The Shipwreck Cannibals

by Adam Nightingale

  The Dutch Captain Commodore Wybrant Scheltinga tried to tackle the partisanship that divided the fleet. Factions fell in behind two captains, the Norwegian Peter Bredale and the Russian Ivan Sinavin. John Deane favoured Bredale. Deane despised Sinavin calling him, ‘a sordid, drunken, ignorant fellow, a creature of the tsar’s, and therefore of great power misused by him, to the exposing of himself and his Prince’s service to ridicule.’ Deane’s assessment of Sinavin’s worth as a human being and an officer was typical of the escalating contempt in which he would come to hold most of the Russians he encountered and of the ambivalent attitude he felt towards the tsar that governed them.

  On 7 July, Peter the Great arrived in person bringing with him thirty-seven galleys and a snow. On 20 July he took command as vice admiral. Since the battle of Polatva, the creaky alliance with Denmark had been somewhat refortified. Peter the Great entertained the king of Denmark and set his mind to reorganising the fleet. The tsar initiated something of a reshuffle among his officers. He was concerned about the polyglot nature of his fleet. He reassigned officers to ships best suited to their abilities. Once assigned, the captains would stay with the same ship, an antidote to the problems of negotiating the different languages and maritime cultures that made up the body of the fleet. He insisted that any commanders must have risen through the ranks and be skilled navigators familiar with the coasts. The Egudal was taken from John Deane and he was given a new vessel, a frigate. John Deane was now captain of the Samson.

  The Samson was built in Holland. It was a gift to Peter the Great from the tsar’s close companion Prince Alexander Danivolovich Menishikoff. It was a relatively small vessel, bristling with guns. There were forty of them. But forty was considered too many guns for the size of vessel. The English master builder Richard Brown overhauled the Samson and reduced the guns to a more manageable thirty-two. Deane’s assessment of Brown’s handiwork was that he had turned the Samson into ‘an excellent frigate’. Prior to Hango Head the Samson had been employed to look for the Swedish fleet, avoid a confrontation and alert the Russians of their enemy’s whereabouts. After Hango Head the Samson hunted privateers, capturing three enemy vessels. The Samson was sent on missions to England and Holland. The Samson was fitted with, and then stripped of, the contentious boarding equipment John Deane would help transport across Russia by sledge. Prior to Deane, the Samson had been commanded by another Englishman, Benjamin Edwards, and two Norwegians, Isaac Brandt and Peter Bredale. Under the new administration John Deane would stay with the Samson until promotion, death, demotion or disgrace separated him from her.

  When Peter the Great assumed command of the fleet, John Deane got the opportunity to test the guns of his new vessel when a salute was fired in honour of the tsar. Once the tsar’s fleet had been reorganised it was ready to find the Swedes and force a confrontation if the conditions favoured the Russians. But John Deane’s orders were to wait upon Sir John Norris and find out if he had any intentions of committing his cruisers to the ensuing conflict. If the answer was ‘yes’ then Deane and fellow Englishman William Baker would accompany the English cruisers, Deane in the Samson and Baker in the Arundel. Sir John Norris declined to commit his ships so the tsar ordered Deane and Baker to search for the Swedish fleet and report back the Swedes’ strength and numbers.

  The ocean echoed with the sound of gunfire. Sir John Norris had honoured the tsar with a twenty-one-gun salute. The tsar reciprocated in kind. Danish warships fired their own friendly salvos.

  In early August the Russian fleet set sail for the Danish island of Bornholm. Norris’s squadron, a number of merchant vessels and a Dutch man-of-war accompanied them. John Deane located the Swedish fleet. They had sailed to the naval port of Karlskrona. Deane returned to the Russians and reported the news.

  A proposed plan to invade Sweden came to nothing. The campaigning season juddered to a halt as winter approached. John Deane’s last mission of 1716 was to patrol the Baltic in the Samson alongside Captain Baker in the Arundel. Deane and Baker’s orders were to ‘keep different courses in the Baltic,’ in order to find and harry enemy store ships that were believed to be in the vicinity.

