The Crimean War at Sea: The Naval Campaigns Against Russia 1854-56

Peter Duckers

Jul 2011 · Casemate Publishers

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Too often historical writing on the Russian War of 1854-56 focuses narrowly on the land campaign fought in the Crimean peninsula in the Black Sea. The wider war waged at sea by the British and French navies against the Russians is ignored. The allied navies aimed to strike at Russian interests anywhere in the world where naval force could be brought to bear, and as a result campaigns were waged in the Baltic, the Black Sea, the White Sea, on the Russian Pacific coast and in the Sea of Azoff. Yet it is the land campaign in the Crimea that shapes our understanding of events. In this graphic and original study, Peter Duckers seeks to set the record straight. He shows how these neglected naval campaigns were remarkably successful, in contrast to the wretched failures that beset the British army on land. Allied warships ranged across Russian waters sinking shipping, disrupting trade, raiding ports, bombarding fortresses, destroying vast quantities of stores and shelling coastal towns. The scale and intensity of the naval operations embarked upon during the war are astonishing, and little appreciated, and this new book offers the first overall survey of them.

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Peter Duckers has been a collector of British campaign and gallanary medals for many years and now specialises in awards ito the Indian Army. He is a Fellow of the royal Asiatic Society, a Fellow of the Royal Numismatic Society, a member of the Orders and Medals Research Society, the Military Historical Society and the Indian Military Historical Society. He is the curator of the Shropshire Regimental Museum at the Castle, Shrewsbury.