Russia: The Officers of the Baltic Fleet

Davies, Brian

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-25700-2_8

Brian Davies⁷

Part of the book series: War, Culture and Society, 1750 –1850 ((WCS))

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Abstract

This chapter traces the evolution of the administration and officer corps of the Russian Baltic Fleet from its establishment by Peter the Great through the reign of Catherine the Great. It emphasizes the role that foreign-born officers played in its development, the efforts to recruit and train native-born Russian officers, and the deployment of the navy across the century’s wars. Peter the Great’s vision for the navy proved difficult to sustain and subsequent administrations struggled to find funds for it. Manning and revenue problems undermined its effectiveness, and foreign-born officers continued to play important roles right up until the end of the century.

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Notes

1.
‘Slovo pokhval’noe o flote rossiiskom’, Feofan Prokopovich. Sochineniia, ed. I. P. Eremin (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1961), 103–112, 468–9.
2.
S. I. Elagin, Istoriia russkago flota. Period Azovskii (St Petersburg: Tip. Komissionera Imperatorskoi Akademii khudozhestva, 1964), 97–101.
3.
A shautbenakht (from the Dutch schout-bij-nacht) was roughly equivalent to a rear-admiral. The term kontr-admiral replaced it in 1732. F. N. Gromov, ed. Tri veka rossiiskogo flota. Tom I (St Petersburg: Logos, 1996), 34, 37.
4.
Gromov, Tri veka, I, 37.
5.
G. A. Nekrasov, ‘Voenno-morskie sily Rossii na Baltike v pervoi chetverti XVIII v.’, in Voprosy voennoi istorii Rossii, XVIII i pervaia polovina XIX vekov, ed. V. I. Shunkov (Moscow: Nauka, 1969), 241–2.
6.
Nekrasov, ‘Voenno-morskie sily’, 246.
7.
Elagin, Istoriia russkago flota, 146; L. G. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flota v XVIII v. (Moscow: Ministerstvo oborony SSSR, 1950), 52–3.
8.
‘Ustav Morskoi’, Zakonodatel’stvo Petra I, ed. A. A. Preobrazhenskaia and T. E. Novitskii (Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literature, 1997), pp. 232–384.
9.
L. G. Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flota v XVIII v. (Moscow: Ministerstvo oborony SSSR, 1958), 49–50, 52–4, 146–8, 172–4; A. I. Lebedev, ‘Flot pri blizhnaishikh preemnikakh Petra Velikago, 1725–1761 gg.’ Istoriia russkoi armii i flota. Vyp. VIII, ed. A. S. Grishinskii, V. P. Nikol’skii, N. L. Klado (Moscow: Obrazovanie, 1912), 5; Sergei Kolotov, ‘Russko-Shvedskoe morskoe sopernichestvo v XVIII v.’, Mezhdunarodnyi voenno-morskoi zhurnal 3, no. 1 (2014): 9–10.
10.
V. N. Berkh, Zhizneopisaniia pervykh rossiiskikh admiralov, ili opyt istorii rossiiskago flota (four volumes) (St. Petersburg: Morskaia tipograiia, 1831–1836), I, 9–47. This list also reports salaries, which ranged from 7000 rubles a year for the highest-ranking officer in 1715 to about 40 rubles a month for captains.
11.
Ibid.
12.
Ibid.
13.
Ibid.
14.
Ibid.
15.
All dates listed as OS are Old Style, according to the Julian calendar, which was in this period eleven days ahead of the Gregorian.
16.
A. I. Lebedev, ‘Flot pri blizhnaishikh preemnikakh’, 6; S. I. Elagin, Materialy dlia istorii russkago flota. Chast’ V (St. Petersburg: Tip. Morskago ministerstva, 1875), 8–11.
17.
For example, see A. I. Lebedev, ‘Flot’, 7–10.
18.
John Tredrea and Eduard Sozaev, Russian Warships in the Age of Sail, 1696–1860. Design, Construction, Careers, and Fates (Barnseley, Yorkshire: Seaforth, 2010), 31.
19.
A. A. Lebedev, ‘O nekotorykh nabliudeniiakh inostrantsev o russkom flote perioda stanovleniia (pervaia polovina XVIII v.)’, Prostranstvo i vremia 3–4 (2016), 131–3.
20.
Elagin, Materialy, V, 16, 37.
21.
F. F. Veselago, Kratkaia istoriia russkogo flota (Moscow, Leningrad: 2nd ed., Voenmorizdat, 1939), 59, 61.
22.
