GREIG now led a bruising four year campaign among the Greek islands, returning to Russia in 1773 for a brief recruitment drive. He rejoined Admiral Spiridov at Paros in March 1774,* but that summer Empress Catherine agreed peace with the Ottomans. Greig was recalled to St Petersburg to succeed Knowles, continuing his successful reforms by building ships, tempering harsh discipline, establishing two floating academies, and recruiting experienced British officers.*
In recognition, Catherine showered him with Imperial honours, and appointed him Admiral of the Russian Empire and Governor of Kronstadt, the nearby island fortress to which Knowles had relocated the Naval Cadet Corps.* Yet he remained active with the Baltic Fleet during Catherine’s protracted conflict with Sweden, and saved St Petersburg from invasion at the Battle of Hogland in July 1788. Sadly, he caught a stubborn fever soon afterwards; he died on October 26th, and at a solemn state funeral on November 5th, a grateful nation said farewell to ‘the Father of the Russian Navy’.*
The so-called Orlov Revolt sparked by Catherine’s intervention stirred Greek patriotism, and led ultimately to the Revolution of 1821 in which Lord Byron took such an interest. See Wrath Reawakened.
Not everyone from Britain or indeed Scotland was welcome. The British contingent threatened to resign en masse over Imperial favourite Rear Admiral John Paul ‘Jones’ (1747-1792), a Scotsman of unsavoury reputation and piratical methods who had fought for the Americans in the Revolutionary War, taking part in The Battle of Flamborough Head on September 23, 1779, and making Europe so hot for himself that he adopted the surname ‘Jones’ as a smokescreen. Paul left Russia after one year in service.
Greig’s state funeral in the Admiralty and burial in St Mary’s Lutheran Cathedral in Tallinn testify to his adoption as a true Russian. Indeed, long before this he had begun calling himself Samuel Carlovitch Greig, and his four sons had Russian names, and served the country of their birth — they included Admiral Aleksey Samuilovich Greig (1775-1845) and Captain Samuil Samuilovich Greig (1778–1807), who married Mary Somerville, the scientist after whom the Oxford College in named. Yet their father never forgot his birth in Inverkeithing: he admitted to Catherine that if war broke out with Britain he would have to resign.