  7

  Apraxin

  As 1716 drew to a close, a few of the tsar’s ships were lost to the elements; a four-gun privateer was captured and there was a controversy involving a Dutch officer. Captain Vandergun had sold items aboard Deane’s previous vessel, the Egudal. The items were not his to sell, an act tantamount to theft. His peers informed on him. Vandergun was arrested. He was subject to court martial and was sentenced to three years’ confinement. On closer investigation it transpired that Vandergun had had no money to feed his men and had only sold the items to buy food for that purpose. Deane was convinced that those that had told tales about Vandergun’s justifiable indiscretion had been motivated by covetousness, craving the Dutchman’s command.

  The fleet wintered at Revel. A storm destroyed part of Revel and broke two ships to pieces, the Fortune and the Antonio. The tsar was in St Petersburg. In his absence there were few promotions. No important decisions were allowed to be made in his absence so nothing much was accomplished until he returned.

  On 12 April 1717, the day the ice broke, John Deane set sail with new orders. He was to briefly visit his homeland. Deane transported apprentices bound for five years’ service to Rostock, England and then Holland. By July, he had returned, and John Deane and the Samson were placed in a squadron under the command of General Admiral Fedor Matveevich Apraxin.

  The general admiral was one of the few Russians John Deane had a kind word to say about. Deane’s physical description of him was a man ‘well made’ and ‘inclined to feed’, a polite or mischievous euphemism for fat. Apraxin had long white hair that he tied in a ribbon. He was in his mid-fifties. He was a childless widower. He was neat and dressed, in Deane’s opinion, in a manner that ‘surpasses all the noblemen of his years in Russia’. Apraxin was an even-tempered individual. He liked men to behave according to their rank and station, and expected to be treated with the deference due his own rank. He didn’t suffer fools. He was a man of his word. He did not extend patronage easily but when he did he was fiercely protective of his charges. Where Apraxin was concerned, Deane abandoned his stance of denigrating Russians with little or no naval experience. Deane respected the on-the-job knowledge Apraxin had accrued. Deane’s assessment of Apraxin’s relationship with the tsar was that the Admiral was more ‘esteemed than loved’ by Peter the Great, ‘and therefore rarely consulted, unless on arduous and important affairs’. On this point Deane was in error. Apraxin was a close friend and intimate confidant of the tsar. There was also a shadow side to the admiral. He could be a rough and brutal man when he believed necessity demanded it. In the aftermath of an early revolt, Apraxin had hanged rebels on the roads leading in and out of Voronezh. In 1718 the tsar’s son Alexi Petrovich would rebel against his father. Apraxin would be present at his interrogation and torture. Alexi Petrovich would be brutally flogged and die later that day. But Apraxin showed the conciliatory and paternal part of his nature to many of Peter the Great’s foreign mercenaries and it was the better part of Apraxin that John Deane encountered at close quarters. Deane would recall an incident between Captain Commodore Sievers and the English Jacobite exile Rear Admiral Thomas Gordon. Sievers and Gordon were celebrating the anniversary of the Battle of Hango Head. Both men were roaring drunk. Gordon insulted Sievers, claiming he had taken the best sailors for himself prior to Hango Head. When news reached the tsar of the dispute, Apraxin defended the Dutchman to his ruler and criticised Gordon. The tsar refused to take sides and forced the two enemies to have a conciliatory drink together. Despite Apraxin’s intervention tensions continued to fester and engendered factions within the fleet. Gordon recruited a strong ally in Rear Admiral Thomas Saunders, a man that would cause John Deane particular grief in years to come. But Apraxin’s example was not lost on Deane, who would have reason to thank the admiral when his own Russian adventure tu
rned to ash.

  General Admiral Fedor Matveevich Apraxin, John Deane’s first great mentor. Apraxin’s patronage secured John Deane safe passage out of Russia after the English captain’s court martial. Illustration by Jean Nightingale

  The fleet anchored near Ostergarn. John Deane and Clays Eckoff, the Danish captain of the Portsmouth, were ordered to sail southward toward Slite Hamn where they were to observe enemy fortifications and report back on the enemy’s strength.

  The Russian fleet entered Ostergarn. They encountered a small amount of enemy resistance from mounted guns that the Swedes quickly spiked before retreating and lighting warning beacons. The Russian fleet anchored and put soldiers ashore.

