The Admiralty Building in St Petersburg, Russia. The history of Russia’s Imperial Navy properly begins with Tsar Peter the Great (r. 1682-1725), who acquired a healthy respect for British maritime skills on his Grand Embassy to Amsterdam and London in 1698. He immediately recruited Cornelius Cruys from the Netherlands, at that time ruled by William III of England, and then Captain Thomas Gordon (?1658-1741) in 1717, who rose to the rank of Admiral ten years later and carried on Cruys’s work. Gordon’s great-grandson Thomas Mackenzie fought alongside Samuel Greig at Chesme, and later founded the city of Sevastopol.
Part 1 of 2
ON November 20th, 1759, Sir Edward Hawke intercepted the French fleet at Cape Quiberon, and Samuel Greig, a young Scottish subaltern, ‘eminently distinguished himself’ in a famous victory that prevented a full scale invasion of England.* Greig’s reputation was enhanced in the West Indies against the Spanish, and in 1763 he was one of just five handpicked by the Admiralty to go to St Petersburg, and help Catherine, Empress of Russia, develop her inexperienced and under-strength navy.
By the time war broke out between Russia and Turkey in 1769, the Imperial fleet was strong enough to command the seas in the Baltic, battling Turkey’s allies Poland and Sweden, and also in the Mediterranean itself, where Greig, now a captain, joined fellow Scot John Elphinstone* and Thomas Mackenzie* in guiding Admiral Alexei Orlov’s* fleet to a rout of the far larger Ottoman forces at Chesme* on 7th July, 1770. Greig was rewarded with promotion to Rear Admiral under another British administrator, the newly-appointed Sir Charles Knowles.*
See The Seven Years’ War. Russia, which had backed the French in their designs on Britain’s empire in India and America, pulled out of the war in 1762.
John Elphinstone (1722-1785) left Russia in July 1771, after refusing, according to novelist and historian James Grant, to be party to Admiral Orlov’s kidnap of ‘Princess Elizabeth’ (see below); Greig also managed to wriggle out of it, but he did not declare his refusal before the Empress while ostentatiously wearing the uniform of the British Royal Navy, as Elphinstone did. Elphinstone’s son Samuel served in the Russian fleet as a captain.
Thomas Mackenzie (1740-1786) was born in Archangel to Rear Admiral Thomas Mackenzie, grandson of Captain (later Admiral) Thomas Gordon, whom Peter the Great brought to St Petersburg in 1717. After he was wounded at Chesme, Thomas Jr went to the almost uninhabited Akhtiar Bay in the Crimea, and there under his governance the city of Sevastopol was founded in 1783, and developed into a prosperous city with schools, churches and hospitals.
Alexei Grigoryevich Orlov (1737–1808), who in 1774, on Catherine’s orders, seduced and kidnapped, and then abandoned to die in prison, a young woman claiming to be a daughter of the late Empress Elizabeth. He fell from favour shortly afterwards, and raised chickens.
Çeşme, the ancient Kyssos, on the west coast of Turkey near Izmir (Smyrna), just across a narrow strait from the island of Chios. The Ottoman fleet was twice the strength of the Russian.
Admiral Sir Charles Knowles (1704-1777), veteran of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763), and a former Governor of Jamaica.
Précis
IN 1763, Emperor Catherine II of Russia asked London for help in building up her Imperial navy. Five up-and-coming seamen were sent, including Scottish subaltern Samuel Greig. He served with such distinction that in 1770, following the Battle of Chesme Bay against the Turks, he was promoted Rear Admiral in a now much more professional Russian navy. (55 / 60 words)
Part Two
Fireships at the Battle of Chesme Bay, between the west coast of Turkey and the island of Chios, on July 5th-7th, 1770, as imagined by Russian artist Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900). Greig would pack a ship with explosives, set red flames to it, then sail it right up to the enemy before diving overboard and swimming back to the Russian line, while musket balls whined and smacked into the water around him. Not for the fainthearted. While ‘Father of the Russian Navy’ is a title that might be claimed by any of Sir Charles Knowles, Admiral Thomas Gordon and Norway-born Dutchman Cornelius Cruys, Greig’s combination of skilful administrator, brave sailor and victorious commander make him a unique figure in the birth of Russia’s navy.
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.
Précis
Greig continued to impress the Russian admiralty, until in 1774 he succeeded Sir Charles Knowles as its chief. Under his care, the navy grew yet stronger, and he continued in active service too, and helped save Russia from invasion by Sweden. However, the exertion took its toll, and ‘the Father of the Russian Navy’ died of a fever in 1788. (58 / 60 words)
