Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 372 - The Siege of Petropavlovsk

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

COME SEE US LIVE OCT 4TH IN GLASGOW: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lions-led-by-donkeys-podcast-live-in-glasgow-4th-october-2025-tickets-1501072671769 SUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys In this episode, Joe, Nate, and Tom discuss a lesser-known battle in the Crimean War in which the British attempt to capture a city on the Kamchatka Peninsula after getting massively lost at sea (in an era where this wasn't supposed to happen) and getting waylaid when the King of Hawai'i invited them to the barbecue. We are not making any of this up. Sources: JR Stone. RJ Crampton. 'A Disastrous Affair': The Franco-British Attack on Petropavlovsk. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/polar-record/article/abs/disastrous-affair-the-francobritish-attack-on-petropavlovsk-1854/D765F9B46DA8B5A0C6D55460466220A6Mark N Lardas. Petropavlosk: The Crimean War's Forgotten Battle. https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/petropavlovsk-the-crimean-wars-forgotten-battle/ John Stephens. The Crimean War in the Far East. Modern Asian Studies. Vol. 3. No. 3 (1969)

Hey everyone, we're doing another live show. This time we're going to be live October 4th at the Flying Duck in Glasgow, Scotland. Our first time in Scotland. Come get your tickets now. The links are going to be in the show notes. We hope to see you there. Like always, there's going to be show specific merch you probably won't be able to get anywhere else. Possibly some stickers, maybe patches maybe some hats who knows Get some tickets come and find out. We'll see you there

If you like what we do here on the show consider supporting us on patreon just five dollars a month gets you access to our entire bonus episode catalog as well as every regular episode, one full week early. Access to all of our side series that are currently ongoing and our back catalog of those as well. Gets you ebooks, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merchandise when they're available. And also gets you access to our Discord, which has turned into a lovely little community. So go to patreon.com slash lions led by donkeys and join the Legion of the Old Crow today. Hello and welcome to the Lions on my donkey's podcast. I am Joe and with me is Tom and Nate and you're still in the bunker with me.

Bella's how are you doing? I feel like it's unfair to call this the bunker. The actual bunker was far more concrete everywhere, dirt everywhere. There could be concrete under this. Maybe but like it's nice, you know, you feel like it's unfair to call this the bunker. The actual bunker was far more concrete everywhere, dirt everywhere. Yeah, there could be concrete under this. Maybe, but it's nice, you know? You feel like home. It's our home bunker. We're slowly becoming more and more beleaguered

by podcast cycles as we riff more and more into the podcasting satanic zone. Tom's gotten married and he has a dog called Blondie now. Fellas, last week we talked about a siege. And by last week, as for our listeners, for us it's about 20 minutes ago. I figured we should talk about another siege this week. We're siege maxing here on the lions led by donkey spot. We're rationing our food.

We're dying of thirst. We all have cholera. We have blown through our ration of white monster down here. It is true. I feel like if I have any more, I might die. I've opted to not and it's unfortunately cherry Pepsi Max, very hard to get in central Europe. So every time you don't find it in store, you have to go to like a big grocery store to find it. And so it's just like, yeah, here it's everywhere. Any flavor of Pepsi Max you want, they've got it.

Big Coke is keeping it from you. Yeah, well, I mean, they do bottle Coke in Switzerland. So Pepsi, unfortunately, the anti imperialist choice is not available which is not true at all. It's also an American company This is why I don't drink coke because I hate the Swiss. Yeah But man, I'm just I'm you know, as I said before to the immigration authorities of the Republic and Canton of Geneva I'm just kidding Last time we talked about Persia Lebanon and Greece and Greece, and Alexander the Great. This time we're putting on our furs, we're jumping in our steamers, and we're going to the Russian Far East during the Crimean War of 1850s. You know what's funny is that when we talked earlier and I said the best way to understand the mid-2000s, like Bape, bathing ape, you know, technicolor camo fashion, is to see a domestic or or flight going to a regional city in Russia. I saw this experience, what I'm just describing, of guys lining up and everyone in like counterfeit

vape on a flight from Narita airport in Tokyo to Vladivostok. So that's the best way to picture the furs that we're wearing. I'm a very big fan of creation by man called Nego. Have you heard the second Clips album? A friend of mine was just into it a lot. I mean, it was appropriate in the air. It was like 2006 We actually went to the original vape store and to go there. It was like super super unmarked There was just like a tiny little text thing in like the very bottom corner of the window

But you had to go in and get a ticket so you could join the queue So it took like four hours to go into the store and like yeah the sort of North Face vape jacket was the equivalent of $1,500 in 2006 so So I bought a key chain. Yeah. That didn't last very long. Very badly made. To be fair, we are maybe about 300 meters away from the contemporaneous version of that, which is going to the Omelion door shop to buy a coffee, but you have to queue up across the street to get in to buy a coffee to then look at like a monogram basketball. Yeah. I can recall having errands to run in random government offices that happened also be in the Lower East Side and you're like, why are there so many

Scandinavian teenagers standing in line? You're like, oh the Supreme Store is here. But I'm kind of dating myself to like 2014. For this one you have to think, okay we're Russian, you know, in this context. Straight Jorknet in a Russian sense. So today would be, we're all DJs and would probably live in Dubai. That is the more modern take on that. Why Ushanka has come on Inside with Ferf? Well, let's not talk about my previous three girlfriends who died hanging off of building

accidents for TikTok. I believe that was for Twitch. Yeah, TikTok may not have ascended by that point. Now it goes without saying, judging from the name, that this war largely involved and was fought in Crimea. Thankfully, a place that's known only peace ever since. But that isn't entirely true. It's a war that's largely thought of being European based and little to no thought is

given to the far flung reaches of the conflict that managed to stretch all the way to Russian Alaska. Which was a thing, people may not remember this. The US bought Alaska from the Russians in I believe 1867. For virtually nothing. The Russians were like, hey let me hold five dollars. We don't need this shit anymore, sorry. It's too cold, too many armored mosquitoes, we don't want it.

And then three years later they discovered enormous gold deposit. And then eventually oil. Now the Russian empire is much like the Russia we know today. And by that, I mean hyper racist and aggressively territorial and also very big. The Russian Far East of the 1850s was even larger going so far as again, to take over Alaska, which at the time was known as Russian America.

