Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October

The Nautical School and Maritime Academy continued to crank out midshipmen who went on voyages of exploration and mapping along the Arctic Circle in the Pacific, looking for a passage to India and China. Among the Russian navigators were Ivan Fyodorov and Mikhail Gvozdev, who accurately charted the route of Captain-Commodore Vitus Bering, who discovered the narrow passage that was named after him, between the Asian and North American continents, at the top of present-day Alaska. In fact, many of the seas and gulfs above the Arctic Circle are named after Russian naval explorers of the era: the Kara, Laptev, and Chuckhi seas and even the Sea of Okhotsk, north of Japan. Russian explorers made it all the way south to Japan, thus finally circumnavigating, and therefore mapping, the entire Russian empire. Not only that, but the Russian Alexey Chirikov, along with Captain-Commodore Vitus Bering, explored well down the west coast of the North American continent.

But the peace for Russian sailors did not last long, and in the fall of 1769 the bells in Moscow began ringing in earnest, when the sixty-six-gun Yevstafy broke out into the Mediterranean Sea to help the Greeks whip the Turks.

In July 1773 Russian ships attacked Beirut, in present-day Lebanon, because the territory had for a long time helped fund the Turkish military.

In 1783 the Russian naval presence on the Black Sea was strong enough that the Crimean Peninsula, along with most of the coastal territory around the entire sea, was annexed and the city of Sevastapol was founded.

By 1788, with another war against Sweden looming on the horizon, Russian ships of the line were being refitted with new, more powerful guns that fired shells instead of cannonballs, copper sheathing was installed to help protect hulls from damage and increase speed, and each year one hundred new officers graduated from the Naval Academy, now called the Naval Cadet Corps.

In 1798 just about everybody became allies, including Russia and her old adversary Turkey, to fight Napoléon. But by 1826 Tsar Nicholas I ordered his navy to switch sides, this time becoming allies of the French and English, to help the Greeks fight the Turks. Of course the Turks hired as their chief naval adviser a Frenchman by the name of Letellieu, which in due course led to the Russian-Turkish War of 1828-29, and this time plenty of bells were rung in Moscow.

In the first half of the nineteenth century Russian warships under sail were among the best in any ocean, but then, with the invention of the steam engine, the entire world was turned upside down. The Russians managed to build four steam frigates and a twenty-three-gun screw-propeller frigate, the Archimede, by 1849. And they managed to successfully wage war against Egypt, which was trying to invade Turkey, and against Prussia, which was trying to grab as much territory from Denmark as it possibly could.

Even more bells were rung in Moscow, but it was nothing compared to what was on the horizon with the start of the Crimean War, in which Great Britain and France as allies came to the aid of Turkey. That was in 1853, and that fall the allies began a siege of the Russian town of Sevastopol that would last six long, bloody months, which most historians regard as one of the most distinguished events in Russia’s military history, even though the Russians lost. The entire Black Sea fleet was destroyed; three admirals, more than one hundred officers, and nearly four thousand sailors were killed defending the town. And more than fourteen thousand were wounded.

Eventually the Russians lost not only the battle for Sevastopol but the entire war. A treaty was signed on March 18, 1856, by the new tsar, Alexander II. Russia’s Black Sea fleet and coastal fortifications were taken away, but in exchange the shattered remains of Sevastopol were returned to Russian control.

Every bell in Moscow rang continuously for the entire two years. Medals were awarded, new naval academy midshipmen were graduated, and Russia, as did the rest of the world, entered the age of the ironclads, starting with eighteen steam-powered ships of the line and ten frigates as a new, modern Baltic fleet.

The fight was not over.

By 1876 the Russian navy was ranked number three in the entire world, and one year later Russia began another war with Turkey using torpedo boats, a brand-new innovation so effective that the Turks pulled almost all of their forces from the Black Sea.