(1802 - 1855), commander of Black Sea Fleet in Crimean war.
Pavel Stepanovich Nakhimov was born into a naval family in Gorodok, Smolensk province. In 1818 he completed his studies in the Naval Cadet Corps and served aboard ships in the Baltic fleet. From 1822 to 1825 Nakhimov participated in a round-the-world cruise abroad the frigate Kreiser -36. Nakhimov served aboard Vice-Admiral Geiden's flagship Azov -74 at the battle of Navarino on October 21, 1827. During the subsequent 1828 - 1829 Russo-Turkish War, Nakhimov served in the Russian Mediterranean squadron blockading the Dardanelles, commanding a corvette. Following the end of the war Nakhimov returned to the Baltic fleet base at Kronshtadt. In 1834 Nakhimov was transferred to the Black Sea Fleet, where he was given command of a ship of the line. During the 1840s Nakhimov participated in numerous amphibious landings on the eastern Black Sea Caucasian coast, where the Russian military constructed a chain of coastal forts to interdict arms smuggling to Muslim rebels. Nakhimov was promoted to rear admiral in 1845. Seven years later Nakhimov was promoted to vice admiral and given command of a fleet division. As relations between the Russian and Ottoman empires worsened in the early 1850s, Nakhimov argued for an aggressive naval policy toward the Ottoman Empire. On November 30, 1853, Nakhimov led a squadron into Sinope harbor on the southern Black Sea coast. Using shell-firing artillery instead of smoothbore cannons, his ships annihilated the Ottoman squadron moored there, producing outrage in Europe. Following the outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854, Nahkimov was appointed commander of the Black Sea Feet and military governor of Sevastopol port in February 1855. Nakhimov supervised the offloading of artillery from the fleet's warships to be integrated in a series of land fortifications under the direction of engineer E. I. Totleben. Nakhimov was mortally wounded by enemy fire on the Malakhov redoubt on July 10, 1855, and interred in the Vladimir church. A monument was raised to Nakhimov in 1898 in Sevastopol on the forty-fifth anniversary of the Sinope battle. The Imperial Navy honored his memory by naming ships in his honor; an Admiral Nakhimov cruiser was sunk by her crew after the Tsushima battle on May 27, 1905. Despite the USSR's disavowal of much of its imperial history, the Soviet government on March 3, 1944, established a first- and second-class Nakhimov military order for valor for officers; a Nakhimov medal for lower ranks was also established, and naval cadets attended Nakhimov naval academies. The post-Soviet navy also has a Kirov-class Admiral Nakhimov cruiser (formerly Kalinin, renamed in 1992).
Bibliography
Daly, Robert Welter. (1958). "Russia's Maritime Past." In The Soviet Navy, ed. Colonel M. G. Saunders. New York: Praeger.
—JOHN C. K. DALY
