The dockyards of Nicholaieff are supplied with timber and wood from the Government of Ligtewski, which contains several large forests of fine trees. These are situated chiefly in the neighbourhood of Minsk, Mohilev, and Vitebsk. The wood is floated down the Dnieper to Cherson in rafts firmly clamped and bound together, with strong and substantial huts upon them for the navigators. Each raft is generally composed of 4,000 large trunks of oak-trees, which are covered with knees and smaller pieces roughly shaped after drawings and instructions sent to the cutters. This is done, that the timber may be made available at once for use in the dockyards. After being floated as far as the current will take them down the Dnieper, they are met by the Government steamers outside or inside the bar off the mouths of that river, and thus towed up to Nicholaieff. Some small steamers must be kept at Nicholaieff, at all events at this moment, but they have never stirred, nor have we seen any traces of them in the Bug. Cherson was the great ship-building and maritime yard for the Black Sea fleet in former days, but the difficulty of building large ships there, or rather of getting them away when once they were built, on account of the shallowness of the water on the bar of the Dnieper, forced the Russian Government to remove their establishments to Nicholaieff, on the confluence of the Bug and of the Ingul. The bar of the Bug has a depth of eighteen or nineteen feet; the bar of the Dnieper has only eight feet water upon it in ordinary seasons. The ships of the line are built at ISTicholaieff, but it is not improbable that small vessels and frigates of light draught may still be constructed at Cherson. The arsenal at Nicholaieff is very extensive, but its principal supplies of timber came from the Dnieper, and the loss of these two rafts will be no inconsiderable injury. Fine oak timber such as they contain is very dear and scarce in Russia. The timber in the casemated Spit Battery, and the expense of erecting it, came to no less a sum than 45,000 silver roubles, or £7,500 English currency.
On Sunday, the 28th of October, Captain Paris joined the Allied squadron blockading the Bug and Dnieper, with orders to take the command as soon as Admiral Stewart went; and we left that officer with the Beagle, Viper, Snake, and another English gunboat, and four Erench gun-boats, to keep up that dismal duty. Admiral Stewart sailed from the Bug on Tuesday morning, the 30th of October, and joined the fleet at Kinburn. A portion of the fleet which had gun-boats to tow started for Kamiesch the same evening. The Allied fleet, under Sir E. Lyons and Admiral
Bruat, Sir H. Stewart and Admiral Pellion, sailed the following day for the same anchorage.
Ere the expeditionary force returned to Kamiesch and Kazatch the most effectual measures which could be adopted were used to put the garrison of Kinburn in safety for the winter. All the curtains of the Fort of Kinburn were rebuilt, the ruins cleared away, the damaged guns removed, and ships' fine guns put in their place; the fosse cleared out and deepened, the palisades repaired, the south-eastern gateway filled up, and its approaches covered by a strong ravelin; the crest of the parapets repaired solidly and well with fascines and earthwork, the Russian guns rendered efficient, the casemates cleared out and filled with stores or adapted as barracks, and the interior buildings in course of reconstruction and renovation. The result proved the defensive preparations were so formidable, that the enemy never attempted to operate against the French troops stationed there, although the sea (a very unusual occurrence) was frozen hard across to Oczakov.
Kinburn having been secured against the attack of any forces the enemy could bring against it, and covered completely by the guns of the formidable flotilla we left to protect it, the greater portion of the fleet sailed for Balaklava and Kamiesch before November.
The blockade of the Bug and the Dnieper was of course raised by the first frost, and the gun-boats engaged in that service had dropped down and joined the flotilla at Kinburn. Before the expedition started, nearly all the smaller gun-boats were despatched to reinforce Captain Sherard Osborne's flotilla in the Sea of AzofF, where that active and energetic officer was harrying the Russians as a hawk perturbs a field of larks.*
The Cossacks showed themselves from time to time in the neighbourhood of Kinburn, but the state of the Spit prevented them, from establishing a camp or even a grand guard near the fort.