A. A. Lebedev, ‘O nekotorykh nabliudeniiakh’, 129–31; Hamish Scott, The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 1756–1775 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 19.
23.
A. I. Lebedev, ‘Flot’, 10.
24.
Veselago, Kratkaia istoriia, 62.
25.
N. N. Petrukhintsev, Tsarstvovanie Anny Ioannovny: Formirovanie vnutripolit-icheskogo kursa i sud’by armii i flota (St. Petersburg: Aleteiia, 2001), 225.
26.
Veselago, Kratkaia istoriia, 45, 61; Elagin, Materialy, V, 8; Petrukhintsev, Tsarstvovanie Anny Ioannovny, 214.
27.
Cited in Lindsey Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 460.
28.
Brian L. Davies, Empire and Military Revolution in Eastern Europe: Russia’s Turkish Wars in the Eighteenth Century (London, New York: Continuum, 2011), 164.
29.
Ibid., 163.
30.
Osterman, a Westphalian by birth, had some knowledge of the needs of the fleet. In 1703–4, in Amsterdam (where he had fled after killing a fellow student in a duel) he was taken on by Vice-Admiral Kornelis Kruys to assist in the recruiting of shipbuilders and captains for Russia. A. V. Ignatev, N. Ponomarev, G. A. Sanin, eds. Istoriia vneshnoi politiki Rossii XVIII vek (Moscow: Mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, 1998), 60–1.
31.
V. E. Vozgrin, Istoricheskie sud’by krymskikh tatar (Moscow: Mysl’, 1992), 36, 38.
32.
Hans Bagger, ‘The Role of the Baltic in Russian Foreign Policy, 1721–1773’, Imperial Russian Foreign Policy, ed. Hugh Ragsdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 54.
33.
A. I. Lebedev, ‘Flot’, 10.
34.
Petrukhintsev, Tsarstvovanie, 227.
35.
Ibid., 226–7.
36.
Ibid., 228–9.
37.
A. A. Lebedev, ‘O nekotorykh nabliudniiakh inostrantsev o russkom flote perioda stanovleniia (1-ia polovina XVIII v.)’, Prostranstvo i Vremia 3 (2016), 133.
38.
Petrukhintsev, Tsarstvovanie, 246, 251–3, 256.
39.
Ibid., 266–8.
40.
Berkh, Zhizneopisaniia, I, 49; Gromov, Tri veka, I, 65.
41.
Gromov, Tri veka, I, 65.
42.
Petrukhintsev, Tsarstvovanie, 259–63, 297.
43.
Ibid., 337.
44.
Ibid., 213–22, 296, 335–6.
45.
Mikhail Polievktov, ed. ‘Iz perepiski barona A. I. Osterman (pis’ma k kn. B. I. Kurakinu i gr. A. P. Golovkinu)’, Chteniia v Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom universitete, 244, III (1913), 18.
46.
A. I. Lebedev, ‘Flot’, 20; N. V. Novikova, Boevaia letopis’ russkogo flota (Moscow: Voennoe izdatel’stevo ministerstva vooruzhennykh sil SSSR, 1948), 72–3.
47.
R. J. Morda-Evans, ‘Recruitment of British Personnel for the Russian Service, 1734–1738’, The Mariner’s Mirror 47, no. 2 (1961): 127, 128, 132, 135.
48.
N. Shpilevskaia, Opisanie voiny mezhdu Rossiei i Shvetsiei v Finliandii v 1741, 1742, i 1743 g. (St Petersburg: tip. Iakov Treia, 1859), 242–6, 249–60; Kolotov, ‘Russko-Shvedskoe morskoe sopernichestvo’, 14–15; Novikova, Boevaia letopis’, 84.
49.
Stockholm fined Utfall a year’s salary for abandoning Hangö, but Golovin was also brought before a Russian tribunal for allowing the enemy to withdraw without a fight. Shpilevskaia, Opisanie voiny mezhdu Rossiei i Shvetsiei v Finliandii., 242–6, 249–60; Kolotov, ‘Russko-Shvedskoe morskoe sopernichestvo’, 14–15; Novikova, Boevaia letopis’, 84; A. A. Lebedev, ‘Baltiiskii parusnyi flot v Russko-shvedskikh voinakh XVIII- nachala XIX v.: Dostizheniia i problemy’, Sankt-Peterburg i strany Severnoe Evropy: Materialy Chetyrnadtsatoi ezhegodnoi mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (St. Petersburg, 2013), 191.
50.
Chetardie was expelled in 1743, and the head of the pro-French faction, the court physician Jean Armand de Lestocq (who had helped in engineering the coup enthroning Elizabeth Petrovna and advanced Bestuzhev-Riumin to Vice-Chancellor) was exiled in 1748 after overreaching and conspiring to overthrow Elizabeth Petrovna and install Karl Peter Ulrich, son of Holstein Duke Karl Friedrich. M. Iu. Anisimov, ‘Rossiiskii diplomat A. P. Bestuzhev-Riumin (1693–1766)’, Novaia i noveishaia istorii 6 (2005) at www.vivovoco.astronet.ru/VV/PAPERS/History/Best.HTM, 7–10.