Russian colonization in Alaska began in the mid 1700s and been going on approximately a hundred years by the time the Crimean War commenced, which honestly makes sense. In the grand scheme of things, Russia proper is obviously not far away and every Imperial power has wet dreams about expanding into a new continent. They really hoped about expanding down like the American Western seaboard and they kind of tried through the Russian America company because of course their imperial dickheads are gonna have a company to do this shit.

And it did the same thing that all these companies did which was enslave indigenous people to extract wealth from the land. But the Russians were not very good at colonizing things that were not directly connected to them. I'm gonna say, because they were pretty successful in conquering Central Asia, but yeah. And the Caucasus and Eastern Europe and you know, but you know, they're connected to them. Because they were pretty successful in conquering Central Asia, but yeah. And the Caucasus and Eastern Europe,

and you know, but they're connected to them. It's a lot harder, and you know, Alaska is a much harder place to exist in. Also the places with the biggest Russian influences won't surprise you are all on the coast, but like those areas are extraordinarily extreme bad weather most of the time. Incredibly hot in summer, very easy to get diseases,

insanely cold in winter, dark. It's very, very inhospitable. It's also weird that there's like a Russian Orthodox church still there. In like Barrow, well not Barrow, but you know what I mean, like some of these- Middle of fucking nowhere. Like the other Kotzebue Peninsula and stuff like that, yeah. By the time the Crimean War started,

the colony in Alaska, as well as they attempted other colonies in like Sonoma, California and Hawaii, they were all failing miserably. They're flat broke. And when the war did kick off, it gave Russian colonial holdings in the Pacific and in the Far East, a new value and importance. Or should I say, it gave them value, period. This time as naval bases, to strike out at the much more successful, if that's a term you want to use in this context, colonies of their enemies, in this case being France and Great Britain, which obviously have colonies all over the place in that area. It is to say nothing of France and Britain's goal in the Pacific of trying to put a stop to Russian expansion in China and

Korea, and now having an open war to allow them to do that, that's just handy. Yeah, some of the ones people forget about like the Gilbert Islands in the South Pacific was now the nation of Kiribati That was a British colony that didn't achieve it get independence until 1979 So maybe the British controlled the Chinese city of dire end like not far from North Korea So like yeah, there was a lot of people forget there they had planted the flag lots of different places and like at this time It was extremely at like the Expansion period yeah and France as well and the Polynesia and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Because you've got you still have what I he'd eat new Caldonia Another thing the French and the British are worried about were the the Russian settlements in and around the sea of O'Cost

east of the Kchatka Peninsula and north of Japan. Because of course these are all places that Russia wanted to bleed into. The Sakhalin Island is a Russian territory and it's sort of like yeah it's it's Japan, Korea, Russia all mixed together. Mm-hmm and all of them claim them. Russian power in the region despite Russia being the closest of the three countries involved here, the various colonies, the outpostings of that, was actually very, very low. Normally to patrol and secure such a far-reaching empire like the one Russia was trying to eke out required a fairly large navy and they just didn't have one.

Russian naval history, after all, is generally one of comedic failure, and we've talked about it on the show several times. And even knowing that, the power that they had available in the Pacific is surprisingly low. The Russian Pacific Squadron, which covers the Far East, had only six ships, all of which were pretty badly out of date and in a general lack of fuck it level of disrepair. For example, the Russian Pacific Fleet flagship, the Pilata, was broken down and trapped in port due to it being so old that nobody was entirely sure how to fix it

Forcing its captain and overall fleet commander Yavinia Petuyin to switch his flagship over to a different ship the Diana They'd lost track of a Mislav the engineer Yeah, exactly. So they couldn't repair the ship and the Mislav the you know ship builder was also nowhere to be found They got them all mixed up. Yeah, yeah And I'm not here to constantly shit on Russians that would be unfair and also it's just low-hanging fruit. In some situation they just got hit with such bad luck that God himself was also shitting on the Russians. In February 1853

the new flagship the Diana and Putinian stormed into a Japanese port and forced it open with like the Russian version of gunboat diplomacy in direct competition with Commodore Matthew Perry. However this process interrupted by a massive fucking earthquake and resulting tsunami which destroyed the Diana leaving Patinian and his Russian contingent just stranded in Japan. This left him to like rent a whole bunch of Japanese laborers and work together despite the fact he was just forcing them to sign trees at gunpoint to build a replacement ship so he could go back home. However, I should stop and point out here that the Russians saw the eastern portion of their expanding empire as remote and frozen as it was massively important.

Though it had failed so far, their territories were also known for being a natural equivalent of a bank vault. If they could just figure them out and get some roots down where not everybody's freezing to death, they're dying of like frozen death cholera, they would make a fuckload of money off of them. Timbers, furs, things of that nature, like the Russian military and Russian imperial court really wanted to make sure they stayed safe and secure.

So while they didn't have the naval strength to really do that, they made sure to staff their Pacific fleet with who they saw as their best naval officers for the job. This was not the case for the British and the French. The Pacific theatre for the Allies in the war was a sideshow. And almost like what is below a sideshow, it's more like a vat. They didn't see it as fucking anything. Yeah, so it's like, well, you're not good enough to be sent to, you know, Asia or the Indian subcontinent. So we're going to stick you up in the frozen wastes near Alaska. Yeah, we're going to send you to do a tight five in the Russian far

east. We're not going to send you to die of cholera and malaria and in Crimea like so many other people are doing, which is what that war is most famous for. But at least you can't die from shitting ass disease because both your cheeks are frozen together. Yeah, it just makes a seal like a giant scab. The Ascarapus. Yes, the Ascarapus once again. They were led by people that

collective military minds in Europe just knew they could do without to say, like, that's the best thing you could say about them. And just to get a better picture of what everything looked like, British holdings in the East were many, but very far apart, leaving their comparatively large fleet of 20-something

ships to be scattered across various different Chinese ports. Hell even the British-Chinese fleet commander James Sterling was just chilling in Singapore when the war broke out, weeks away from the rest of his men. And this is where we see the key divide in their war plans in the east. The British, regardless of the quality of their leadership in the region, had muscle and they wanted to use it to destroy the tiny Russian fleet. And once that was done, they'd reduce the Russian eastern colonies to ash, or maybe take them over. They weren't entirely sure. Mm-hmm.

