Kotka bridge, burnt July 26th 1855 [Finland]

Mounted in album with PAI4677-PAI4716.; No.1. No. 1 in Fanshawe's Baltic, later service and holiday album, 1843-1883. Captioned by the artist on the album page below the image, as title. The historic town and port of Kotka is on the north side of the Gulf of Finland, east of Helsingfors (modern Helsinki) and about halfway between Tallin and St Petersburg on the Gulf's southern side. It is on an island connected to the mainland by a causeway bridge. Although an abandoned Russian fort on a nearby island had already been destroyed, Kotka had some remaining military barracks, which Captain Yelverton of the' Arrogant' burnt on the night of 26-27 July 1855,preparatory to a further attack on a Russian position up the adjacent Kymena River. Fanshawe's role, commanding the 'Cossack' under Yelverton, was to guard the causeway to prevent a Russian counter-attack. He wrote to his father on the 25th: 'this week we gho to Kotka at the mouth of the Kymena, the old boundary between Sweden and Russia....We shal, I believe first take complete possession of Kotka, and destroy the bridge and some large barracks still remaining there, and then from a high point on the island ...hope to see the [Russian] position on Hogforsholm and what we can make of it...' (Fanshawe [1904], pp. 324-25). This view shows the destroyed causeway bridge roughly from the east, after the attack, with smoke rising from the smouldering buildings on Kotka island to the right. The ships' masts seen beyond are probably those of the 'Arrogant' and 'Cossack'.
Edward Gennys Fanshawe

Original size: 176 mm x 258 mm