51.
Ignatev et al., Istoriia vneshnoi politiki, 10–104; M. Iu. Anisimov, ‘Rossiiskii diplomat’, 14–15.
52.
Franz Szabo, The Seven Years’ War in Europe, 1756–1763 (Harlow: Pearson/ Longman, 2008), 188, 290; Novikova. Boevaia letopis’, 86–90; Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot, 284–6.
53.
Gromov, Tri veka, I, 65–6.
54.
Ibid., I, 66.
55.
Georg Wilhelm Steller, Journal of a Voyage with Bering, 1741–1742, ed. O. W. Frost (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 62–5; James R. Gibson, ‘Russian Occupation of the Far East, 1639–1750’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 12, no. 1 (1970): 74–5; Jeremy Black, ‘G. F. Müller and the Russian Academy of Sciences Contingent in the Second Kamchatka Expedition, 1733–1743’, Canadian Slavonic Papers 25, no. 2 (1983): 237, 239–40.
56.
Berkh, Zhizenopisaniia, II, 266–312.
57.
Ibid., III, 250–80.
58.
Rebecca Willis, The Jacobites and Russia, 1715–1750 (London: Tuckwell Press, 2002), 179–80; Anthony Cross, ‘By the Banks of the Neva’: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of the British in Eighteenth-century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 180–1.
59.
Berkh, Zhizneopisaniia, II, 178–239.
60.
Ignat’ev, et al., Istoriia vneshnoi politiki, 106–7.
61.
Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot, 332; A. A. Lebedev, U istokov Chernomorskogo flota Rossii (St. Petersburg: Gangut, 2011), 17, 19, 20: Polnoe sobranie zakonov Rossiiskoi imperii, XVI, no. 11970 (1762).
62.
G. A. Grebenshchikova, Baltiiskii flot v period pravleniia Akateriny II: dokumenty, fakty, issledovaniia (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2007), 95–7, 100–2; Lebedev, U istokov, 27; Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot, 333; F. F. Veselago, Kratkaia istoriia russkogo flota (Moscow-Leningrad: Voenmorizadt, 2nd ed. 1939), 86–9.
63.
Lebedev, U istokov, 37; A. A. Lebedev, ‘O smotre Baltiiskogo flota Ekaternoi II v 1765 i ego posledstviiakh’, Prostranstvo i vremia 1–2 (2016): 151–2; Sbornik Imperatorskago russkago istoricheskago obshchestva X (1872), 23–5.
64.
For their names and their instructions, see, Grebenshchikova, Baltiiskii flot, 84–6.
65.
I. M. Smilianskaia, M. B. Velizhev, E. B. Smilianskaia, Rossiia v Chernomor’e: Arkhipelagskaia ekspeditsiia Ekaterinoi Velikoi (Moscow: Indrik, 2011), 33–4.
66.
Lebedev, U istokov, 36; Beskrovnyi, Russkaia armiia i flot, 454–5.
67.
Brian L. Davies, The Russo-Turkish War, 1768–1774: Catherine II and the Ottoman Empire (London, Oxford, New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2016), 108–10, 151, 153.
68.
Gromov, Tri veka, I, 83, 85.
69.
Herbert H. Kaplan, Russian Overseas Commerce with Great Britain during the Reign of Catherine the Great (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1995), 127–31.
70.
Lebedev, ‘Baltiiskii parusnyi flot v russko-shvedskikh voinakh’, 189–91; Kolotov, ‘Russko-shvedskoe morskoe sopernichestvo’, 18.
71.
Gromov, Tri veka, I, 85.

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University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USA
Brian Davies

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U.S. Naval War College, Newport, RI, USA
Evan Wilson
Centre for Maritime Studies (CEMAS), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
AnnaSara Hammar
Bornholm’s Museum, Nexø, Denmark
Jakob Seerup

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Davies, B. (2019). Russia: The Officers of the Baltic Fleet. In: Wilson, E., Hammar, A., Seerup, J. (eds) Eighteenth-Century Naval Officers. War, Culture and Society, 1750 –1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25700-2_8

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25700-2_8
Published: 07 November 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-25699-9
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