Meanwhile, the Russians, they really couldn't do shit with, you know, what started with six, but now it's actually ships. So, Putinian and others were given the mission to ensure Japan stayed out of the war and also try not to lose the rest of the ships and if you can, protect the Kamchaka Peninsula from being taken by the joint Anglo-French navies. Of course, Russian officers and politicians in the region quickly understood that there was really no way they could do all of that with how little resources they had. So they consolidated their navy and infantry forces up the Amur River and deployed their forces in four settlements, which were all very far apart because this is the Russian Far East we're talking about. The most important of these settlements for

our story today is Petropavlovsk. Now Petropavlovsk is literally in the middle of nowhere. It's on the like the end of the Kamchatka Peninsula. It was established 100 years before this. And due to the rugged mountains and the sheer inaccessibility of Kamchatka, despite it was not on an island, it could only be reached by sea. It's really, really remote.

Like it's called Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky now. And like, yeah, if you want to go there, you basically have to get a charter flight unless you want to take a boat. It's like Juneau, Alaska, but like imagine in much worse state of repair. The Kamchatka Peninsula, because of map projections, looks relatively small or like, you know, not particularly large, but it's that way on the map. It is gigantic. It is enormous. And like getting places there is very difficult because the roads are incredibly poor quality.

So imagine what it was like, that's what it's like now. Imagine what it was like in 1850 something. Like the roads are always mud fields and then completely frozen over. So I have to, because I lived in Alaska for three years, I have to say this. Something that doesn't get talked about unless you've been this part of the world

is that when it's cold, sucks, dark, icy, snowy, really dangerous weather, snow collapses buildings, so on and so forth. When it's warm, it's almost impossible to walk because it's like semi-swampland and mosquitoes will kill you. They are gigantic. They're like literally like you can see fur on them.

I'm not making this up. They're wearing tiny for Jack, because they work for Russia. Exactly, yeah, yeah, with Bape camo on them. And I'll be honest with you, like it can be well below freezing when it's dark and then as soon as the sun comes up I need for jackets because they work for Russia. Exactly, yeah, yeah, with Bape Camo on them. And I'll be honest with you, it can be well below freezing when it's dark, and then as soon as the sun comes up

and the ice melts and water starts forming, so you were suddenly hit by clouds of mosquitoes, and then it gets cold and freezes again, and it's just like, yeah, you basically can't win on that planet. A little mosquito buzzing by your ears here. Blah, suka. I sold farm of onions and bought mink coat

for my mosquito and mistress You've already alluded to what a lot of these guys are gonna run into as a problem, which is malaria and mud my favorite It's it's it's pretty mean then that's like I said, I was there in from 2008 to 2011 It's it was far worse back in those they didn't they didn you know, they didn't have pills you could take to stop malaria. The Brits hadn't shared the secret alcoholic birth. She didn't tell me. Yeah. The same remoteness and those same mountains

that made it, you know, hard to get to also made a natural harbor free of arctic ice. Most importantly for the cause of the Russian Imperial projects, it was the only station between Russian America and the major Russian hub of Vladivostok. So it's an important way station. It kind of goes without saying that the place is important,

but Russia only saw it that way about five years before the start of the war and dumped a comparatively large amount of money into it, to build it up into something that wasn't just like a glorified death camp out in the woods. Pretty much the first settlers here all died horribly of disease and exposure. So they built lighthouses, they built barracks and shipyards, they could service military vessels, as well as foundries and gunsmiths to better facilitate the ports used for military matters. And they sent a ton of food there to make living there not so miserable. Of course this also made it the best target of all of the Russian settlements as well. Normally its commander, Colonel Major Vasily Zoyko, would have been

absolutely screwed. But he's a seasoned naval commander, he's in the employ of the Russian American company, and he knew he was at the end of the earth with no hope of assistance should a battle begin. There's also a small problem of only having about 250 soldiers stationed there, with him and the Russian Pacific squadron only being four rickety steamships that were held together by duct tape and hope. He knew, if a battle comes this way, I'm probably fucked. So he ordered his men to dig in. He ordered all able bodied people to take up tools and help them.

The town of Petropavlask had a population of about 1,000, and he pressed all of them into service. Men, women, and children. Yes, child soldiers. Build my bunkers, kids. I mean, I'm just imagining what good in that climate can, you know, a battalion of child laborers really do. Throw enough of them at the problem. I mean, I'm just imagining it's like bucket brigade to hold the world's tiniest bucket. Aww.

Hands. They can get into small places, you know, to get mangled by machinery. No, they can do hand to hand combat if the mosquitoes are really really big and the kids are really really small, then it's an even match. You take the least productive child to make a sacrificial offering to the mosquitoes. Within hours of Zoyko getting word that the war had begun, which to be clear here was about a month after it actually started, his chain gang was hard at work building massive earthworks, eventually constructing seven different batteries, which the British would

eventually call forts, carved out of the surrounding cliff faces. And as Zoyko, his soldiers, and the impressed civilians waited, some bizarre shit was going on out in the ocean. And this brings us to David Price, commander of the British Pacific squadron about four months before this. Cause all of this that we're about to talk about happens on accident. Yeah. There's like a really kind of a insane sailor on a small boat with a man called Quee quag. They're like, they're chasing a mythical whale, you know. Actually kind of.

What? Just not a whale. It's a proverbial great white whale, but you know. When the war started, he was nowhere near any of this shit. Instead, he and his fleet was parked in Calais, Peru, hanging out with his French counterpart, DuPont. Now, DuPont was old as fuck. Every account of this battle and everything that's about to happen is that

everybody says that the man should have never been in command. Like he was old and chronically ill. Like he should have been retired. But France is like, no, go to the Pacific and die. War hadn't started yet, but rumors were that it might soon. And it took about two months for the news to get from Europe to Peru where he was. And while they were hanging out, the Russian ship Aurora showed up. And now people who've listened to the show for a long time might remember Aurora as one of the names from the Voyage of the Damned. It's a different Aurora. It would be funny though. The British and the French watched the ship nervously as it resupplied before leaving.

