The Sea War

The Baltic
The Black Sea
The North Pacific
The White Sea

While operations during the war were centered in the Crimea, they were prosecuted outside that Peninsula. In the Baltic Sea there were 27 Russian ships of the line at large. In order to prevent a Russian break out into the North Sea, the Admiralty brought together a scratch force to contain the Russians within the Baltic. The Command of this fleet was given to Sir Charles Napier. His task was to drum up naval recruits where he could find them and train them as quickly as possible. Queen Victoria reviewed Napiers fleet at Portsmouth shortly before it set sail. His ships was undermanned and short of ammunition.

Napier sailed on March 10, 1854, eighteen days before Britain declared war on Russia. His fleet consisted of 4 screw ships of the line, 4 block ships, 4 frigates and 3 paddle steamers, although other ships were to join later. His orders were to seal the Baltic, to destroy the Russian fleet and to protect Danish and Swedish shipping and territory from attack. The Russians had 27 ships of the line, 10 frigates, 7 brigs , 9 steamers and many smaller craft to range against him.

The fleet sailed first to Kiel, and from there to Koge Bay, south of Copenhagen. Napier considered this the best base from which to block the exits to the North Sea. Supplies came from Rlensburg, and were carried by Mr Petos' fleet of steamers, the same man who had built the railway line to Flensburg. Once supplied and securely based, the British fleet considered how to attack the enemy. The Russian fleets base was beyond the two hundred mile long Gulf of Finland that led to St. Petersburg, the Russian Capital. The Gulf of Finland had four defensive point; Krondstadt, a formidably fortified island barring the approaches to St. Petersburg; the fortress of Sveaborg guarding the entrance to Helsingfors (Helsinki), as Finland was constitutionally governed by the Russian Empire; Revel on the Esthonian coast, and Bomarsund, in the Aland Islands. There were secondary fortresses at Abo and Hango in Finland.

When Napier arrived in Copehagen he spent three weeks in Copenhagen where he trained his crews in sailing techniques and gunnery, after receiving reports of the possibility of a Russian move with the early spring thaw. When war was declared, Napier was instructed to blockade the Gulf of Finland and any convenient Russian ports, to intercept supplies from Finland to Aland, and to report on the possibility of attacking Bomarsund, Revekl and other fortified ports.

As soon as Napier was told Sveaborg was free of ice and had ordered a reconnaissance of Bomarsund, Napier moved off with his fleet from Copenhagen, arriving at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland on April 17^th. There he ran into bad weather and withdrew, for he had no local pilots, to Stockholm and waited for better weather. Once there he tried to persuade the Swedish king to join the allies, but in vain. In May the fleet sailed to Hango and exchanged a few shots with the garrison. In June, Sveaborg was surveyed and found to be too strong for the fleet. Admiral Plumbridge was sent north to Aland and the Gulf of Bothnia with a squadron where he managed to inflict much damage to the Russian merchant ships and stores at Brahestad and Uleaborg. The expedition nearly came to grief at Tornea when the landing force ran into a formidable force of Russians troops and only escaped after suffering heavy casualties.

On June 21^st, Captain Hall, with three ships at Bomarsund, cashed in on the presence of a local pilot and attacked the Bomarsund in a bombardment which lasted for eight hours. he withdrew convinced he had inflicted considerable damage, but had only set fire to a few outbuilding and wasted ammunition.

The Allied fleet now numbered 12 British and 6 French sail of the line, with nine steamers, set sail on June 22^nd for Kronstadt leaving 9 sail of the line and 6 frigates to watch Sveaborg. On June 26^th, the fleet arrived off Kronstadt, near which was a Russian fleet of thirty ships, anchored in three columns. The allies spent three days in careful reconnaissance and discovered that the fortress could not be approached except by ships of shallow draught. Moreover, any attack would require special artillery, mortars and rockets, and only eighteen capital ships against the Russians twenty two. Sir Charles Napier was severely censured later for not attacking the fortress, even through cholera had recently broken out among his men.

The allied ship withdrew and sailed to Sveaborg, where Admiral Corry, had made a detailed examination of the defenses and found it to be defended by booms, stakes, mines and eight thousands troops in granite fortifications. Sir James Graham wrote from the Admiralty on July 2^nd to say that six thousand French troops, with ten guns, were to be sent in British ships for the Admiral to use against either Sveaborg or Bomarsund, although the Lords preferred the latter. Napier replied that Bomarsund would be the most suitable objective.

