The White Sea and Pacific Campaigns

Abstract

The Crimean War was a global maritime conflict: allied naval and amphibious forces attacked Russia and blockaded its commercial ports in the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Pacific Ocean and the White Sea. While the last two theatres have received relatively little attention in a historiography dominated by military operations in the Crimea, they provide critical insights into allied grand strategy, and confirm the dynamic offensive approach, based on British approaches, that the allies adopted in all four theatres. British navigational expertise was the key enabler of the allied war effort in all four theatres. The Hydrographer of the Navy, Sir Francis Beaufort, had collected Russian and other charts and used them to plan the war, and ensured expert hydrographers were sent to each theatre, to check and improve the charts Beaufort had produced from Russian originals. Recent British experience of Arctic navigation was also useful. In the White Sea an attack on Archangel was prevented by the shallow river, while in the Pacific, Petropavlovsk was taken after an initial repulse in 1854. However, Russia expanded into the Amur River Basin, at the expense of China, a major strategic expansion.