A week later, word of the war got to Peru, and with it, orders for Price to chase down and destroy the Aurora. Price was manning a state of the art 50 gun ship. He had several other ships with him, including the French fleet, because they were supposed to be working together. Now, the French fleet was ordered to help Price, but not to fall under his command. So there's like this weird parallel command system, but DuPont was largely fine with it. Like he was never arguing with Price at all. He was too old and sick to really give a shit. He could have easily stomped on the gas, caught up to the Aurora and made short work of this whole thing. And this battle that we're about to talk about never would have happened. But he

didn't. He just kind of hang around. Instead, he sat around in Peru doing nothing. His supply logs say his ship had been fully stocked. All of his ammunition was on board, but in his personal journal, Price complained that he simply did not have enough beef to set sail. So I get look at, I need more beef. I need more lovely jumpers made out of alpaca wool. All of my sailors are on the carnivore die. Oh God, the sailor latrine somehow managing to be even worse because everyone's just eating like eggs, meat, butter. And this nice little poultice made from a local plant that just makes you work faster. It was only a week after that that he finally orders his fleet

to make for Honolulu, which by then the British called the sandwich islands for some reason, but it was an independent kingdom not under British command. And I mean, this does lead me to believe that he was just hungry. He's like, my men don't have enough beef. Let's sit down for the sandwich islands. I mean like stationing British sailors in Peru, the cocaine poultice is the most likely thing that

happened. I'm also laughing too because it's like the problem is is it you might get food on the sandwich islands also known as Hawaii or you might in the spirit of James Cook become the food. Yeah. You gotta make sure you know what day you're arriving. Yeah. But then he canceled those orders and instead sat around for another week and then ordered his fleet to make for the Marquesa Islands and then he ordered them once again for the Marquesa islands. And then he ordered them once again to go to Hawaii. This is despite the fact that all their intelligence pointed to the fact that Aurora was going to Honolulu and it did. And now they're a

full month behind schedule. Maybe he was like, you know, the way you're not supposed to go to the supermarket when you're hungry. He was like navigating. He was like, let's just go to sandwich islands. You know, like I haven't had lunch. It's like mmm let's just go to sandwich islands you know like i haven't had lunch it's like the islands are just tesco the island of big tesco that implies the marquesa islands are the fancier ones yeah that's the waitrose islands the mns food islands yeah he learned from the hawaiians upon arrival at oh yeah there was definitely a russian ship here but it left about a month ago so now knowing that, oh yeah, there was definitely a Russian ship here, but it left, about a month ago. So now, knowing that he was falling further and further behind in price, once again did

not start chasing the Aurora, and instead just kind of hung around with King Kamehameha III of Hawaii for a week, including grilling with him. Grilling with your homies. Grillin' with the boys. Apparently, the king and him all got blind drunk and he took the king on the tour for his ships for a little while Like he was having a good time a lot of the time his white boys came to the bar Invited to the cook Well, he can't kick him out unfortunately, yeah, we got this liquor

We made out of lilikoi completely gives you the worst hanging hangover you can possibly imagine But it definitely gets you in the mood to consume more of the pork barbecue. I mean, man, you know, the food would have been great. Fuck yeah. Maybe that's why Akira Toriyama like named the Kamehameha the Kamehameha. Cause it's like, well, Goku like what's his main characteristics? You know, he's really strong. He loves eating. He loves eating barbecue food. What's who else loves it? There's a weird amount of people in Dragon Ball Z named after food.

There you go. So, you know. He left Hawaii on July 25th heading for Sitka, Alaska, thinking that must be where the war is going. But then he stops and sends two ships back to Hawaii. The reason for this is he's worried about British holdings in California, and he simply orders them to sail up and down the Californian coast to make sure the Russians can see the British flag there.

So now he's down two ships. Then he sailed his fleet directly into a thick blanket of fog and got very, very lost. His ships got separated from one another and he figured out the best way to keep the fleet together was actually is quite common for the day but is very funny. It's to play Marco Polo but by firing off cannons so you could go towards the sound I mean they didn't have GPS You know maybe maybe his compass also was made in the shot gun. Magellan meant something very different back then Yeah I mean it is funny to think about that. It does make a lot of sense

They did it also it's like terrain association would be somewhat difficult because you're like I look for a big mountain It's like I've got bad news for you on the Alaska Panhandle. That's kind of all there are there They can't see shit. They're lost in this fog for a week, only leaving the fog behind at the end of August. Now this is where finally Price gets a look over the bow of his ship and get a lay of the land. And that's when he realizes something. Oh fuck that isn't Alaska.

It's fucking Kamchaca. Okay, okay, okay. So he has, he has traversed the entirety of the North Pacific, not realizing on accident. That's I mean, he was that lost. But also, like, there are some telltale signs that you've kind of gone, such as the most insane wind you will ever experience in your life when you start to get out that way, because he's past the Aleutians, he's past the Bering Strait. Like you're on you're in the eastern hemisphere now. cuz he's past the Aleutians He's passed the Bering Strait like you're on you're in the eastern hemisphere now

He was going for the Aleutians, but he missed I mean remember price is not a good naval officer There's a reason why he's there. I mean Okay, and Again the point the commander of the French is old and sick and since most of his time shooting on himself in his cabin Well, I guess I mean it could have ended up a lot worse. I mean, you could have... It's gonna be. Well...

Captain Price, we've got a problem. They've eaten our chocolate compass. So as Zoyfka looks over out of his defenses in Petropavlovsk, he sees warships parked out there. He's like, oh, fuck, the attack is coming. And the weirdest part is the Aurora was there. Like they'd accidentally found where the Aurora had parked. Stupid like a fox. Exactly. Price is like, that's right, I got him exactly where I want him.

