Interior of fort kinburn, october 18, showing the effects of two hours' bombardment
fort kinburn, after the bombardment. Illustration for the illustrated london news, 1 december 1855. Read the iln
fort kinburn after the bombardment. These three sketches of fort kinburn by our artist and correspondent, who accompanied the expedition, give a pretty fair notion of the terrible havoc produced by the combined fire of the french floating batteries and the english fleet. An eye-witness of the attack says it surpassed anything he had ever seen in the crimea: "heavy as the fire has been from time to time during the bombardments of sebastopol, it never was anything like that opened by the allied fleets in force, intensity, din, or grandeur. " under so frightful a fire-storm (feu d'enfer), it was no wonder that the place very soon became too hot for the russians. As the buildings in the inner space of the fort were chiefly of wood they fell an easy prey to the flames. Our own correspondent explains how this was in the following passage of a recent letter:- " the difficulty of procuring stones for the erection of solid masonry in a country which, for hundreds of miles, offers no other material to work upon than sand, explains the slightness of these buildings. The greater part of them had been burnt entirely to the ground, others had been rent to fragments by the balls and shells which entered them from all sides, and the whole presented an aspect of desolation and ruin not surpassed in any portion or the great wreck of sebastopol. ' there was no refuge anywhere from you,' said the old russian commandant. The houses of the courts were untenable; the casemates of the south were invaded by shot from the northward, and those of the east by shot from the west; and those which were safest from direct fire were not proof against the perpendicular fall of heavy thirteen-inch shells from the english mortar-boats. In truth the casemates, although built of solid mason-work, were none of them bomb-proof, the stone to all appearance having rotted with age. So weak, indeed, were they considered by the russians themselves, that there were guns in two or three only of the stone embrasures; and the strength of the russian artillery consisted mainly in the barbette pivot-guns of the upper parapet, and nine or ten mortars in the interior of their works. The vaults, which were unused for hostile purposes, had apparently been made into provision magazines, or places of safety for charts, records, and miscellaneous articles: one of them smelt powerfully of sour beer, another of rotten cheese-none of saltpetre or sulphur. The whole cement which bound the fabric together had fallen away every- where, and left the stones carried thither centuries ago by the turks or genoese to exfoliate and dwindle away. And this was not only the condition of the vaults internally, but of the outer walls also. In many places the russians had made efforts to strengthen the traverses and magazines by piling up iron wheels of gun-carriages in rows, and mixing them with sand. * * * there were but two or three pieces of ordnance in the whole fort capable of being fired at the time of the surrender. The carriages of the pivot-pieces, built of russian pine, had in almost every instance been smashed, leaving the long tube of iron projecting into the air in a variety of attitudes-many of them so severely hit that they tumbled off the parapet and had fallen into the yard below. The guns themselves had not been spared. One had been struck and broken into pieces, another had its breech knocked of', a third its muzzle, whilst a fourth and fifth bad received such dents in their sides as to split them and render them unfit for further use. The ground around the guns bore marks of the explosions of our shells and their effects, where the fine sand had drunk the blood of the unfortunate slain. In eight or nine instances’ shells had fallen upon the vents of the casemates below, and, exploding as they fell into the vaults, caused those clouds of black duet-smoke which i had witnessed so frequently during the bombardment. The whole circumference of the parapets was marked by similar explosions, and it was creditable to the russians that they fought so long under such adverse circumstances. Nay, if the old commandant's assertion be true, the garrison would not have surrendered so soon as they did had the fire been confined to the gun-boats, mortar-vessels, and small steamers. It was only when the english fleet, led by sir edmund lyons, closed in where they never dreamt that a three-decker could come, that despair seized them and they lost heart. Date: 1 December 1855.
Loading...
