CHAPTER VII.

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.