Despite the fact there is a bite taken out of my chocolate compass, it still brought us to the right place. He thought he was staring at an invasion force when in reality he was staring at a bunch of very very lost, increasingly sick and exhausted group of Brits and French sailors. To make matters worse, Price had taken so long to hunt the Aurora that the Aurora and one other ship, the De Winna, had already pulled into the harbor and effectively been disassembled to help the defense. Like half of the Aurora's guns had been taken off and added to coastal defenses and the entire De Winna's guns had been taken off. But to coastal defences and the entire Duwina's

guns had been taken off. But also 500 or so marines that staffed those ships were now added to Petropavlosk defences. This number was further bolstered by local civilians who volunteered to fight alongside the soldiers once they saw the allied fleet parked outside. And it shouldn't surprise you, the kind of people who survived out in Petropavlosk were about the hardest fucking people on earth. He just got a kid with the shapes cannon riding on the back of a giant mosquito. A long enough timeline they achieved supremacy over the mosquitoes. The mosquitoes changed sides, they joined the Russian

defense force. The mosquitoes started buzzing in Russian. These were like wolf hunters and trappers in the fucking Arctic and shit. So the most hard-nosed fucking people on the planet. You hear the stories invariably about like some person who went out to make their fortune in the Russian Far East. He's like, was devoured by wolves two years later. Like just a regular occurrence. It's that fucking workplace hazardous wolf attack. My friend told me a story of going to a funeral for one of his relatives in Kurdistan and it was separated like you know there's the men's tent and the women's tent and then they heard screaming

from the women's tent and so like of course all of his male relatives drew their guns they went to go see what was going on and what had happened is somehow a wolf a snake and two scorpions had fallen through the roof of the tent. That sounds like a warning from the Quran. I was like okay. That's a bad fucking omen. A snake I get it you know climbs up whatever slithers up falls. Scorpions yeah absolutely. How does a wolf get on top of the tent and fall through it? The wolf falls as I got my airborne wings bitch. I guess it was that like he's like

hypothetically one assumes the wolf was hunting the snake and was like oh he's on top of that brightly colored thing. One must be mindful when the wolf hunts the snake Making proverbs over here and shit. The idea though the average day in Kurdistan is wolf falls from the tent ceiling off to you Okay, imagine how freaked out that wolf was though These volunteers were just a gang of dudes who are probably the most comfortable of dying than anyone was there Price didn't know any of this though. He didn't know the defenses, he didn't know the Aurora and the Winna being there, he literally knew nothing about Petra Pavloss because he wasn't even supposed to be there. So Price took his fellow commanders aside and held a war council and

decided you know after a scouting mission like oh the Aurora is in there so we have to go in, but we need to suss out the strength of the enemy So we're gonna just sail into the harbor and start shooting at them, you know, like recon by fire So they did on August 28th 1853 and it did not go well as the article petropavlos the Crimean Wars forgotten battle puts it quote The Allies had put considerably less thought into capturing petropavlos and the Russians had into defend again. Okay Yeah considerably less thought into capturing Petropavlovsk than the Russians had into Defendigin. Okay, yeah, I mean, if that's the summary off the top, I can only imagine the details are going to be a little more illuminating. It's not good. They quite literally had no idea what they were sailing into, and once

they did, they caught some serious hands in the form of dozens of cannons ripping shells at them. This is when the Allies learned that the ships in the harbor were mostly harmless, like the guns had been taken off them. The Aurora was still firing at them, but the Allies broke off contact and left. Thankfully for them, the only gun crews seemingly worse trained than their own were the Russian ones, and neither side really hit the other. At this point, Price is reportedly called a despondent, combined with a healthy dose of shocked into speechless

Captain price it seems you're very morose over this battle. I recommend you listen to the high performance podcast or maybe Steven Bartlett We haven't had a chance to resupply since Peru. So the carnivore diet is running out. You know, he's having a crash He's not he's not in the calm down of a lifetime. He's no more poultice and no more me Alpha mode has been turned off entirely. I really need my cocaine beef the calm down of a lifetime he's no more poultice and no more meat. He was sure the side of his squadron forced the Russians into surrender, while simultaneously unsure of what exactly to do next. He was lost for words the whole time, but he was also probably you know According to his diary at least really regretting all of those pointless delays

He made along the way or he could have caught the Aurora at open sea and smacked it in about five seconds flat You wouldn't yeah It's much more challenging when it gets absorbed into the larger hive mind of the city and all the guns get moved and it just Becomes a floating armor wall He writes like if I just got the Aurora at sea none of this would be happening or You know if I haven't gotten fucking lost and ended up in Russia Which happens to the best of us, you know I wouldn't have ended up squaring off with a mini fortress

If I hadn't rolled up and down the California coast the very first instance of someone cruising USA Then I genuinely would have been able to get this thing on the open sea I really shouldn't have hung out with my homies in Hawaii. Feney, I have to fight the seaborne version of Hell's Moving Castle. I mean, but here's the thing too, I think take it out from the motive jokes also it's like there's no resupply for them there's no no support so it's like any kind of big change in the calculus like this then you really on your own and it's like if things go bad then you drown in the North Pacific or you become

Russian I guess. After a while he brought his other commanders together and tried to come up with a plan to proceed. The plan was quite simple with the squadron massing their fire in each Russian battery in order to overwhelm them one by one while staying out of range of Russian guns. When the French commander pointed out that that was actually impossible, Price said, don't worry, trust me, this somehow worked. And de Poin was like, yeah sure, because he has to agree to this, he doesn't have to follow Price's commands.

And on August 30th, the attack begins once again. As the ships move into gun range again bombing the Russian positions, Price and his other commanders did exactly what you'd imagine naval commanders would do in the middle of battle in the 1800s. They retired to the dining hall to have a large, several course lunch, while cannons are going off everything. What are they eating? They don't have any of their carnivore diet stuff left. Maybe Joe Rogan supplements? I don't fucking know. Sir, I've got you a lovely serving of boo. They've probably got, I mean you think about it probably salt beef

Yes, I'll be some kind of hard bread dissolved in hot water things of that nature. Yeah, no vegetables No fiber that the toilet is all either abandoned or punished in the extreme Punished toilet after he finished price got up told everyone I'll see you in a few minutes Went back to his cabin aboard his flagship, which is called the President, found his service revolver, and shot himself with a chest. Okay. Did he die? No.

No one would exactly say Price is good at his job, but he was also very bad at pistol marksmanship because he missed his heart and said blew apart one of his lungs, doing him to a very slow, horrible and painful death. Something he made sure to apologize for when people came running into his room with the sound of a gunshot. See if only they had Aubrey Matron on this ship, he could have been saved. That's right. I mean maybe he shouldn't have been saved. Remember the battle is still going on, and the ships and his men are actively engaged in combat as he attempts suicide

So as people stand there confused not really believing that this shit had just happened The command structure completely breaks down due to the small fact that the Allied commander had just Self-connected to God's Wi-Fi the sailors didn't come running because of the sound of the gunshot They just heard that song by logic playing in the background I don't wanna be alive, I just wanna die today. I mean it's just the idea of basically missing with what sounds like a small caliber pistol and then people are like oh terribly sorry. He's like slumped in a chair like oh sorry about the mess I should have been dead by

now. The squadron confused broke off the attack without orders unsure of what else to do. The other commanders went to visit Price as he lay screaming and dying in bad pain at the surgeon's cabin. The French commander was the highest ranking man left and should have been put in command but he was like suffering from this mysterious illness. I mean it's like a mix of cholera and dysentery. It also sounds like he's just cholera and dysentery. Effectively an invalid. Yeah, pretty much.

