The Shipwreck Cannibals

by Adam Nightingale

  John Deane returned to England. He had little in the way of material possessions. His reputation had been destroyed for a second time. Russia had promised a form of exorcism for Boon Island. But when all was said and done, John Deane had simply exchanged one funereal world of wind and ice for another. Yet the twice-exiled Englishman could still call himself Captain John Deane. He also knew the power of the written word. Ink on paper had blunted the disgrace of Boon Island. Ink might yet mitigate against the bankruptcy of almost a decade wasted in the service of a fickle empire. Captain John Deane returned to England full of bile and malice, and a will to convert years of hatred into a written document. Unlike his account of the Boon Island episode, what Deane wrote next would not be for public consumption. It was for a few select eyes and would take him back to Russia clothed in the diplomatic mantle of his home nation.

  10

  A History of the

  Russian Fleet

  The name of John Deane’s document was: History of the Russian Fleet during the Reign of Peter the Great. The early pages of the document relayed in a condensed fashion the initial prototypes and failures of Peter the Great’s fledgling navy. Deane summed up the tsar’s various experiments prior to his tour of Europe with a degree of facetious restraint, stating that, ‘to pass them by in silence is the highest compliment’. Deane moved with similar brevity through Peter the Great’s trip to Western Europe and his harvest of, and preference for, foreign naval talent. Deane wrote briefly of the early living and working conditions that Peter the Great provided for his foreign employees, the first ships built after his tour of Europe and the tsar’s intimate involvement in the construction process of his new fleet. The tsar’s war with the Turks and his conflict with his sister were given a cursory mention. But once the document reached the events of 1703, the pace of Deane’s narrative slowed down. Deane’s principal task for the majority of The History of the Russian Fleet was to systematically chart the progress of the war at sea with Sweden. Deane relayed each Russian success and setback. He charted the evolution of Russian naval tactics from the primitive galley victory at Hango Head to the sophisticated deployment of frigates and men-of-war and the judicious use of privateers. As Deane brought his account of each successive year of campaigning to a halt, he would disclose an inventory of warships in the Russian fleet. John Deane’s narrative ended in 1722, a year after the peace treaty at Nystead. The majority of this part of the document was relatively clinical and detached. But Deane was not averse to a little editorialising flavoured by more than a touch of righteous anger and contempt. Here Deane describes a galley raid perpetrated by one of the tsar’s Italian mercenaries:

  Five large Holland flyboats, arriving at Helsingfors to load timber, were all burned, and the men either killed or wounded in a barbarous manner by Count de Buss, rearadmiral of the Russian galleys, merely through ignorance and indistinction of the neutral flags and passes. This action was utterly unjustifiable …

  Deane was not only interested in revealing Russian strength and tactics. He sought also to give an impression of the men that commanded Peter the Great’s navy. Throughout the document John Deane would continue to deliver generally critical and occasionally complimentary comments about fellow officers. Sometimes he would arrest the narrative completely for a potted biography and analysis of important high-ranking foreign and Russian officers in the tsar’s employ.

  John Deane wrote about the Norwegian admiral of the blue, Cornelius Cruys:

  This gentleman, a native of Norway, bred a sailor in Holland and advanced there, had in the last Dutch war been pretty active in privateering upon the English. Some little prejudices imbibed in his youth, through the ill understanding betwixt the two nations, did not easily wear, and might probably render him less a friend to the English than otherwise he would have been. However, he is a man of sobriety and a good seaman; and not withstanding some errors of judgement, has been of excellent service to the Tsar, indefatigably studying to improve the maritime affairs in opposition to the many difficulties industriously thrown in his way, out of envy to him as a foreigner, by the malevolent Russians.

  John Deane also wrote about the Danish rear admiral of the blue, Peter Sievers:

  He is a man of excellent sense, general knowledge and very exact and methodical in all his conduct; speaks and writes most European tongues; many Russians of distinction will assure you, not a man of their own nation understands their language so well as he. These qualifications render him of great importance; besides he is a bold man; and during the time the ships lie in harbour, in dividing the officers and men &c, has refused to suffer Rear Admiral Gordon to be present at the opening, or consulted upon the execution of orders, even when desired by the Tsar.

  Both assessments of both officers were largely positive but both contained broadsides against those that John Deane perceived to be venal and incompetent; the ‘malevolent Russians’ and Sievers old enemy Thomas Gordon. In the Sievers analysis there was also implied criticism of the tsar’s poor judgment in favouring Gordon over Sievers and implicit praise for Deane’s own saviour Apraxin, the ‘general admiral’ referred to in the text.

  Once Deane had concluded his account of the campaign the rest of the document took the form of a study of the infrastructures, administration and command structures of the Russian fleet. In these sections Deane’s own opinions and prejudices were on more prominent display. He also provided a window into the many brutal social divisions within the Babel-like community of mercenaries, as well as those that still existed in Russian society. Deane began the concluding sections of the document by assessing the galley fleet. The largely Italian and Greek mercenaries that made up the bulk of the galley fleet were pariahs to the rest of the Russian fleet: ‘The officers of the men-of-war seldom care to converse much with these people; partly on account of their different languages and manner of living; but more out of abhorrence of the great barbarities they have sometimes practised upon an enemy … .’

