “that Russia, which I found a
brook and left a river, must, under my successors, grow to a mighty sea,
destined to fertilize worn-out Europe, and advance its waves over all
obstacles, if my successors are only capable of guiding the stream.”[95]
The origin of all the numerous naval armaments of Russia in the present
day was the little boat built by Peter’s own hands, when he returned from
his European travels.
In 1836, after a lapse of 113 years, the anniversary of the launching
of the little boat, was for the first time celebrated with great pomp
at Cronstadt. Twenty-six ships of the line, twenty-one frigates, ten
brigs, and seven gun-boats, were anchored in the roads of Cronstadt, and
saluted with 2000 cannon the tiny “grandpapa,” as the little boat was
called, which, placed on a steamer, was carried through the lines. From
the earliest times there has been a slight halo of maritime glory around
the Russian name. The half fabulous Varangians, Northmen, or Normans,
who conquered Russia as they did France and England, and from whom the
Russian nobility still boast their descent, were victorious by sea as
well as by land, and the glories of Ruric and Vladimir belong to the
Russian nation as much as the victories of Alfred and the Plantagenets
belong to us. The Varangians found out the road by water along the rivers
of Russia from the Baltic to the Black Sea,—that very road which Peter
the Great improved by employing his Swedish and Cossack prisoners to cut
the canal of Ladoga.
In 886 (shortly after the foundation of the German empire) the Varangians
appeared on the Black Sea with 200 boats, each containing from forty
to sixty men, and advanced to the attack of Constantinople, which was
only saved by a miracle. At the end of the sixteenth century the Russian
fleets were still feared on the Baltic, and even under the empire of the
Tatars, Novgorod had possessed a flourishing maritime commerce, although
in a great measure it was conducted by strangers. But after the fall of
Novgorod, when the Baltic provinces fell into the power of the Swedes,
the Poles, and the Germans, the maritime importance of Russia began
to decline. The single outlet that was left her, Archangel, was only
frequented by foreign merchant vessels, chiefly Dutch. Then, the Russians
of that time, like those of the present day, occupied themselves entirely
with internal commerce, and the spirit of the Varangians disappeared, or
only lingered among the Cossacks of the Dniepr and the Don.
Peter the Great, in his maritime views, had for a paramount object the
conquest of the débouchés in the south, leading to the Mediterranean and
the southern oceans, which were then exclusively in the hands of the
Turks and Tatars.
His first dockyards for a fleet of war were placed near Woroneje, in the
country of the Don, and then also for the first time the Russian flag was
seen to triumph in the Black Sea over the Turks, their national enemies.
At a later period, in the war which Peter the Great had to sustain
against Sweden, he employed a fleet consisting chiefly of row-boats,
which had been constructed on the lakes of the North, and he found this
fleet far more advantageous in the Baltic than vessels of the line or
frigates. Even up to the present time flotillas of row-boats have always
rendered greater services than large vessels to Russia in the shallow
waters of the Baltic. The first result of any importance was the victory
which Peter gained in the middle of the Séches, or low reedy islands
of the Baltic, over the Swedish Admiral Ehrenskiold, from whom he took
a frigate and ten row-boats, but at that time his land army was nearly
annihilated on the Pruth, and the conquest of Azof and the possession
of the Black Sea was in consequence postponed till the end of the last
century. “The condemnation of Admiral Cruys,” I here quote the words of
Haxthausen, “under Peter the Great for having lost several vessels in
an attack which he had risked too rashly against the enemy, was of bad
augury for the Russian fleet, although he was afterwards pardoned and
restored to all his dignities. In England, Byng was executed, because
near Minorca he had avoided battle with the French fleet, which was
superior to his own. It is a rule in England always to attack, if the
English fleet equals that of the enemy, and this rule has undoubtedly
been the base of the maritime power of that country. In 1743 the Russian
Admiral Golovine excused himself to Lascy, who had given him the order to
commence the attack, by saying that the maritime laws of Peter the Great
forbid the Russian fleet ever to engage in battle with the enemy unless
they had three Russian vessels to two Swedes.”
The Russian fleet has always been rather for show than use, owing to the
want of boldness which the Russians have in later times shown in maritime
enterprises, although, under Catherine II., Greig, Elphinstone, and
Spiridoff acquired some glory in the Mediterranean.
At the end of the last century the Russian fleet consisted of sixteen
ships of the line and twenty-three frigates, which was about its force
under Peter the Great. During the war which, after the French Revolution,
devastated Europe, the Russian fleet played only a secondary part.
When Russia was allied with England, the navy of the latter power
commanded the sea, while Russia was to employ her forces on the
continent. When Russia was against England her vessels were little worth.