He's an old man who's constantly coughing up blood and shitting himself. So the British captain Sir Frederick Nicholson was tasked with solving this clusterfuck. Then Price politely asked the surgeon to kill him, so he'd be put out of his misery, and the surgeon decided to overdose him with a massive amount of morphine. That felt really good for a couple of seconds first. The man may have lived as a British naval officer, but he died as a Midwest suburbanite. Now the officers in charge didn't much care for Price, but the sailors are pretty demoralized by you know, their commander killing themselves.

Well, it's not a really good sign of how things are gonna go. He's like hey guys I retire to handle something really quickly and then it's like kaboom yeah. I'm gonna go cash in my nine millimeter pension room. It's like the Steve Harvey clip thought about killing myself. I think about this is like you imagine being like lower enlisted sailor whatever on this and this just like well he got so mad at what's going on that he killed himself and now we've got a 90 year old French guy who is completely unable to stand in charge of us great system we got this is really setting us up for success and honestly commander mysteriously kills himself in the middle of battle is

definitely something to expect from the Russian side. Yeah. Right, but I mean, the thing is, I think the operative concern here is that the battle is still ongoing. Actively going on. Imagine you're like, so why are we calling off the attack? Oh, Commander killed himself. Like, fucking crazy. Like, I'm just going to take a dive into the frozen waters. See, this battle would have went so much differently if they had invented madri by then.

You know, like men's mental health beer. Check it on your lads. Yeah, you know, Prince Harry wasn't alive yet. He couldn't check in on his blokes. Nobody checked in on Bryce, so Bryce clapped himself. Sometimes it's that 21 a day, sometimes it's just that one guy on the boat. Once again, if only the high performance podcast had been around then he would have, you know, checked in on his blokes, had a can of madri, you know.

But Nicholson kind of had no choice but to continue planning the attack due to the fact that Price had gotten them into this whole fucking thing. Nicholson's orders were still to destroy the Aurora. Then as if that didn't have enough problems, the ship Forte broke down, forcing it to be towed by another ship, the Virago. So now their navy is towing itself. wasn't the Aurora kind of destroying itself I mean it's it's sitting at port with all of its guns taken out yeah they're kind of scrapping it for defensive materials just leave you can just go away like hit

the bricks mm-hmm but now the price dead Nicholson in charge and everyone's second-guessing this whole war, an argument broke out between the British and the French. The French contended that this whole entire thing was wildly out of control, spiraling further, and most importantly, pointless. The mission was to destroy the Aurora, not whatever the fuck this has turned into. And full on assaulting a port with all of their ships is going to put them in serious danger even if they succeeded. The losses wouldn't be worth it, even if they did manage to take out the Aurora. So Nicholson came up with a plan. Using a landing force to get to shore, take out the Russian batteries, haul artillery ashore to counter-battery the other Russian

cannons and take the heat off of them with the squadron. Only after the batteries were taken on land would the ships move in and bomb the shit out of Petropavlovsk proper? In a classic case of what we call mission creep, the goal was now to conquer Petropavlovsk. But mind you, they're doing this without consulting anyone. But also like, situations change, gotta get, you know, consult for more orders would be a great excuse to go fuck off for like three months because how long it takes to get messages back and forth. Exactly. This had such an easy out. To To the French this plan seemed even crazier than prices and the French had the larger ground contingent which meant their Marines would be doing most of the dying. Nicholson most importantly lacked the command authority to

just tell the point to do what he wanted. There was no unified command structure. The French could say no at any time. But one thing kept them following Nicholson's orders, and it's probably something we can all see coming. Nicholson put the battle orders to a vote, making sure to point out that failing to go to battle would make the entire squadron look like cowards. It's like, oh, you're gonna vote no? What are you, a bitch? I mean, what are you? You don't want to die?

Why are you some kind of pussy? I mean, also, we've You don't want to die? Why are you some kind of pussy? Exactly. I mean, also we've talked already enough of them on this show about the sort of like not being alive impulse that some of these people have that's like, all right, I guess this is just part and parcel of your job. You know, it's like, hey, it was supposed to be go harass and annoy a ship in the open seas. Now it's take over a city

in one of the most remote parts of Russia. Those are like the same thing. Convince French Marines to fight. Yeah, it's going over a city in one of the most remote parts of Russia. Those are like the same thing. Convince French marines to fight. Yeah, it's gonna be... alright. I wish we had drops in the studio so we could play the thought about killing myself. You can drop it in in post. Of course we've got the clip of that.

I do like the idea that everybody's voting is like, well, to be fair, dying in this battle is a lot easier than like having to sail all the way back home. And DuPois was like the most vigorous opponent to this plan. But after being like Calder Coward, if he voted no, he's like, well, now we have to vote and go ahead. He immediately pressured all of his French officers to vote in favor after saying how bad of an idea it was.

Can you imagine being one of those officers and be like, well, yeah, it's easy for you to say you're like lying in your yelling at people and having your bedpan changed every 15 minutes. We're the ones who actually have to disembark and get shot at. Yeah, the ship being captained by Grandpa Bucket. I should point out before going into battle, the squadron came to the mouth of the Russian port and shook Price's dead body directly into the water. with its point out with a quote, very little ceremony. Yeah, he belongs to the sea now. So the squadron steamed or was towed into port, guns blazing, heading for the closest

Russian batteries while the Virago, who was towing the Forte, who was in turn towing, 15 paddle boats loaded up with French marines, who had the mission to make landfall and begin capturing batteries on foot, trying to blow up Marines who had the mission to make landfall and begin capturing batteries on foot. Trying to blow up as many cannons as possible to make it safe for the rest of the squadron. They landed on the right side of the port charging ashore and took several batteries. Most of the reason for the success was simply a surprise. The Russians didn't think they would ever be dealing with a straight-up ground invasion because it's nuts and their cobbled together force of soldiers, sailors, townspeople, and fucking wolf hunters probably wasn't expecting it.

