Peter the Great called a council of war. Both the navy and the army were present. Key ministers in Peter the Great’s government were also there. There was discussion about the proposed descent into Swedish territory. According to Deane, such was the nature of the debate that, ‘the tsar ordered his ministers, generals and flag officers to deliver in writing the next morning their sentiments concerning the intended descent’.
The following day the galley fleet, under the protection of half a dozen men-of-war, sent raiders from the galleys ashore. The raiders scoured the enemy country and returned with many civilian prisoners who were taken captive to St Petersburg. The tsar recalled the galley fleet on 18 August. Peter the Great left the main fleet on 21 August to return to Kronslot, taking the galleys with him. Before he left he spoke to his officers. The tsar was in a good mood and thanked his men for ‘their good services’.
The main Russian fleet, now under the command of Admiral Sievers, sailed for Revel with many recently taken prizes. John Deane and the Devonshire sailed with the fleet, arriving at Revel on 24 August. The British fleet was expected. The immediate priority was to ascertain its whereabouts as quickly as possible. Near the Isle of Nargen, the Kronslot Squadron waited for Sir John Norris and the British. Cruisers went looking for them. Fire beacons sat ready to be ignited, to relay news in a chain of flame once the British had been discovered. The fleet readied itself for dual possibilities, either the advent of the British or else the appearance of the elusive Swedish navy.
On 22 September Adjutant General Alexander Ivanovitz Rumanzoff, the man who had hunted down the tsar’s rebellious son Alexei and brought him captive back to his father, arrived in Revel. He had orders from the tsar. Three of the best ships in the fleet were to sail to Kronslot as soon as they could make themselves ready. The London, the Portsmouth and the Devonshire were selected. Robert Little commanded the London, Adam Urqhuart the Portsmouth and John Deane the Devonshire.
According to Deane, the next few days were spent in ‘much hurry and confusion,’ making the ships ready ‘with all possible expedition’. The three ships set sail on 25 September. On 29 September the London and the Portsmouth were 5 leagues from Kronslot, ahead of Deane and the Devonshire by a distance of 2 miles. The London and the Portsmouth had plotted a different course from the one Deane had instructed his own men to follow. Both the London and the Portsmouth hit a sandbank. Both ships ran aground. Imprisoned by the shallows and the sand the London and the Portsmouth were at the mercy of Deane and any help and expertise he might provide.
John Deane weighed anchor. He sent a boat to Kronslot to seek out the commanding officer and ask for help. Kronslot sent boats to aid the London and the Portsmouth. Deane ordered Little and Urquart to be ferried to the Devonshire where the three Englishmen discussed how best to dislodge the two paralysed warships. The situation was difficult and embarrassing but not insurmountable. Then the weather turned.
The volatile elements obstructed any further help from Kronslot. Little and Urqhuart returned to their ships and attempted to cut down their masts. In his spartan account of what followed, Deane did not reveal how, but during the felling of the London’s mast, Captain Urqhuart was killed. The London and the Portsmouth were bilging. John Deane had sent many of his own men and every boat that he had to try and dislodge the ships from the sandbank. All of Deane’s boats were destroyed or lost in the attempt. Deane had done everything he could. He had laboured for three days to help rescue the Portsmouth and the London. Now he needed to be pragmatic and secure the safety of his own vessel and such crew that were still aboard. On 1 October John Deane severed the Devonshire’s cable and sailed for Kronslot. Captain Little would be rescued eventually but the Portsmouth and the London would not be recovered. The aftermath of the Kronslot incident would be a toxic experience for both surviving commanding officers.
It was inevitable Captain Little would be called to account for the loss of the London. But there was a contingent in Kronslot that believed that John Deane was equally to blame. There was a perverse irony to the accusations against Deane. In an inversion of the charges of incompetence that Christopher Langman had once levelled at Deane, it would be his skill and experience that would be the rod by which his enemies sought to beat him this time. The logic supporting the case against Deane was that Little and Urqhuart were vastly inexperienced in comparison. Deane was better acquainted with the coasts and should have schooled the less-experienced captains to circumvent the sandbanks that he had managed to avoid. There was a further implication to the accusation against Deane. Deane was thought by many to have purposefully allowed Captain Little to ground his ship by deliberately withholding crucial information about the sandbanks from him. The motive for such treachery was believed to have been the outworking of some feud between the two men. The Machiavellian logic ascribed to Deane was discounted when investigations revealed the fact that Little and Urqhuart had sailed ahead of Deane, and that 2 miles and half an hour separated the Devonshire from the London and the Portsmouth. The inevitable court martial cleared Deane. Captain Little was demoted to lieutenant and sentenced to six months’ confinement. The mate of the London was sent to the galleys. John Deane contemptuously ascribed Captain Little’s blunder to, ‘ignorance and too much pride to ask for advice’.
