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However, it was for some reason decided not to do so, and after lying at anchor for five days, the greater portion of which was passed in a thick fog, the great fleet steamed away towards Kinburn.
History tells how gallantly the naval brigade behaved before Sebastopol, and how at length, the night before that proud fortress fell, the Russians sank their remaining line-of-battle ships; and how the English and French admirals, to prevent a single keel from escaping, placed their fleets across the mouth of the harbour, when the garrison, despairing of saving even their steamers, set them on fire with their own hands; and after proud Sebastopol had fallen, how Kinburn, not far from the mouths of the Boug and the Dnieper, a strong casemated fort, armed with seventy heavy guns, supported by well-made earthworks, each furnished with ten guns more, was attacked by the combined fleets.
The new system of naval warfare which characterizes the age was proposed by John Stevens of Hoboken during the War of 1812, recommended by Paixhans in 1821, made the subject of official and private experiment here and in Europe during the last ten years especially, subjected to practical test at Kinburn in 1855, recognized then by France and England in the commencement of iron-clad fleets, first practised by the United States Government in the capture of Fort Henry, and at last established and inaugurated not only in fact, but in the principle and direction of progress, by the memorable action of the ninth of March, 1862, in the destruction of the wooden sailing-frigates Cumberland and Congress by the steam-ram Merrimack, and the final discomfiture of that powerful and heavily armed victor by the turreted, iron, two-gun Monitor.
At last, finding the impossibility of further resistance, the officer in command hoisted the white flag. The fort on the opposite shore was blown up by the Russians, and the fleet entered the channel. The troops were landed, and Kinburn occupied, and held until the end of the war, and the fleet, after a reconnaissance made by a few gun-boats up the Dneiper, returned to Sebastopol.
About 8 A.M. I got an order to commence a plan of the works, for which purpose I went to the Redan, where a dreadful sight was presented. The dead were buried in the ditch the Russians with the English Mr. Wright reading the burial service over them." On the fall of Sebastopol Gordon joined the force that besieged Kinburn, and was present at the fall of that fortress in October.
During the night the Capitan Pacha attempted to pass out from the Liman, with the remains of his squadron; but nine of his ships grounded, and, being thus brought within range of the Russian fort on the extreme point of Kinburn, were fired upon and were practically at the mercy of the Russians.
In the reduction of the Kinburn batteries, in October of the same year, these boats suffered little, but were helped out by an overwhelming fire from wooden ships, 630 guns against 81 in the forts. The French armored ship Gloire of 1859 caused England serious worry about her naval supremacy, and led at once to H. M. S. Warrior, like the Gloire, full rigged with auxiliary steam.
With one of these, the Lave, during the Russian War, he assailed and destroyed in the brief space of one hour the strong fortress of Kinburn, near Sebastopol; and in striking contrast to this success, a large British steamship, heavily armed, but constructed of wood, was actually captured near Odessa by a small party of Russians with two or three thirty-two-pounders worked through a gap in an embankment.
Accordingly an expedition was prepared, whose object was to destroy the forts at Kinburn and occupy that place, and so further reduce the sources from which the Russians drew their food. The sight was an imposing one, as the allied squadrons in two long lines steamed north past the harbor of Sebastopol.
The English and French fleet then sailed for Kinburn, standing on the shore of a shallow bay full of shoals. On their way they appeared off Odessa, in order to mislead the Russians, and then proceeded direct for their destination.
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