The English, at a later period, undertook to keep the Russian fleet, and
in this uneasy state of relations with England she lost the excellent
instructors of her navy, which she had before employed in great numbers.
The English officers on board her fleet refused to serve against their
own country, and since that epoch they have been less favourably viewed
in Russia.
The great difficulty of the Russians is to man their fleet, because they
have no mercantile navy, and scarcely any Great Russians live on the
sea-coast. Archangel furnishes a very few men, and after them the best
sailors are the Finns of the Baltic, the Cossacks, and the Greeks of the
Black Sea. The crews of the fleet are much more numerous than the whole
of the sailors in the mercantile marine, and for this reason they are
obliged to recruit among landsmen, and to put in practice the maxim of
Peter the Great, that every man is fit for everything.
A Russian is never allowed to say that he cannot do a thing, and whatever
the order given him may be, he is expected to set about executing it as
well as he can. The only answer permitted is “Schloushaiou,” “I hear,
and will obey.” But although he attempts to do everything in a certain
kind of way, his work is generally very imperfect, and the inaccuracy
of Russian workmen is proverbial among the English superintendants
employed in that country. They realise the English saying of “a Jack of
all trades, and master of none;” or as Custine puts the point, “Le Russe
n’est maître de rien, excepté l’art de feindre;” and this last is an
observation which our Ministers would do well to reflect upon now that
they are asked to open negociations.
Some notion of the paucity of sailors in Russia may be formed from the
fact that the law which obliges every captain of a merchantman to be
of Russian origin is constantly eluded. The shipowners try to gain the
advantages of sailing under the Russian flag, and at the same time to
avoid the disadvantages of having a Russian captain, and therefore the
individual who is put forward in port as the legal captain of the vessel,
as soon as she puts out to sea descends to the humble office of the cook.
The Russian fleet is manned from the common conscription with very
little “ethnologic” distinction, excepting that in the North the Finns
are preferred for that service, and in the South the Jew conscripts are
generally sent to the navy, not on account of their aptitude for it, but
because as soldiers they are considered worthless.
The Imperial fleet consists of three divisions, two of which are in the
North, and one in the Black Sea. It is manned by forty-five battalions,
called “equipages:”[96] each equipage is composed of eighty petty
officers, twenty-five musicians, and 1000 seamen, and is officered by
one commander, of the rank of a colonel, two superior officers, twelve
lieutenants, and twelve midshipmen.
An equipage will man one three-decker, and one or more small vessels, or
a two-decker and a frigate, or two frigates and one or two brigs. A ship
of 120 guns is manned by 812 seamen and 65 petty officers. A ship of 84
guns is manned by 625 seamen and 50 petty officers. A frigate of 60 guns
by 375 seamen, and 30 petty officers. A frigate of 44 guns by 320 seamen
and 20 petty officers. A corvette by 158 seamen and 12 petty officers.
The forty-six equipages are disposed in the following manner:—From No. 1
to No. 27, inclusive, are in the Baltic. From No. 28 to 44, inclusive,
are in the Black Sea. No. 45, in the Caspian. No. 46, at Kamstchatka.
There are no marines in the Russian navy, and the seamen are disciplined
like soldiers. The term of service in the navy is, I believe, similar to
that in the army, namely, from ten to twenty-five years, according to the
provinces of the empire from which the sailors are drawn.
The oak of which the Black Sea fleet is built comes mostly from Minsk
and the neighbouring governments, and is of quick growth, on low land,
in a country which was an immense lake in ancient times.[97] Herodotus
says that both the Dniestr and the Boug took their origin in enormous
lakes. The great portion of the timber of Kherson used to come down the
river Pripet, which is the remains of an enormous marsh or lake, and
is navigable for 350 miles to its junction with the Dniepr. The masts
that come down the Dniepr are good, and drawn from the same forests that
supply Riga, but the wood for ship-building is bad, and the Russian
Government hopes to supply Nicolaief with the oak of Kazan, which is
used in the dockyards of the Baltic, and which might be brought down to
the south by the Volga and the Don to Rostof. Mr. Upton told me that
a cannon-ball, which would lodge in one side of an English ship, would
go right through both sides of a Russian one. For certain parts of all
the ships they are obliged to import oak from England. The Crimean oak
is very good, but not obtainable in large quantities. A frigate or two
have been built of it, but none are now afloat. The only ship of the line
built of it was the Raphael, which was taken by Captain Slade and the
Turks in the war of 1828. The Bulgarian oak is also of a good quality.
The timber at Nicolaief is used green, as soon as brought down the
Dniepr, so that ships become quickly infected with dry-rot, are unsound
in ten years, and quite unfit for service in fifteen.
