Lieutenant John Bythesea Vc ; the First Special Forces-Style Raid of the Crimean War Resulted From a Mild Rebuke Delivered by One Senior Royal Navy Officer to Another More Junior One.

Summary

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The first Special Forces-style raid of the Crimean War resulted from a mild rebuke delivered by one senior Royal Navy officer to another more junior one.

Early in the conflict, in the summer of 1854, the British fleet was stationed off the Russian-occupied island of Wardo, close to Finland, in the Baltic.

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Extract

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Lieutenant John Bythesea Vc ; the First Special Forces-Style Raid of the Crimean War Resulted From a Mild Rebuke Delivered by One Senior Royal Navy Officer to Another More Junior One.

Captain Hastings Yelverton, from HMS Arrogant, which was one of the larger warships in the area and had already seen action against Russian forces, paid an official visit to Admiral Sir Charles Napier, the commander of the British fleet. Yelverton was gently ticked off for the fact that dispatches from the Russian Tsar were being constantly landed on Wardo and forwarded from there to the Commanding Officer at Bomarsund. Napier's gripe was tha...

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