But as the French marines began to blow up cannons, the Russians mounted a counterattack by anyone who was in the area. They got shot, stabbed, and beaten to death, and the French marines quickly retreat under hail of gunfire, musket balls, and rocks back to their boats and pedaled away. Another landing party, this time made up of Brits and French, landed to the left of the port aiming for a battery that has five different cannons. Like before, the initial landing work wonders. Marines and sailors sprinted ashore chasing off gun crews and began setting the cannons on fire and blowing them up. Then the Russians again ordered anyone that could walk or carry anything to join in on a counterattack and push them right off.

And this went on for 10 hours. Landing parties hit the beach, took batteries, blew them up, then found themselves fighting every living thing in the town until they gave up and ran back to their boats. All under a massive amount of Russian support fire which ignored the squadron in the port entirely and focused on bombing the hell out of the landing parties. At least until those same landing parties assaulted the cannons that were firing at them. By the time the sun went down, Nicholson's first order of the landing parties. At least until those same landing parties assaulted the cannons that were firing at them. By the time the sun went down,

Nicholson's first order of business was handled. All the Russian batteries that were guarding the harbor had been taken out. However, because it had taken so long, they couldn't follow it up with what they thought might be a killing blow, like a full landing in daylight hours. They're not gonna do this shit at night in the 1800s.

Instead, they withdrew for the night with the plan to attack again in the morning. Meanwhile, the Russians didn't rest. Zoyevka ordered everyone who was still alive to get down to the harbor and start rebuilding throughout the night without rest. By the time the sun came up, the allied commanders were looking at fully rebuilt and rearmed batteries all across the harbor, making their entire first day of fighting completely meaningless. Looking out of my fucking glasses and being like, god damn it! This kicked all the broken shit in the ocean! That kind of implies they just had like another 10 batteries worth of cannons just kind of

lying around in case they needed them. Well they had a foundry, they could just build them. Right, but the idea of building cannons overnight is something people are like, I don't know, maybe they can work that fast. They got the age of empire hack, you know? But then something strange happens as the Allied squadron is floating out there They come across a small rowboat with three American whalers in it. Obviously these men were not a full whaling crew They were deserters or criminals have been kicked off of a larger ship

This is something that Nicholson completely ignored and just took them in The Americans had apparently been watching the battle the day before and told Nicholson like, hey, you guys are doing it all wrong. There's a way easier place to land to the north near Mount Nikolaevka away from all those harbor guns. And then you can just go across by land. Now it doesn't dawn on any of them involved in this command structure that like, well, the Russians literally never go across to the city by land.

It has to be a good reason for that And the Americans are like, oh we'll guide you we've totally done it before Nicholson decided this idea is much better than his own and the French agreed so soon the Americans were leading them north Small problem though. The Americans had done this before but it had been months ago Before Ziveco had ordered the entire area to be reinforced So rather be no batteries at all waiting for them. There's actually three. And they covered the entire northern approach to the town.

The landing worked. The three batteries were easily overwhelmed by a full force of 700 men who landed ashore. They broke into three different columns and two marched towards Mount Nikolaevka, dragging artillery around with them, while the third march towards Petropavlovsk proper attempting to take the town from behind. Everything was going so well it seemed nobody realized that they're quickly moving away from their one advantage. The Navy. They were moving so far inland the Navy couldn't support them anymore. The men on the ground were also

discovering something else. September in Kamchatka sucks. It's hot, it's humid, it's wet, and it's muddy. There's fucking mosquitoes everywhere. And the soldiers were all still wearing their wool winter clothing. Oh, that is a new level of swamp bias going on. And it's like getting stuck up to their knees in this shit. Because like it's cold, it's below freezing at night, but it's still hot in the daytime it's really humid and

yeah like the terrain because it's not fully frozen is just like bog land everywhere yeah and like they're getting stuck up to their knees in this shit wearing like wool clothes and never-ending swarms of malaria mosquitoes and bog shit. Typically to make paths or you know earthsats roads in that they have to make washboard like to put wood down and make a trail because like there just isn't anywhere solid to walk and that oftentimes just gets swamped Anyway, and you have to redo it all over again And then they start getting picked apart by sniper fire coming from Russian hunters and I assume children riding mosquitoes These guys are completely prepared for this hellscape that they're fighting in because they live there like oh, yeah

We know this place sucks, we love it. Exactly, isn't it? That is the most Russian thing. Yeah, it's like, well, you know, it's horrible, but it's home. And you know what, it'll get better when it's minus 60, don't worry. It's homable. The hunters also aim for officers first, who are easy to pick out things, so they're uniforms. Soon the poor fuckers slogging through that shit had no leadership, they got confused, they get lost.

Then if that wasn't all bad enough, they began to get assaulted on all sides by a growing number of Russian soldiers, sailors, townspeople, and swamp creatures. Like, in a lot of cases, people are wounded and just fall face down to the mud and drown. They run back to their boats as fast as they can, leaving hundreds of dead and wounded behind them as they go.

The march up the mountain was met with more of the same, and by 10pm that same night they landed, they managed to get back to their boats and the squadron got away from the failed northern attack. The Russians were rewarded by capturing swords and rifles and a British Royal Marine standard, which they had a little parade in town about. And at this point it's pretty clear to Nicholson that they were not going to be able to pull this off. His French counterpart, DuPont, was also getting sicker and sicker. Oftentimes it looks like he's about to die, but they had been saying that for months now. Like the man looked like a corpse. On September

7th he decided to cull it, pulling the squadron out of the port, bringing them back to the colonies on the western coast of what is today the US and Canada to refit and rearm. But that wouldn't be the end of the fighting over Petropovlask. The British and the French would return the next year only to find the Aurora and the entire Russian garrison had abandoned the port, evacuating inland at the first rumor of an incoming allied fleet. When they made landfall, the Allies had everyone gone. Sailors, soldiers, civilians.

Except for one thing. You want to guess what was left behind? Wolves. That's standard. Those two Americans were just chilling. Ahab and Kwee Kwee. You guys need some trailers, you all need some guides? It worked really well for us last time.