  Deane listed the officers’ rates of pay and the gratuities included besides pay. Deane listed the falling rates of exchange between shillings and roubles and the gifts and the bounties afforded to admirals. Having praised him earlier in the document John Deane blamed Vice-Admiral Cruys for the poor rates of pay available to foreign officers.

  Deane turned his attention to warrant officers and seamen and afforded himself a run of invective against his favourite target, the Russians. Deane’s opinion of the under officers was a qualified disrespect. He ascribed their poor quality to bad treatment from their lieutenants who were by and large ‘Russians and men of little worth…’ Deane went on to attack the general level of Russian seamanship. He put the Russian allergy to naval life down to ‘an aversion to the sea’ in the makeup of the recruitment pool, whom he described as ‘sons of such and such’ obliged to serve but with no interest or inclination to do so. Deane also credited a severe decadence of lifestyle to the average Russian officer that neutered their usefulness as navy material, men who ‘having credit at large, launched out into all manner of effeminate and extravagant living, frequenting the play-houses … not caring how little they went to sea …’ Deane blamed the Russian winter for arresting the repetitive drill necessary for maintaining maritime skill and knowledge. Once winter fell everything was forced to stop. Once the ice had thawed the fledgling seamen had forgotten most of what they had learned the previous summer and spring.

  John Deane blamed Russian religion as a force that obstructed progress and threatened lives in Peter the Great’s navy. Deane relayed a chilling and tragic phenomenon:

  … their religion enjoins a strict observation of three annual fasts, amounting in the whole to fifteen weeks, besides every Wednesday and Friday throughout the year; and so tenacious is the ignorant superstitious multitude of this less essential part, that great numbers of sick have been landed abroad the Russian fleet, especially in these fasting seasons, and the Tsar has ordered a provision of fresh meat and set a guard to prevent the int
roducing all other support, many have actually perished rather than violate their ill-informed consciences in eating prohibited viands.

  Deane described the early days of Peter the Great’s new capital in his document. The importance of the city to the tsar was paramount. Deane believed that in the city’s infancy the tsar ‘would have willingly condescended to deliver up all his conquests, upon condition of reserving to himself St Petersburg’. Deane’s attitude toward the city seemed to be one of incredulity, not quite believing that anybody could have the hubris to undertake such a building project. He described the ground around St Petersburg as a ‘morass and wilderness, producing little or nothing for the support of man’. In Deane’s opinion the ground needed to be cultivated in order to produce food for the city’s population but the tsar forbade it, prohibiting ‘the cutting up of the least tree or shrub within twenty, and in some parts within thirty miles thereof’. Deane noted the city’s indefensibility. According to Deane, St Petersburg, ‘being built on several islands and standing on a vast extent of ground, will not possibly admit of fortifications’. Deane noted the city’s flammability, St Petersburg buildings being mostly made of wood. According to Deane, St Petersburg’s best chance of defending itself lay in ‘rendering the avenues impassable’. In making this observation Deane afforded himself another opportunity to assault the character of the Russian military. He reasoned that such a tactic suited ‘admirably well with the temper of the Russian soldiery, ever reputed better at ambuscade, or defence of a place where they lie covered, than in the bravery of an open assault’. In saying this, John Deane was effectively calling the Russian soldiers cowards.

  Deane wrote down his thoughts on the function and deployment of the Russian navy now that the war with Sweden had ended. In peacetime the priority of Peter the Great was to establish trade treaties, ‘to obtain the privilege of exporting, in his own ships, the product of his own dominions’. Then there was the problem of England and Holland. Now that the war was over the two technically friendly nations were likely to take offence at the fact that Peter the Great was ‘victualling his ships at much cheaper rates than they’. There was also the question of monopoly. The spoils of the recent war had ‘drawn in a manner, the whole commerce of his dominion into the Baltic; and necessitated the general system of Russian imports and exports’. Deane suspected that the tsar would exempt his own ships from paying tolls. Peter the Great also had plans to connect his provinces internally by canals, further improving trade. The tsar’s next great horizon was to ‘grasp into his hands the Persian trade’. Deane concluded this section of the document by predicting that the tsar wanted, ‘a port in the hithermost parts of the Baltic for the bringing these designs to maturity’, but encouraged whoever might read his report that the tsar’s plans were ‘as yet but in embryo …’.

  Deane wrote of rumours of the tsar’s plans to send his fleet to the Mediterranean, the possibility of further conflict with the Turks, the benefit of such a campaign to a still inexperienced navy and the danger to Peter the Great of mass desertions once his men saw, ‘the preferable standards of living in other countries …’. Deane gave details of Russian galley building and timber transportation. He wrote how frequently Peter the Great would need to replace his ships to maintain its strength. Deane conceded the strong possibility that Peter the Great could indeed build a navy to match and dominate the Swedes and the Danes. John Deane compared the command structures of the Russian navy with the English navy. He foresaw problems for the tsar when Russians were promoted above their levels of competence, an endemic problem in the Russian navy. Deane appeared to abate his blanket denunciation of Russians for a sentence or two by conceding that, ‘There are some men of capacity among the Russians,’ but couldn’t resist stating that, ‘foreigners ever desire to leave ’em ashore …’. Deane believed that the Russians struggled to sail well in bad weather and that an ‘inferior force’ could ‘attack and destroy’ them if they engaged the Russians during a ‘strong gale of wind’.