The sailors are fed upon rye or black bread, which they prefer to wheaten
bread. They have meat twice a week, and drink “quass,” a fermented drink,
made from the rye flour, and the Russian “vodka,” or brandy, which is
likewise made from rye. The sailors are all disciplined and dressed as
soldiers, wear helmets, and for their common dress the same long drab
greatcoats as the army. They are, in fact, more properly sea-soldiers
than sailors. When the Grand Duke Constantine inspected the Black Sea
fleet, its Admiral was obliged to ask permission for the sailors to take
off their proper uniform, as it was found impossible for them to mount
the rigging in it.
When a Russian vessel is on a foreign station, which has seldom been
the case, except with small vessels having only picked crews, the dress
is changed, both of officers and men, and they then, for the time, wear
shirts and trousers, like the sailors of maritime nations; and they
also then receive extra allowances, to enable them to live like the
people of the country where they happen to be. The Russians have a great
“amour-propre;” and I have often watched them on a foreign station, when
they have been moored with French and English vessels at Constantinople
and Athens, constantly exercising their men, until at last they succeeded
in managing their vessels with great quickness.
The immense majority of their ships, however, are confined to the Baltic
and Black Seas, in which they are obliged to lay up during more than half
the year. The Black Sea fleet is seldom out for more than one month’s
cruise in summer, and sometimes for even a shorter period. Besides the
short time they are out, the cruizing in such limited areas with a large
fleet of vessels must be a very uninteresting operation, and there is
nothing in it to call out a spirit of enterprise or adventure. The
sailors are nearly all landsmen, and such they always remain. There is no
mercantile marine, notwithstanding the great inducements held out by the
government; and although the commerce of Russia is considerable, there
is not a single merchantman manned and sent out by Russians Proper, by
which I mean the Slavonic population, which forms the real strength of
the Russian nation. The Finns are enterprising shipowners, but they are
a totally different race, and a conquered people. I believe I am correct
in saying that there is only one real-born Russian merchant who has an
establishment in a foreign country. This gentleman, of considerable
wealth, set up a house at Liverpool a few years ago, more from patriotic
motives than in the regular way of business, and received great
encouragement from his government, who wished to induce others to follow
his example, but without success. Under all these disadvantages, some of
which are inseparable from the despotic nature of the government, for
commerce like genius requires for its development complete liberty, it is
impossible that the Russian fleets can ever become formidable by their
quality, although the large number of their vessels may prove a source of
disquietude to a second-rate power.
In the beginning, the Russian navy was formed entirely by foreigners, and
principally by Englishmen, while the sailors and officers in the Black
Sea were generally Greeks. There were, in particular, five Englishmen,
who had been originally brought up in the English navy, who rose to
be admirals in the Russian service, and were of great use to their
navy,—Admirals Crown, Hamilton, Elphinstone, Dugdale, and Greig. Admiral
Lazaref, a Russian, who commanded when I visited Sevastopol, had been
brought up in the English navy, and fought as a midshipman at Trafalgar.
At the period of my visit, in 1844, a great change was taking place in
the Russian navy, which had its origin in a more general cause. Just
about that time there was a strong national movement throughout the
Empire, which was encouraged by the Court. The nation had been under the
tutelage of foreigners for a century and a half, and now showed a wish
to act for itself. Russian replaced French as the fashionable language
at court, and representations were constantly made to the Emperor to
place Russians instead of foreigners in places which the latter had till
then exclusively occupied. There was a strong feeling against the German
officers in the army, and the laws were strictly enforced, forbidding
foreigners to hold land or possess manufactories, unless they made
themselves Russian subjects, a step they were very much pressed to take
by officials as the best way of being favourably viewed by the Emperor.
At Sevastopol there was an outcry against the English engineers of the
steam-vessels, and the Emperor consented to appoint a Russian on trial,
who took a steamer out to sea, and damaged her machinery so much after a
few hours, that she was towed into port again by another steamer sent out
to fetch her. The Emperor then said that he would continue to employ the
English until his own people were really able to undertake their duties.
The great change in Sevastopol about 1844 was the getting rid of the
Greek influence, which had till then been paramount. Both men and
officers were replaced, as far as possible, by Russians, and the same
change was effected as regarded the civil departments of the naval
administration.
