The Russian Navy Comes to Kent

Dr Philip MacDougall outlines his research into the influence and connections of Kent’s naval facilities with the Russian Navy through from Peter I's visit to Chatham in 1698 to the later use of Chatham by the Russian Navy during the French Wars of the eighteenth century.

Dr Philip MacDougall is an historian and author who has been researching Kentish maritime history for many years primarily the county’s four naval dockyards and naval hospitals. Philip has written and published several books and contributed to academic publications in both the UK and France.

In this blog post he outlines his research into the influence and connections of Kent’s naval facilities with the Russian Navy through from Peter I's visit to Chatham in 1698 to the later use of Chatham by the Russian Navy during the French Wars of the eighteenth century.

I have a long interest in Kentish maritime history and any naval connection with Kent, especially relating to the 18th century immediately draws my attention.

This certainly happened while researching my book published in 2022, The Anglo-Russian Naval Alliance of the Eighteenth Century and Beyond. In describing the events associated with that informal alliance, the naval yards of Kent feature strongly as Russia was a key source of raw materials for the building and repairing of ships and the yards also hosted Russian warships and naval personnel during that period.

The primary focus of that book was the supply of those raw materials from Russia, this leading to a massive stream of merchant ships bringing tar, hemp, fir and other items from Russia to supply the  four Kent yards. However this was only part of the story.

Chatham, being the largest of the yards accessible from the Baltic, also witnessed the presence of Russian fleets on two important occasions during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, with Russian ships and personnel working alongside the British Navy.

The first fleet arrived in 1795, two years after the outbreak of the war with revolutionary France, having been ordered by Ekaterina II, Catherine the Great, to work alongside the Royal Navy’s North Sea squadron blockading the enemy-held port of Texel. Those Russian ships,  commanded by Vice-Admiral Hanickoff, were to remain in British home waters until the end of 1797, after which they were withdrawn back to the Baltic by Catherine’s successor, Paul I,  a tsar who was unsympathetic to any form of alliance with Great Britain.

Then in 1812, following Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, the distinct possibility arose that Napoleon would turn towards St Petersburg and the Russian naval base of Kronstadt, which would potentially mean the capture of a great many Russian warships. For this reason Alexander I, who had himself succeeded Paul, determined to send his Imperial fleet to Britain for safeguarding. Again, because of its geographical location, the naval base at Chatham was to receive the bulk of those Russian warships. Orders sent by the Navy Board in London to the commissioner of the yard stated that the officers and ships’ companies of the Russian fleet were to be allowed free egress into the dockyard, in like manner as ships of the British Navy, with several pilots assigned to the task of conveying the Russian fleet to their respective moorings in Kethole Reach.

The arrival of this second Russian fleet in the Medway was to put considerable strain on the already overburdened dockyard and naval facilities at Chatham, as well as Sheerness, a smaller naval dockyard lying at the mouth of the Medway. Over the next eighteen months, the Russian fleet was to draw heavily upon these two dockyards as well as a victualling yard further up river at Rochester. 

Of concern to Parliament was the level of expenditure placed on the British government to support the presence of the Russian fleet at Chatham and whether Britain was receiving value for money. Indeed Westminster had agreed to provide Alexander with an annual sum of £500,000 to support the Russian fleet while in British coastal waters, gaining in return Alexander’s consent to use those ships ‘in the European seas, in the manner which he may judge the most useful to the operations against the common enemy’. For this reason, and in 1813, the Russian Imperial Navy alleviated some of the pressure on the British navy, undertaking patrols in the North Sea to release British warships for more distant waters, including the west side of the Atlantic following the outbreak of war with the USA. At one time operational ships of the Russian navy were to have been assigned to a projected raid on the Dutch fleet bottled up in the Scheldt and an assault on Copenhagen. In the closing months of the war, 4,000 Russian seamen from the ships moored in the Medway were drafted into the Russian army, supporting the siege on Antwerp that had begun in mid- January 1814 and was to continue until the first week of May.

Rear Admiral George Tate, c.1795 by William Naish (Portland Museum of Art).

When Napoleon was finally defeated the Russian Imperial fleet returned to Kronstadt sailing out of the Medway in July. There were twelve sail of the line, six frigates, and six store ships, along with eight troop ships supplied by the British Admiralty, all under the command of Rear-Admiral George Tate, a Russian Admiral of English parentage. On their way some of the ships collected a division of the Russian Imperial Guard from Cherbourg, a force that was part of the large and victorious army that Alexander had put into France and which had played no small part in bringing about the final victory against Napoleon. Allotted to each ship was a British naval surgeon with William Burnett, a future Physician-General of the Navy and who had been previously charged with overseeing all health matters relating to the Russian seamen while in the Medway. He was placed in overall charge of the medical arrangements for the squadron while at sea. Upon arrival in St Petersburg, Tsar Alexander presented to Burnett, in recognition of his services to the Imperial Navy, the Imperial Order of Saint Alexander Nevsky.

Sir William Burnett KCH. MD. FRS. Director General of the Medical Department of the Royal Navy, 1844 (NMM).