  Deane seemed be to working up a head of steam for a page-long rant about Russian incompetence. The specific context for the rant was the ill treatment and humiliation of any foreigner who had the nerve to gainsay the tsar in matters of naval wisdom regarding handling a ship in foul weather. Deane’s riposte gave full vent to the barely suppressed hatred he felt for his former paymasters and the nominally latent contempt he had for the majority of his peers, Russian cowardice and incompetence being the two frequent and recurrent gobs of venom spat by Captain John Deane from the pages of his document at Peter the Great’s indigenous subordinates:

  And how much less will they be able to do it, after ten or twelve days’ continuance at sea, when many are seasick, or otherwise in ill state of health, and the rest thunderstruck with terror of an approaching engagement […] The officers from a sense of their people’s inexperience will be fearful of opening their ports or loosening their guns, lest by ill steerage, or other mismanagement, the sea run in at their portholes, or the guns break loose and endanger their sinking, especially among the Russians, whose known property is ever to recoil from danger, even when immediate presence of mind is requisite to repel an otherwise unavoidable ruin […] And even in calm moderate weather, when the people are in condition to behave something better, yet the enemy has great advantage through the badness of their powder; and commanders acquainted with the hazard they run, above all things dread the blowing up of their ships, through the fear, ignorance and confusion of the undisciplined multitude.

  The storm in Deane seemed to blow itself out somewhat for the concluding pages of the document. Deane reported on the Russian ironworks, the peacetime fate of his own last great vessel, the Devonshire, which had become a transport ship for weapons, ammunition, wax and paper. He reported on details of disputes between officers regarding matters of advancement and pay. He wrote about building work, new ships, further disputations, strategy, deployment and trade. Deane concluded his document with a detailed inventory of the Russian fleet and its officers. His final observations of Peter the Great’s prospects as a naval superpower were sober and critical:

  I am fully of the opinion though the number of his ships is increased, yet his seamen, properly so called, are not more numerous, within these last four years. And the vast charge he is yearly at to discipline his men and keep his fleet to its present height, whilst or no service is done him in return of such expense, much inevitably exhaust his treasures and render him less formidable. All future designs and expectations must abide in a state of inexecution till his affairs in Asia stand on a less precarious footing; and should he in turn meet with adverse fortune, it would past all peradventure ruin many if not most of his undertakings.

  It was a back-handed compliment to Peter the Great. John Deane acknowledged that the Russian navy, for better or worse, was held together by the industry and will of the tsar. The project’s success would perish if its architect were to die suddenly. It was an astute and prophetic observation. Deane’s once prospective saviour turned author of his present torment, died an agonising death a year later from an infected bladder. The potency of his navy died with him.

  But where was John Deane in his own document? And to what extent did the ‘Shadow Man of Boon Island’ truly reveal himself?

  Unlike his accounts of the New England shipwreck, John Deane relegated himself to a supporting player in the wider narrative of Peter the Great’s maritime adventure. Deane did not put his name to the document. The authorship was ascribed to ‘A Contemporary Englishman’. Deane appeared to give no more weight to his own exploits than he did to numerous others that sailed and fought alongside him. He referred to himself in the third person. He seemed to so divorce himself from the sailor named John Deane he was writing about as to give no indication that the author and the sailor were one and the same person. To confuse matters even further, he made passing reference to another John Deane who worked for Peter the Great as a master builder. Long after he had died, future readers of the
anonymous document would assume that the two John Deane’s were the same person. Deane relayed his own campaigning career with a detachment that seemed to indicate the desire for anonymity. Yet Deane was careful to justify his role in the Kronslot disaster and made sure that the reader understood where the blame ought to lie. Deane also omitted crucial information about himself. There was no mention in the document of the incident at the Gulf of Danzig where Deane was forced to hand over the two merchantmen to the English and the Dutch. There was no mention of the subsequent court martial and Deane’s commuted sentence transporting timber from Kazan. The only reference to John Deane’s expulsion from Russia was oblique. In his final inventory of all the commanding officers that had served the tsar in the Baltic campaign, Deane listed his own name. The entry simply reads: ‘Deane, John; England; Captain, dismissed in 1722.’

  Although John Deane could have made a decent fist of trying to vindicate himself, he elected not to. Back in England he was still a notorious man, now newly disgraced and touting for employment. It did not do well to advertise his failures any more than he had to, even if a compelling case could be made that his second fall from grace was not his fault. Whereas Deane was the fallible but essentially competent and benign saviour of his own Boon Island narratives, in The History of the Russian Fleet John Deane’s tactic seemed to have been to hide in plain sight.