I visited several of the large line-of-battle ships in the harbour
of Sevastopol, with one of the Uptons, and as they were all built by
English shipwrights, to a non-nautical eye they looked very much like
the men-of-war in our own country. I visited in particular the Twelve
Apostles, the largest ship there, which I have lately heard to be now
quite useless for warlike purposes. No Russian ship in the Black Sea
lasts more than ten years, not only on account of the bad wood of which
it is built, but also because of the worm (_teredo navalis_) which
infests Sevastopol and the southern coast of the Crimea, and commits
great ravages among the ships. The project of filling the new dock with
fresh water, by introducing into it at great expense the Tchornaya
Retchka from Inkerman, was adopted with the view of getting rid of this
worm, but it was found when too late that it was in the very waters of
the Tchornaya that the worm was generated.[98]
The Vixen, the English vessel which we so timorously gave up in 1837,
lay in the harbour at the period of my visit, and the Russians were very
proud of having taken an English ship, while the English there told me
they never could see her without a feeling of shame. She had served as
a model to the Russians, and I saw several vessels that had been built
after her.
The whole fleet in Sevastopol consisted, in 1853, of 18 first-rates, 7
frigates, 30 steamers, and 36 smaller vessels. There were besides 28
gun-boats, built for service in the Danube, and 30 transports measuring
10,000 tons.[99]
The only achievement of the Black Sea navy has been the destruction of
the Turkish fleet in Sinope, which was characterised by their usual
negligence on the part of the Turks, and by that cruelty in war which
has always stained the Russian name. The Turkish ships were armed with
small ordnance, of which the largest scarcely reached the calibre of
24-pounders, and they placed themselves in the roadstead under the
protection of land batteries, which were in a wretched state of defence,
unprovided with guns that would throw shells, and armed only with cannon
of very small calibre.
The Russians, on the contrary, had availed themselves of the latest
discoveries and improvements in naval gunnery. Many 68 and 42-pounder
shot were picked up at Sinope, and they used with fearful effect the most
terrible instruments of modern warfare, the Paixhans guns.
This attack of the Russians at Sinope has been designated as iniquitous
by both the French and English military authorities: in the first place,
because the attack ought not to have been made under the political
circumstances then existing, and next, because from their superiority
in number and calibre of guns, instead of burning the Turkish vessels,
and exterminating the crews, they might have taken the whole squadron
prisoners, and brought away the surviving men as prisoners of war, while
the ships would have served to increase their own effective force. They
preferred, however, to use the new terrible incendiary shell, and to
massacre without mercy the brave but negligent Turks.
This affair forms an important epoch in the history of the new system of
naval warfare, as that in which the Paixhans shell system was first used
in war. These shells contain incendiary bodies, which, when ignited by
the bursting of the shell, are scattered about in every direction, burn
with far greater intensity than ‘la roche à feu,’ develope more heat, and
give out dense smoke during the combustion, which must interrupt for a
considerable time the working of the guns. The chances of setting fire to
an antagonist’s ship in action are prodigiously increased, and if one
party uses these dreadful engines, the other must adopt the same means
of warfare, by which one or both combatants will surely be burnt. “Both
France and England,” says Sir Howard Douglas, “are provided with these
appalling weapons of mutual destruction, and are prepared, if unhappily
there be occasion, to use them _à l’outrance_ against each other’s ships,
in a barbarous and ignoble strife, in which it seems the only question
is which shall be first burnt. What would Nelson have said to this
incendiary warfare?”[100]
The Russians, with that energy and promptitude which has been the secret
of all their successes, have availed themselves of every improvement
in naval gunnery, although their fleet is with them a matter of only
secondary importance. It is impossible to read the history of Russia
and her opponents, that is to say her neighbours, for the last 150
years, since the peace of Carlowitz, without observing the quickness in
seizing opportunities, the absence of prejudice, the anxious desire for
improvement, and the alacrity in repairing errors when they have been
committed, which are the true methods by which an individual or a nation
can best attain the object of its desires, be they good or bad.
However, notwithstanding the great care bestowed upon it, there is no
doubt that the Russian fleet is extremely inefficient, and would be
hardly a match for any of the second-rate powers of Europe. It was not
to be expected that it should come out to fight the united navies of the
two first maritime powers of the world, and there was little cause for
the boast of the late Ministers, that we performed a great achievement in
forcing it to act on the defensive. Still, on the other hand, there seems
to be good sense in the remarks of Haxthausen, that the Russians have
been too timorous on the sea, and that the Russian navy will never equal
the high character of their army until they have suffered defeats, and
fought their way to confidence. The natural “pluck” of the people would
probably in the end be as successful on the sea as on the land.
The Romans hated the sea as much as the Russians, and in reading of
Peter’s little boat, and the Vixen serving for a model, the mind
naturally recurs to the Carthaginian galley stranded on the coast, which
served as a model for the first Roman vessels, yet, after no very long
period, the Carthaginian state, betrayed by lust of conquest, was broken
up, and the Romans swept the seas.