Customer Reviews

Russian Warships in the Age of Sail, 1696-1860: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates

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It is unfortunate that some purchasers might have bought the book expecting a technical treatise on the development of naval architecture in Russia or on Russian wooden shipbuilding techniques. The title, "... Warships in the Age of Sail: Design, Construction, Careers, and Fates <dates>" follows exactly the form of three works by Rif Winfield on the warships of the British navy in the age of sail ("British Warships ... 1603-1714," "British Warships ... 1714-1792," and "British Warships ... 1793-1847"), put out by the same publisher, Seaforth Publishing. The content and format of "Russian Warships" is largely the same as that of "British Warships," except that there is a rather longer essay on the history and organization of the Russian navy because the publisher thought that English-language readers would be less familiar with these topics, and less able to find out more about them, than they would about similar aspects of the British navy. I regret that unlike the "British Warships" series, _Russian Warships_ does not include the names of commanding officers. For those, it is still necessary to refer to the Russian-language A.A. Chernyshev, _Rossiiskii Parusnyi Flot," which is difficult to find and difficult to use if you do not have at least a smattering of Russian. It was the latter difficulty that prompted the publication of _Russian Warships_. _Russian Warships_ also corrects errors that author Eduard Sozaev found in Chernyshev.

_Russian Warships in the Age of Sail_ covers "design" by naming the *designer* of each warship and grouping warships of a common design. Each "class" also includes commentary about its relationships to other designs; piecing together these short essays on several classes of a common type (e.g., 66-gun ship of the line) produces a more extended essay on Russian development of the type. "Construction" information includes, for each ship, dates of keel laying and launch, place of construction, and the "constructor"--the person overseeing the building of the ship. The last is not generally included in the "British Warships" series, although private yards are named as places of construction.

How to treat place names that have changed over the centuries is always a challenge. It is now vicious racism to refer to Mumbai as anything else, although Bharat is still not de rigeur for its country. The erasure of Mumbai's former name from modern maps and histories makes older histories, including first-person accounts, difficult to understand. So it is with "Tallin." Naval histories like R.C. Anderson's still definitive _Naval Wars in the Baltic_ and the more recent _A History of War at Sea_, by Helmut Pemsel, describe a "Battle of Revel" or "Reval" (Pemsel puts "Tallin" in parentheses). The presence of a Russian on the authoriship team influenced the use of "Gogland"--merely "Hogland" in Russian, which has neither the sound of Swedish (and English) "h" nor a letter for it (see the entry on HIRMS Gamburg on p. 191 of _Russian Warships_). Just as with transliterations, for which there are many slightly differing systems, it is not always possible to find a name that is recognizable and acceptable to all readers for a place that has undergone many changes in sovereignty and language.

A multi-volume publication reproducing all the plans still extant in the Russian naval archives would have been a wonderful reference work that would consume a year's, or several years', acquisitions budget at many libraries, and would have been out of reach financially of all but the very wealthiest purchasers. As with the "British Warships" series, Mr. Sozaev selected *representative* illustrations, within a budget that had to reflect both the cost of reproduction and the compensation demanded by the owners of the illustrations.

The expert collaboration of Russian naval historian Eduard Sozaev and American naval enthusiast John Tredrea, Russian Warships in the Age of Sail 1696-1860: Design, Construction, Careers and Fates is an exhaustively detailed technical reference and history, featuring a wealth of black-and-white diagrams, illustrations, and period artworks. The majority of Russian Warships in the Age of Sail is packed with information blocks listing the constructor, date laid down, date launched, dimensions, armaments, classification, and more about virtually every Russian warship created from 1696-1860. Supplementing this is an overview of the role these ships played in naval history in general, and notable battles in particular, written to be accessible to readers of all backgrounds. A solid resource and treasury for anyone seeking to research these magnificent ships, highly recommended.

Proofreading: F

Apart from the totally random use of Swedish, Russian, Finnish and English place names for locations on the Baltic Sea, the apparent inability of the authors' to spell the Swedish and Finnish names they choose to use correctly, does not breed trust for the factual accuracy of the text. As for the Russian names, it is hard to say as I do not speak the language, but the problems with the other languages give me doubts.

A brief example of one sentence from page 59 serves to illustrate the problems:

"Russian territorial gains in the war involved a small expansion of Russian territory into Finland, including the galley port of Fridrikshamn (now Kotka)."

Not only is the correct name of the town Fredrikshamn (Hamina in Finnish), but the neighboring town of Kotka, which decidedly is not Fredrikshamn, did not even exist at the time.

This probably originates in bad translation work, as the Russians called the battle fought outside the town the Battle of Fridriksgam. Also, in the same vein, the Battle of Gogland might be better known in English as the Battle of Hogland.

Anachronisms provide further problems with place names. Helsinki, for example, is often called by its Finnish name of Helsinki (not by its Swedish name of Helsingfors) which had no official standing at the time. Using modern names would be understandable if it was systematic, but on the other hand Tallinn is not called by its modern name of Tallinn, which is the same in all relevant languages, but by its old Russian name of Revel.

Also, the again quite random decisions to use or not to use umlauts in names are baffling.

And where is the irony in this? The fact that authors berate A. B. Shirokorad in the introduction for "lack of regard for accuracy". Pot, kettle, black.

Historical content: B-.

A brief introduction to Russian naval history is included. The Black Sea navy is covered better than the Baltic navy, where large battles and even whole wars are mentioned largely in passing.

The Fates: A

This is after all the reason people will buy the book. The problems in translation and proofreading mentioned above may create doubts for this section as well, but as it is impossible for me to know if there are similar mistakes here, I choose to take the ship listings at face value. I will call this part of the work excellent.

Design and Construction: F

As somebody already pointed out, there is not a whole lot on the design of the ships, and practically nothing on the construction.

Not withstanding the title, this book has very little on Design, and Construction. The book is way to light on photos, drawings, plans, and construction. The book is very good on careers and fates. If you want a list of when, where built and how many guns these ships had, then this is the book for you. If you want to learn how Russian warships were designed and constructed, then keep looking. This book did not live up to its name.