trading port on its shores at that time. With an important grain store and coal and iron deposits nearby, the town was naturally drawn into the theatre of war when the Allies marshalled 15,000 troops and launched their campaign to take maritime control of the area. The success of the campaign was to lead directly to victory for the Allies over the Russians at Sevastopol a few months later. 'The Sea of Azoff is open to us,' reported William Howard Russell to The Times on 26 May 1855 after the strategically important capture of Kertch at the mouth of the Black Sea a few days earlier. And our flying squadron of steam gunboats is searching it from end to end,' he continued, 'burning and destroying the ships and trading vessels of the Russians, crushing their forts, and carrying terror and dismay along the seaboard of their inland lake.'25 Together with his French counterpart, Captain Edmund Lyons, commander of the Miranda, sailed a flotilla of eighteen vessels into the Azov Sea immediately after Kertch had been taken. It was the first time that the flag of a British admiral was flown in these waters, and the Allies now started moving up the coast, bombarding first the ships, stores and government offices at Berdiansk, then doing the same at Genitchi when the town refused to surrender. By this time, 249 boats had already been destroyed, as well as the equivalent of two months of food rations for 100,000 Russian soldiers. The Russians helped in this effort by destroying enormous quantities of grain and flour themselves at Kertch.
Lyons then headed for Taganrog with twenty gunboats armed with howitzers and rockets, and on 1 June was obliged to anchor several miles outside the town, due to its shallow waters.26 Two days later, he was able to send a lengthy dispatch to his father Rear-Admiral Sir Edmund Lyons, Commander-in-Chief of the Black Sea fleet, describing a successful campaign begun at three o'clock that morning on the Recruit, an ex-Prussian iron gunboat:
… so heavy a fire opened that although the enemy made repeated attempts to get down to the houses lining the beach, so as to save the long range of store houses from destruction, they never succeeded in doing so in sufficient numbers … By 3pm, all the long ranges of stores of grain, plank and tar and the vessels on the stocks were in a blaze, as well as the custom house and other government buildings, and unfortunately but unavoidably the town in many places . .. The loss of the enemy in men must have been severe, as many were seen to fall.. . The only casualty in carrying out this service, was one private of the Royal Marine Artillery, severely wounded in the face by a musket-ball . . F
Lyons reported that a Russian sergeant, who deserted and gave himself up to a French boat, stated the number of (mostly Cossack) troops in the town to have been in the region of 3,200, of whom 800 had arrived the night before. The allies, on the other hand, had about 600 men on 43 boats. Similar procedures ensued at Mariupol and Eisk up the coast, not surprisingly leaving the whole coastline 'in a state of terror'.
Amongst the frightened inhabitants of Taganrog that early summer morning were Pavel and Evgenia Chekhov, Pavel's brother Mitrofan, and Evgenia's mother, sister and brother. Lyons took pains in his report to his father to note that civilian casualties had been expressly avoided insofar as it was possible: 'Many large buildings had the black flag hoisted, as a sign, I presume, of their being hospitals, these were most carefully respected by us, as were the churches, and as far as possible private houses.'28 In fact there were eleven casualties and eighteen wounded.29 Two hundred houses were also destroyed and a cannon ball remains lodged to this day in the belfry of the Church of St Nicholas, which stands close to the town harbour. The Russian version of events
is, of course, somewhat different, war reportage being what it is. Their account maintains that, despite six and a half hours of bombardment, it was a combination of Taganrog's steep cliffs and the valour of its Cossack defenders which prevented 300 Allied infantry from entering the town via its Stone Steps. The Allies met unexpectedly strong resistance from the Russians, according to the diary of one British officer to whom it seemed that the spirit of perseverance had transferred from the defenders of Sevastopol.30
Commander Sherard Osborn of the Vesuvius now took over as senior officer in the Sea of Azov from Captain Lyons, who returned to join his father in Sevastopol. The admiral did not want his son to miss the next bombardment later that month, but was shocked when the Miranda was hit by a shell and its commander wounded in the leg. So well-liked was Captain Lyons that his unexpected death on 23 June at the age of thirty-five caused even Queen Victoria to commiserate with the admiral on the loss of his 'gallant and beloved son'.31 The intrepid Commander Osborn, also thirty-five years old, with a trip to the Arctic already behind him, and equally competent, now impressed Lyons's grieving father with his reports of further successful sorties in the Sea of Azov. On 19 July he returned to reconnoitre Taganrog in the gunboat of Her Majesty's steam- vessel Jasper, and reported to the vice-admiral that 'every part of that town showed signs of the severe punishment it had received when we visited it under the late Captain Edmund Lyons of the Miranda'. Two shots were 'thrown into' the new battery being constructed on the heights near the hospital next to the harbour, but there had been no response. Osborn nevertheless ordered two gunboats to remain in the vicinity of the town, and requested Commander Craufurd on 20 July to continue to 'harass the enemy' and ensure that no munitions of war were able to reach Taganrog by water from the River Don.32 There was no mention in British accounts of the capture of the Jasper at the end of July by Cossack troops, who handed over its flag to the cathedral in Taganrog; the ship's cannons to this day are kept in the basement of the city museum.
