“Theirs but to do and die” DARTMOUTH AND THE CRIMEAN WAR
O
n 28 March 1854, 170 years ago, Britain declared war on Russia,
in what became known here as the Crimean War. Today, places which became so familiar to our Victorian forebears are once more in the headlines, since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the start of the present war with Ukraine. In July 1853, Tsarist Russia had
occupied the Danubian principal- ities of Moldavia and Wallachia (part of modern Romania and Moldova), asserting historic rights to protect all Orthodox Chris- tian populations in the Ottoman Empire. Not unlike today, Western European powers greatly feared Russian expansionism and saw the occupation as a major threat to Eu- ropean security. Britain and France allied with the Ottoman Empire and declared war. Te new Dartmouth Chronicle
(it had begun publication only three months earlier) followed events closely, and on 3 April 1854 expressed widely-held anti-Russian feeling: “... in the pages of a future
“History of England’ ... it will be ev- erlastingly recorded that [Britain] sent forth her fleets and armies in the nineteenth century to right the oppressed, and honestly opposed ... a Monarch, who had dared the responsibility of throwing down the gauntlet to justice ...” An early concern was Dartmouth
harbour’s vulnerability to enemy attack. Te Ordnance Department visited and decided the Castle
Russian Gun, Embankment, Dartmouth
needed bigger and better guns. But with no active operations in the English Channel, improvements had to wait until 1861, when a new five-gun battery was completed. In July 1854, Ottoman forces
forced the Russians to retreat beyond the Danube. Te allies decided to invade Crimea to capture the city of Sevastopol and destroy the Russian Black Sea Fleet; and perhaps even destabilise the Russian Empire. Allied forces were protected
and supported by their navies; the Royal Navy’s flagship was HMS Britannia. On 14 September, allied troops began landing near Evpatoria, some 45km north of Sevastopol. Five days later they began the march south. Te first battle took place on
20 September, at the river Alma, north of Sevastopol. Back home, street, house and personal names
commemorated the allied victory. Little girls were christened “Alma” (two in Dartmouth), while the housename “Alma” on Clarence Hill was recorded in February 1855; and in Kingswear, “Alma Place” in 1861. But two days later, the Russians blew up their own fleet to block the mouth of the harbour and prevent an attack from the north. Te allies now commit- ted their forces to a full-scale siege of the city’s southern fortifications. Under constant fire, artillery
was hauled up and siege batter- ies constructed. Te first allied bombardment began, by both land and sea, on 17 October. Serving in HMS Queen was ship’s caulker John Winsland, born in Dartmouth in 1818. He survived the war, returning to the town aſter completing his naval service. When he died in 1900 he received full naval honours at his burial in
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