  Deane and Eckoff approached Slite Hamn. They sailed within shooting range of the fortifications. A gale was blowing. Deane and Eckhoff measured the depth of the water and observed the fortress. The fort was situated on an island that was, according to Deane, ‘disunited from the mainland by the passage into the harbour’. Deane spotted batteries of guns camouflaged behind foliage. Deane and Eckhoff ordered their men to fire the cannons of the Samson and the Portsmouth at the batteries. The Swedes fired all their guns at once in retaliation. Deane and Eckhoff counted the guns. They had the information they needed. The Samson and the Portsmouth returned to the fleet.

  At Ostergarn, cruisers were sent north and south to stand watch and send warning if the Swedish fleet were nearby. Two of the cruisers, the Poltava and the Elias, spotted a small privateer. They pursued her. The crew of the privateer could not outpace the cruisers so they took their vessel into shallow water where it would be difficult for the heavier cruisers to follow. The privateers ran their vessel aground. They stripped her of her guns and took them ashore. The Poltava and the Elias dispatched smaller boats to the privateers’ vessel. What they were supposed to have done was to attach ropes to the abandoned vessel, drag her into deeper water and take her back to Ostergard. Instead they tried to set her on fire. The Poltava sailed back to the fleet. The Elias stayed behind to prevent the privateers, who were currently stranded on shore with their guns, from facilitating their escape by returning to the boat and putting out the fire. When the Poltava came back, her captain gave his report to General Admiral Apraxin.

  John Deane was present when Captain Van Gent told General Admiral Apraxin what had happened. Apraxin listened in complete disbelief. Deane had come to see Apraxin to present a report on his findings at Slite Hamn. Apraxin rebuked the Dutch officer and then turned to Deane. Apraxin ordered Deane back onto the Samson and gave him free reign to take any ship or boat he needed. Apraxin ordered Deane to find the privateers’ vessel and either retrieve or else utterly destroy her. Once either task had been accomplished, Deane was to go ashore with an armed contingent and take the guns from the Swedish privateers. Apraxin promised John Deane a generous reward if he could successfully carry out his new orders. Deane set sail with two longboats, a few pinnaces and enough armed men to retrieve the guns. It was John Deane’s first real opportunity to distinguish himself in combat, advance himself and make some money. Deane’s own allies let him down. When the Samson approached the Elias, the Elias was alone in the water. Somehow the captain and the crew of the Elias had allowed the privateers to reboard their vessel, put out the fire and escape, guns and all. John Deane, the Samson and the Elias sailed back to General-Admiral Apraxin empty-handed.

  There was no censure for John Deane. He had done nothing wrong. But there would be charges to answer for the commanding officers of the Elias and the Poltava when the fleet docked at Revel.

  The fleet engaged in a little light looting before they left for Revel. They took cattle from the surrounding countryside but refrained from destroying any property. When the fleet arrived in Revel a court martial was held for the officers of the Elias and the Poltava. Apraxin wanted to cashier the officers of both vessels. The members of the court martial were more lenient. The officers of the Poltava walked away without punishment. Captain Ducy of the Elias was dismissed from the service. His lieutenant was also disciplined. Apraxin went into the country for a short respite. He left the New Englander Rear Admiral George Paddon in charge with orders to engage the fleet in military exercises. Paddon made a pig’s ear of carrying out his orders. The exercises were conducted with much disorder and tensions among the fleet were allowed to fester. There was some consolation in the capture of an enemy snow but even that gave way to disagreements about whether the Dutch captain of the Pearl or the Hanoverian captain of the Alexander had taken her. In August, Paddon left with eleven of the fleet’s finest ships for the Russian port of Kronslot, where he intended to winter. The Russian fleet was strengthened by new ships from Copenhagen.

  At some point during the campaigning season, John Deane pursued and captured two Swedish merchantmen in the Gulf of Danzig. Once a ship had been taken as a prize, the protocol was to man the captured vessel with capable members of your own crew, who would sail the vessel back to Revel. Deane was engaged in the process of selecting which of his men would crew the merchantmen when two warships were spotted. It was not a cause for immediate concern. One ship was a Dutch man-of-war and the other an English frigate. Both nations were allies to Russia. What happened next took John Deane completely by surprise. The frigate and the man-of-war demanded at gunpoint that Deane give up the merchantmen. It was a delicate moment that required a pragmatic response. The English and the Dutch were supposed to be compatriots. The Samson would be shot to pieces if Deane elected to fight them. Deane surrendered the merchantmen. The English and the Dutch let Deane go. Deane reported the incident to his superiors. Russian naval command, who would often be guilty of disregarding the context in which difficult decisions had to be made, seemed to understand why Deane had acted the way he did. There was no censure. Deane had done nothing wrong.

