2-913-780 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Anapa, on the coast of Circassia, 1854. Sketch by Lieutenant C. E. Gordon, Royal Engineers, of a strategic port during the Crimean War: '..."bombarded since the 7th [September], by the squadron under Admiral [Edmund Moubray] Lyons"...Anapa...is a seaport town and fortress of Circassia, on the Black Sea, and has a Russian garrison. It is meanly built, and has a bad harbour...When the Russians, last spring, destroyed that chain of forts along the Circassian coast by which they had for a number of years held the country in a grasp of iron, they thought proper to spare Anapa, Soujuk Kaleh, and Novorussik. Of these three forts, Anapa is said to be the most formidable; and, as it is the nearest to Sebastopol, it is not unlikely that its destruction may have formed a portion of the plan laid down by the commanders of the present campaign'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.