I know some rivers out here. I built a canoe. Did you all buy these star maps? All the best sites. I know the last British guys that we guided left us a one star review, but we think that's really unfair. They were just chilling in the middle, they had data French servant just like living in the wreckage The Allies burned everything and left still looking for the Aurora

But they would never get their hands on it the Aurora roared out the war Save from Allied attack and in this story of the Crimean War probably shouldn't be much of a surprise That if from the Allied point of view the story of the siege of Petroflosk really doesn't ever get told. After all, the allies won the war and they have plenty of other victories to talk about or failing that heroically failed defeat like the charge of the light brigade. But for the Russian side, it was a story of a victory against all odds during a war where they mostly got their teeth kicked in from the beginning to end, even if the victory

is a minor one in a theater that was so small in the grand scheme of things it was almost meaningless. For the rest of the life of the Russian Empire they always made sure to have at least one ship named after the Petropavlovsk. And because it's Russia we're talking about most of those ships were lost in one comedically stupid way or another, including one that was killed during the infamous voyage of the damned. Hahaha! The end. Well, I guess we could make fun of them, but then I recall the US to trying to invade the Soviet Union in like 1918 or whatever and invading Siberia or invading the Russian Far East and it went really poorly.

So yeah, we did a series on that one. I recall. And it involved being so cold that people's poop froze into a giant shit sickle. I mean, I can recall seeing the mass grave where they repatriated their bodies to Alaska be like well that sounds like it sucked Yeah, whenever they have to when it says Americans, you know veterans home from Siberia at a mass grave There's a gigantic mound in the middle of the city. You know, it went really well We're having a mound parade the fellas that is the siege of Petropavlovsk. How are you feeling after that one? I But fellas, that is the siege of Petra Pavlosk. How are you feeling after that one? I can't believe that they're like, yeah, let's just march through this marshy bog land and

believe these three Americans. I'm just kind of having a fugue state, negative sense, memory recall of all the mosquito incidents I can remember from being in Alaska in times when I didn't either bring bug spray or enough bug spray. So yeah, I don't feel for you cuz stupid in general But I guess I feel for the humble guy who just gets ordered to go to land by the sort of you know Depraved officer class we're talking about. I feel bad like is like not for anybody involved It's like it look Kamchak is giving you every hint that you shouldn't fucking be there Russian or British Like this is indigenous mosquito land. Yeah

I mean that was Journalist Richard Kapuscinski said this that once about being in Fura in like Siberia and the mining counts like in summertime He's like being in Siberia in summer is like the best proof you can find that nature thinks of us as pestilence and wants to Rid itself of us for and it's like I can only imagine that but 1850 something. Yeah. I think we just need to let it be a self-governing mosquito territory. Yeah. You can't see the mosquitoes because they're all in babe multicam. But on this show we do something called questions from the Legion, which is if you support the

show on Patreon, you can ask us a question on Patreon or discord. You can attach it to a mosquito, ride it like a horse to over the border from one of the places we record from, and we will answer it on the show. Mosquito Pony Express. The Mosquito Pony Express. Mosquito Air Mail. The world's tiniest little litters. And today's question is, if you could transfer something common in Europe to the United States, what would it be? Healthcare and public transportation, I assume. I mean, yeah. I have one, I have one, an example for both ways actually. We could just, Americans just need to get back on having small cars.

Like, cars are too gigantic in the US, it's ridiculous. You don't like the giant truck that you can't see people when you run them over? Joe's favorite car, the Dodge F-150. You know, where my parents used to live in rural southern Indiana. Like the roads were super wide because they're big American roads. But like the mega fuck off trucks have gotten so big that like you feel as like you're driving on British roads there now.

Like they're fucking gigantic. But I'd say in the opposite direction, I swear to you, outside of Poland, I have never seen box fans the way that we have in the U.S. like Lascaux. And there's every time I've got some from the US on Transformers because you can't find them in Europe and every time people say like these are great. These are amazing Where can I get them like Walmart Home Depot Lowe's and a transformer because they just don't sell them Yeah, I get it because we use them in windows and the windows are typically different construction But even when you put them on like a little prop feet and you put them on the floor

They're great The only thing I can think of is stuff like in the studio or like more or less construction fans but they're like big but you mean if you were gonna bring something from the United States yeah I said I had one in each direction so I had box fans from America to Europe and yes small cars ceiling fans would be nice fans in general I've yet to have an apartment in Europe that has a fan of any kind ceiling fans I just nice. Fans in general. I've yet to have an apartment in Europe that has a fan of any kind. Ceiling fans, I just, I don't know, they always get so disgusting.

You gotta clean them mate. Oh obviously you clean them, they still get disgusting. Yeah. Yeah, I would definitely give to America the European sensibility of being quiet on fucking public transport. Like I was on a bus from Stonehenge on Saturday morning after seeing the summer saltless and it was like half six in the morning. Everyone had been awake since at least 11 a.m. the day before or 11 p.m. the day before and traveled to Salisbury. And this woman's just like on her phone at full volume recounting everything she had eaten that day to the person on the other end of the phone. And I'm like, everyone here is about to fall asleep. All the seats on this bus are too

small because it's a bus that's used to bring children on school trips. So like I'm a big guy. I couldn't really fit in the seats. And about four feet to my right is just like a lady who's like, yeah, and we had these beans on toast. I didn't really like them. And I was like, please be quiet I mean nobody really needs to hear from Americans complaining about America when they're when you're abroad in the sense because you sound like a Like I don't know weird like oh, I'm not one of but like yeah, it's true. We are really loud Yeah, I mean I definitely put the stereotype of a lot of I do keep my mouth shut on public Yeah, I need to I anybody who's been in public transportation can can devalue for that fact

Yeah, he's a big tall American guy guy but he doesn't talk for some reason. Yeah. Anyway, that is an episode of this podcast, but you host other podcasts. Boys, plug those shows. Trash future, what a hell of a way to dad, kill James Bond, no gods, no mayors. Beneath Skin, the show about the history of everything, told you the history of tattooing. You can buy my photography and art books at beneathskinshop.com. And this is the only show that I host.

If you like it, consider supporting us on Patreon. You get episodes like this a week early. You get years and years and years of bonus content, ebooks, audiobooks, first dibs on live show tickets and merch, various other things. But it will send you a tactical mosquito and its own vape camouflage. Support the show on Patreon. And until next time At first you don't succeed kill yourself