A little beyond the quarantine cove, the traveller discovers Sevastopol, situated on the slope of a hill between Artillery and South bays, the first two ports on the right hand as you enter the main roads. The position of the town thus built in an amphitheatre, renders its whole plan discernible at one view, and gives it a very grand appearance from a distance. Its barracks and stores, the extensive buildings of the admiralty, the numerous churches, and vast ship-building docks and yards, attest the importation of this town, the creation of which dates only from the arrival of the Russians in the Crimea. The interior, though not quite corresponding to the brilliant panorama it presents from a distance, is yet worthy of the great naval station. The streets are large, the houses handsome, and the population, in consequence of an imperial ukase which excludes the Jews from its territory, is much less repulsive than that of Odessa, Kherson, Iekaterinoslav, &c.
The port of Sevastopol is unquestionably one of the most remarkable in Europe. It owes all its excellence to nature, which has here, without the aid of art, provided a magnificent roadstead with ramifications, forming so many basins admirably adapted for the requirements of a naval station. The whole of this noble harbour may be seen at once from the upper part of the town. The great roadstead first attracts attention. It lies east and west, stretching seven kilometres (four miles and three-quarters) inland, with a mean breadth of 1000 yards, and serves as a station for all the active part of the fleet. It forms the medium of communication between Sevastopol and the interior of the peninsula. The northern shore presents only a line of cliffs of no interest, but on the southern shore the eye is detained by the fine basins formed there by nature. To the east, at the very foot of the hill on which the town stands, is South Bay, in length upwards of 3000 mètres, and completely sheltered by high limestone cliffs. It is here the vessels are rigged and unrigged; and here, too, lies a long range of pontoons and vessels past service, some of which are converted into magazines, and others into lodgings for some thousand convicts who are employed in the works of the arsenal. Among these numerous veterans of a naval force that is almost always idle, the traveller beholds with astonishment the colossal ship, the Paris, formerly mounting 120 guns, and which was, down to 1829, the finest vessel in the imperial fleet.
Beyond South Bay, and communicating with it, is the little creek in which the government is constructing the most considerable works of the port, and has been engaged for many years in forming an immense dock with five distinct basins, capable of accommodating three ships of the line and two frigates, while simultaneously undergoing repairs. The original plan for this great work was devised by M. Raucourt, a French engineer, who estimated the total cost at about 6,000,000 rubles. The magnitude of this sum alarmed the government, but at the instance of Count Voronzof, they accepted the proposals of an English engineer, who asked only 2,500,000, and promised to complete the whole within five years. The work was begun on the 17th of June, 1832; but when we visited Sevastopol, some years after the first stone had been laid, the job was not half finished, and the expenses already exceeded 9,000,000 rubles. The execution of the basins seems, however, to be very far from corresponding to the enormous expenses they have already occasioned, and it is strange, indeed, that a weak and friable limestone should have been employed in hydraulic constructions of such importance. The angles of the walls, it is true, are of granite or porphyry, but this odd association of heterogeneous materials conveys, in itself, the severest condemnation of the mode of construction which has been adopted.
Highly favoured as is the port of Sevastopol with regard to the form and the security of its bays, it yet labours under very serious inconveniences. The waters swarm with certain worms that attack the ships' bottoms, and often make them unserviceable in two or three years. To avoid this incurable evil, the government determined to fill the basins with fresh water, by changing the course of the little river, Tchernoi Retchka, which falls into the head of the main gulf. Three aqueducts and two tunnels, built like the rest of the works in chalk, and forming part of the artificial channel, were nearly completed in 1841; but about that period the engineers endured a very sad discomfiture, it being then demonstrated that the worms they wanted to get rid of were produced by nothing else than the muddy waters which the Tchernoi Retchka pours into the harbour.[67]
Artillery Bay, which bounds the town on the west, is used only by trading vessels. This and Careening Bay, the most eastern of all, are not inferior in natural advantages to the two others we have been speaking of; but we have nothing more particular to mention respecting them.
After discussing the harbours and the works belonging to them, we are naturally led to glance at the war-fleet, and the famous fortifications of which the Russians are so proud, and which they regard as a marvel of modern art. In 1831, when the July revolution was threatening to upset the whole status quo of Europe, a London journal stated in an article on the Black Sea and Southern Russia, that nothing could be easier than for a few well-appointed vessels to set fire to the imperial fleet in the port of Sevastopol. The article alarmed the emperor's council to the highest degree, and orders were immediately issued for the construction of immense defensive works.
Four new forts were constructed, making a total of eleven batteries. Forts Constantine and Alexander were erected for the defence of the great harbour, the one on the north, the other on the west side of Artillery Bay; and the Admiralty and the Paul batteries were to play on vessels attempting to enter South Bay, or Ships' Bay. These four forts, consisting each of three tiers of batteries, and each mounting from 250 to 300 pieces of artillery, constitute the chief defences of the place, and appear, at first sight, truly formidable. But here again, the reality does not correspond with the outer appearance, and we are of opinion that all these costly batteries are more fitted to astonish the vulgar in time of peace, than to awe the enemy in war. In the first place their position at some height above the level of the sea, and their three stories appear to us radically bad, and practical men will agree with us that a hostile squadron might make very light of the three tiers of guns which, when pointed horizontally, could, at most, only hit the rigging of the ships. The internal arrangements struck us as equally at variance with all the rules of military architecture: each story consists of a suite of rooms opening one upon the other, and communicating by a small door, with an outer gallery that runs the whole length of the building. All these rooms, in which the guns are worked, are so narrow, and the ventilation is so ill-contrived, that we are warranted by our own observation in asserting that a few discharges would make it extremely difficult for the artillerymen to do their duty. But a still more serious defect than those we have named, and one which endangers the whole existence of the works, consists in the general system adopted for their construction.
Here the improvidence of the government has been quite as great as with regard to the dock basins: for the imperial engineers have thought proper to employ small pieces of coarse limestone in the masonry of three-storied batteries, mounting from 250 to 300 guns. The works, too, have been constructed with so little care, and the dimensions of the walls and arches are so insufficient, that it is easy to see at a glance, that all these batteries must inevitably be shaken to pieces whenever their numerous artillery shall be brought into play. The trials that have been made in Fort Constantine, have already demonstrated the correctness of this opinion, wide rents having been there occasioned in the walls by a few discharges.
Finally, all the forts labour under the disadvantage of being utterly defenceless on the land side. Thinking only of attacks by sea, the government has quite overlooked the great facility with which an enemy may land on any part of the coast of the Khersonese. So, besides that the batteries are totally destitute of artillery and ditches on the land side, the town itself is open on all points, and is not defended by a single redoubt. We know not what works have been planned or executed since 1841; but at the period of our visit a force of some thousand men, aided by a maritime demonstration, would have had no sort of difficulty in forcing their way into the interior of the place, and setting fire to the fleet and the arsenals.
We have now to speak of the offensive strength of the Port of Sevastopol, that famous fleet always in readiness to sail against Constantinople. The effective of the Black Sea fleet, in 1841, was as follows:—