Bomarsund guarded the northern entrance to the great landlocked harbor of Aland, standing on a spit of land covering the narrow channel between the mainland and Prasto Island to the east. From the sea, the spit was guarded by a semi-circular fort at water level, holding 120 guns. On the land ward side, the granite Forts Tzee and Nottick squatted on top of twin hills, guarding the approach from the flat ground behind the town. These towers possessed bomb-proof iron roofs and boasted 24 guns each, but the defenses were not effective on the land ward side.

The Allied forces consisted of some 10,000 French troops under General D'Hilliers, and 1,000 British under Brigadier General Jones, of the Royal engineers. The expedition embarked at Calais in ships of the Royal Navy and was landed four miles north of Bomarsund, a contingent of British marines and sappers leading the war, followed by a brigade of French marines. The main force landed simultaneously south of Bomarsund. The forts were surrounded and batteries were placed to attack the round towers. By August 13^th the allied guns were in position and the bombardment began.

Both forts were silenced and then reduced to ruins. the French stormed Fort Tzee on August 14^th, and on the next day, the British took Fort Nottich. The fleet bombarded the Main Fort and Prasto Island, Bomarsund was surrendered soon after and its fortifications destroyed. Although Aland was offered to Sweden as a diplomatic pawn, the offer was rejected.

Napier now turned against Abo in Finland. A reconnaissance revealed the presence of seventeen gunboats, and a large force of infantry in the dense woods each side of the channel leading to the town. Napier was keen to attack but D'Hilliers refused to join the assault since many of his troops had cholera. The French were thus not willing to attack Revel either, so Napier turned his attentions to Sveaborg. The French officers were convinced nothing could be done so late in the year, but Brigadier General Jones reported that an attack could be made by landing guns on a nearby island from where the principal works could be destroyed. But the French began to withdraw on September 4^th for the winter and Napier was ordered to report on possibly activities for the year, but the French had already left by the time he received these orders.

The Blockade was maintained until October 1854, when the fleet was gradually withdrawn and Napier was relieved of his command on December 22^nd at Spithead, mainly due to a series of disagreements between the Admiralty and Napier. Finally, the Admiralty realized its mistake and offered Napier a GCB as recompense, which he refused.

The Baltic war resumed in the spring of 1855. Napier had been replaced by Admiral Dundas, who had transferred from the Black Sea Fleet. Dundas had 19 screw and 1 sail ship of the line, 14 frigates, 12 small steamers, 21 steam gunboats and 15 mortar boats. To this the French had contributed 3 ships of the line, 3 frigates and 10 smaller gunboats. The fleet sailed in march, establishing the blockade once more. In May, reconnaissance's were made to Revel, the Aland Island, Hango, Sveaborg and Kronstadt. The defenses at Fronstadt had been greatly strengthened during the winter, more gunboats might have made an attack possible but Dundas had too few.

Elsewhere, the Royal Navy harassed Russian shipping in the Gulf of Bothnia and at the mouth of the Gulf of Finland. The Russian forts at Svastholm and Frederiksham were destroyed and Sveaborg was subjected to a devastating bombardment in August in which dockyards, stores, magazines and over twenty small ships were blown up and burnt. The fleet withdrew again in November. Peace, early the following year meant the campaign was not renewed.

Has anyone got details of the Sebastopol bombardments apart from what is listed here?
The Allied ships were towed into action at Sebastopol by steamers lashed along the port side.

The following are the names of the French line of battle ships which followed the British ships into action. The French ships moved in two columns as listed below. Jupiter and Napoleon heading their respective columns.
 

A second venture saw an Anglo-French force operating in the North Pacific. The allies attacked the Russian naval base at Petropaulovsk on the Kamchatka peninsula, but a landing by marines and seaman was beaten off with heavy casualties.

Two British squadron, one under Admiral Bruce and one under Admiral Stirling operated in the Pacific in 1855, but despite being joined by a third at Hong Kong later in the year, found the Russians either too strong or too elusive to have much impact on their operations.

In 1854 the allies also blockaded the White Sea in a partial blockade during the summer, three British ships - the Eurydice, Brisk and Miranda, sailed into the White Sea in August and bombarded Kola in Northern Lapland, before attacking Solovetski Island in the Gulf of Onega and examining over 300 merchant vessels, seizing any that could legitimately be claimed as prizes.