  In September, Peter the Great returned to Revel where he inspected and approved of the building work that had been taking place there. He was approached by a delegation of English merchants. They had missed a convoy that would have provided them with the necessary protection through the volatile waters that constituted part of their trade route. The English appealed to the tsar for help. The tsar ordered the Samson and the Uriel to provide an escort. John Deane took the merchants to Danzig. When they tried to go further they were forced to turn back because of bad weather. Deane wintered at Revel. There was little else for him to do that year.

  As 1717 drew to a close, three new ships from St Petersburg were added to the fleet, a new administrational naval rank of secretary was introduced and cabin boys made their first appearance in the Russian navy. There was extensive building work to link key ports with St Petersburg via a network of canals. There were expeditionary voyages to the Caspian Sea.

  The next year began with the usual batch of promotions, including one for Captain Commodore Scheltinga who, despite being mortally ill and paralysed down one half of his body, was promoted to the rank of rear admiral of the red. The promotion was interpreted by Deane as a sop from Peter the Great to the stricken officer so that he would have ‘the honour of dying a rear admiral’.

  The fleet were instructed to be ready to sail as soon as the ice broke. Deane was given sealed orders and told to open them when he was 20 leagues from Revel. He set sail and broke the seal as instructed. Along with the Uriel and the Randolph, John Deane was ordered to, ‘proceed and cruise at large on the enemy’s coast, to hinder all trade with Sweden, and make prizes of all nations, French and Hollanders excepted’. Captain John Deane had been given a hunting licence. He had clear but flexible instructions and a degree of autonomy to pursue and board most ships he encountered. But the chances for financial remuneration were not as glittering as they first appeared. The new rank of secretary was designed to ensure that everything taken from a boarded ship was properly logged and accounted for. Every ship had to have a secretary. But despite this new added layer of bureaucracy, Deane must have felt optimistic. This was his best chance so far to forge a reputation in w
ar that might expunge his sense of shame for deeds done in the name of survival on a scrap of rock off the New England coast.

  8

  Prizes

  The man who had once been accused of deliberately trying to lose his vessel to privateers found, now that the tables had been turned, that he showed a real aptitude for the trade; for state-approved piracy was effectively his profession now. John Deane set sail in June 1718. He had only been at sea a month when the Samson and the Pearl returned to Revel with four Swedish vessels in tow. Two of the prizes may have been captured by Deane working in conjunction with the Pearl, or the Pearl may have captured them herself. But half the tally belonged to Deane. In fact John Deane had employed an outrageous degree of panache to snare his two captured vessels. Deane had disguised the Samson as a Swedish ship and sailed her right into Burgs Vic harbour in Gotland. He had joked and laughed with the gulled Swedes and then took two of their ships away from them. It was a cavalier beginning to a grand run that would total twenty-two prizes.

  Once the initial quartet of prizes had been delivered, the Samson and the Pearl returned to the open sea to hunt for more. The prizes mounted up. In an echo of the incident that had cost him his reward the previous year, John Deane was afforded the opportunity to demonstrate the correct way of dealing with a stricken enemy trapped in shallow waters. Deane was in pursuit of a Swedish privateer. The privateer tried to evade the Samson by sailing into a creek where she knew the pursuing frigate was too big to follow. The Swedes had started to carry their guns ashore. Deane manoeuvred the Samson as close to the creek as was safe to do so without grounding his own ship. Then Deane ordered his men to fire the Samson’s cannons and force the Swedes away from their own guns. The Swedes succeeded in getting four guns off the boat, then decided to cut their losses. The Swedes torched their own ship. John Deane dispatched a pinnace. The men in the pinnace were ordered to board the burning Swedish vessel where they successfully retrieved the enemy’s guns and ammunition.