A few weeks later, Osborn reported to Vice-Admiral Lyons that he had returned to Taganrog on 5 August to discover 'signs of great activity in the garrison': batteries had been thrown across streets and roads leading from the water. Closer inspection revealed five heavy guns lurking beneath the cliffs, which were summarily destroyed. These
turned out to have been old ship guns, which, as Osborn commented drily, would have actually posed a far greater danger to the Russian gunners than to their British targets.33 Pavel Chekhov and Evgenia's brother Ivan had caught sight of the gunboats of the Vesuvius, the Wrangler and the Beagle that Sunday (24 July according to the Russian calendar) after leaving morning service in Taganrog's Cathedral of the Assumption, where Evgenia's mother, Alexandra, had remained to pray. Evgenia was by then eight and a half months pregnant with her first child, and now in great alarm at the prospect of further bombardments. She and Pavel abandoned the samovar boiling in the yard, and their lunch of chicken soup, and decided to flee forty miles or so inland to Krepkaya, where Pavel's parents lived, taking lodgings with the local priest. Chekhov's eldest brother, Alexander, was born there two weeks later on 10 August.34
The Chekhovs were not the only residents of Taganrog to take fright at this new offensive. Count Egor Petrovich Tolstoy, the Governor of Taganrog, had been so incensed by the Allied squadron's first attack that he sent a dispatch to the St Petersburgb Gazette, depicting it a cruel and unnecessary act, while at the same time apparently claiming a Russian victory (this was because the late Captain Lyons had been 'forbearing and merciful', according to Osborn). Then in July, John Martin, an English businessman resident in Taganrog, wrote a letter to the Admiralty condemning the behaviour of the British towards the civilian inhabitants of the town as excessively cruel, and alleging that Her Majesty's officers had been sighted 'dining under an awning on hoard the gunboat, and drinking toasts with brutal hilarity'. A letter from the former British Consul in Taganrog, J. P. Carruthers, subsequently revealed that Count Tolstoy had in fact persuaded Martin to write the letter, although Martin had animus enough of his own since his livelihood had been badly damaged by Allied operations in i he Sea of Azov. When he was finally shown this letter, Osborn penned I robust but slightly tongue-in-cheek dispatch to Vice-Admiral Lyons in his defence. 'That the destruction of an enemy's resources must necessarily be a painful duty, I need not remind you, sir, and no doubt, individuals have occasionally suffered. The Cossacks have repeatedly drawn our fire upon places they could not defend: the blame must rest with them, not us,' he began. He acknowledged that his steamer had indeed fully succeeded in harassing the 'victorious' garrison of
Taganrog, as well as its gallant governor, 'and I dare say alarmed the inhabitants; the numbers of mothers and babes destroyed Mr Martin leaves to my imagination'. He found it hard to comprehend, however, that anyone could believe British naval officers to be capable of such brutality as to fire at women and children, and dismissed