Deane did not succeed in walking away from the affair without something of a breach to his standing. He had survived the often unpredictable and inconsistent ordeal of a Russian court martial. But a grain of doubt had been planted in the mind of Peter the Great. When the ships ran aground the first scrap of news that reached the tsar had been that a single vessel had run into trouble. This news alone had brought the tsar to Kronslot. When he heard that a second ship had run aground his mood had darkened considerably. Peter the Great took the loss of any of his ships personally. The London and the Portsmouth were two of his best. The fact that Deane had preserved the Devonshire counted for very little in the tsar’s eyes. Although John Deane had been technically exonerated, he was personally convinced that Peter the Great harboured suspicions about him. There were rumours circulating to the effect that the tsar privately believed the loss of his two beloved vessels was down to ‘party emulation’. Whether this was true or not, the perception was in the ether that Deane was a partisan who prized tribal enmities above service to the tsar and who would sacrifice a ship to prosecute a grudge.
For a long uninterrupted season, John Deane had triumphed in the Russian navy. He had captured numerous prizes. He had won the confidence of Admiral Apraxin. He had proven himself an expert and flamboyant thief of foreign shipping. In Russia success bred enmity. With royal and aristocratic patronage Deane had become somewhat untouchable, but now the tsar had removed his hand, Deane’s position had been weakened. It was evident that Deane had enemies. He had been assaulted. He had survived the assault but not without wounding. Blood was in the water and predators were being drawn to the scent.
The pretext for John Deane’s second great fall was an incident that was two years old and for which he had received no censure at the time. There was a groundswell of resentment toward Deane for the favour that he had won. His enemies were Russians, officers who did not share their tsar’s love of foreigners, who resented being tutored by them but nevertheless desired their rank and status. lt was a question of timing. Deane’s enemies exploited the current willingness to believe ill of the Englishman. Deane’s loss of the two ships to the English and the Dutch in 1717 was now seen as grounds for court martial. Deane was dragged before a military tribunal for the second time that year. The charge was collusion with the enemy. Deane was accused of taking money from the English and the Dutch in exchange for the captured merchantmen. Deane called on a dozen or so officers from the Samson to testify that he had done no such thing. Unlike the divided loyalties of the crew of the Nottingham Galley, Deane’s subordinates defended his reputation. Deane had one Russian ally. Admiral Apraxin did not interfere directly in the mechanics of the court martial but in a roundabout way Apraxin came to the aid of his protégé. He gave Deane a passport. The passport released Deane ‘from service at his own request to return to his homeland’. But Deane was finished. The trial was a formality. Deane’s fall was rapid. He was found guilty. His punishment was a year in prison. But there was a degree of mercy to leaven the judgment. Peter the Great himself commuted Deane’s sentence from imprisonment to service in Kazan, presumably a concession to Deane for years of exemplary service up until the point of disgrace. But John Deane was stripped of his rank and demoted to lieutenant.
Peter the Great’s act of mercy was double-edged. Deane’s sentence was still severe. Kazan was 130 miles from Moscow. Kazan was the main source of timber for the Russian navy. Deane’s punishment was to transport timber from Kazan to Lagoda Lake. The route was involved and perilous; a long and convoluted journey that took a transport vessel along the Volga and Tvertsa rivers, navigating shallow water near Vishni-Volochok, moving against the current. The transport vessel was at the mercy of the high water, travel in late summer being virtually impossible. The later stages of the journey were navigable by canal and a small river that granted the transport access to Lake June and then Lagoda Lake where the timber would be delivered and then taken to St Petersburg. Deane described the dangers of the later stage of the journey:
The navigation on the lake is very difficult by reason of the deep water, few harbours, sorry shipping and the inexperience of the Russian seamen; and great is the danger of passing the three falls, in the entrance to the Neva. So that many vessels are yearly lost, to the exceeding detriment of St Petersburg in point of merchandise and especially of provisions …
John Deane suffered the humiliation and danger of his new post and hazardous route for a year.
In 1721 the war with Sweden ended. Never again replicating the martial highs of the Battle of Hango Head, the Russian navy had nevertheless proved itself in an attritional campaign of raids, skirmishes and captured prizes. The war eased itself into a settlement at Nystead that heavily favoured Russian interests in the Baltic. To celebrate, Peter the Great offered amnesty to all disgraced officers. To some the amnesty was a restoration to the tsar’s good graces. Robert Little was given his former rank back. To others it was simply a cessation of punishment; technical clemency but no real forgiveness. In 1722 John Deane was set free but ordered to leave Russia and told never to return. His disgrace was total and complete but for one last concession from his sole Russian benefactor. Admiral Apraxin extended a kindness to John Deane that would last him the length of his days. The Admiral gave the Englishman another passport that formally referred to him as ‘Captain John Deane’. Apraxin had handed Deane his rank back. Deane had had the most important element of his status restored to him by the one Russian about whom he had nothing bad to say.
John Deane returned to England. He had little in the way of material possessions. His reputation had been destroyed for a second time. Russia had promised a form of exorcism for Boon Island. But when all was said and done, John Deane had simply exchanged one funereal world of wind and ice for another. Yet the twice-exiled Englishman could still call himself Captain John Deane. He also knew the power of the written word. Ink on paper had blunted the disgrace of Boon Island. Ink might yet mitigate against the bankruptcy of almost a decade wasted in the service of a fickle empire. Captain John Deane returned to England full of bile and malice, and a will to convert years of hatred into a written document. Unlike his account of the Boon Island episode, what Deane wrote next would not be for public consumption. It was for a few select eyes and would take him back to Russia clothed in the diplomatic mantle of his home nation.