In Langman’s favour there was one great unanswered question. If John Deane was the injured party and there was no fraud or assault, then why did at least three members of his crew hate him so much that they sought to destroy his life by obliterating his reputation? No satisfactory answer survives. But history proved one thing about John Deane. He had a talent for making enemies; impassioned adversaries who despised him with deep and renewable reserves of hatred that Christopher Langman would have recognised and approved of.
The purpose of the original narratives had been to refute or prosecute accusations of fraud. But the efforts proved counterproductive. Whatever the public thought about Deane’s innocence, the unifying image in their mind of the captain of the Nottingham Galley was that of an emaciated castaway who had eaten human flesh. England had become a place of poison and torment for John Deane. He felt the pressing need to leave his homeland and resculpt himself on some foreign shore and unfamiliar landscape.
Part Two: Soldier
5
Peter Alekseevich
In 1697 an unusually tall Russian gentleman was employed at the Royal Dockyards in Greenwich as a carpenter. The tall man was an avaricious student, soaking up and ingesting any and every piece of knowledge he could acquire about ship construction. The Russian was clearly an aristocrat affecting a position below his station for some unannounced purpose, spending time among the rough and the skilful of Deptford, absorbing their trade. The Russian was a strange and contradictory figure. He had come to London with something of an entourage but had stayed in a tiny house overlooking the Thames. He seemed to want to be treated with a level of informality but often acted with a bizarre degree of entitlement. His adventures became the talk of London. He slept with a famous actress. He had his portrait painted by Godfrey Kneller. He claimed to some that he was a merchant seaman or else a Russian officer but sought and received an audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He went by the name of Peter Mikhailov. He was in fact Peter Alekseevich, Peter the Great, the tsar of Russia, travelling incognito throughout Western Europe studying its culture and maritime knowledge. It was the worst kept secret on the continent.
The young tsar had already spent time in Sweden and the Dutch Republic. He had worked in the shipyards of the Dutch East India Company. He had studied under the master shipbuilder Class Paul. He had met with William of Orange. The Dutch welcomed him. They played the same game the English would play of knowing precisely who he was but pretending that they didn’t know until it was obvious that he wanted them to know; then they would formally acknowledge his royal presence and accommodate him. Occasionally the tsar’s anonymity would be taken at face value to his detriment. When in Riga, Peter the Great offended the Swedes when he paid a suspicious amount of attention to their ships and tried to sketch their fortifications. He was escorted from the harbour under armed guard. Whether the authorities were genuinely unaware of the tsar’s identity or feigned ignorance in order to clip his wings is not certain. It was an error that they later would pay for in blood. But such confrontations were the exception during Peter the Great’s tour of Europe. The tsar was accommodated. He was entertained and indulged. Generally speaking, his hosts were charmed and intrigued by him. They were also somewhat patronising and condescending regarding him. Peter Alekseevich could call himself what he wanted, see whatever and whomever he liked and study what he pleased. It made no difference. He might dress like a Western European and assimilate its wisdom but wasn’t he just another gift-wrapped barbarian whose reach exceeded his grasp? It was a colossal misjudgement. Peter the Great returned to Russia with a harvest of maritime knowledge, experience and equipment. The English even gave him a ship, the Royal Transport, one of the best in Europe. During his tour the tsar would also visit Germany, Austria, Poland and Italy. He would utilise every scrap of information acquired. He would spend money and blood resculpting his vast land-hemmed nation into a formidable naval power. And every kingdom and administration that had given him assistance, even those that would technically consider him an ally, would regret the indulgence that they had once shown him.
Peter Alekseevich was 9 years old when he was crowned Peter I in 1682. The first decade or so of the young tsar’s reign was a compromise necessitated by the factions that sought to control the gigantic country. Peter was forced to rule in name only alongside his feeble half-brother Ivan under the governance of his indifferent half-sister Sophia, who was content to cede all her authority to her lover. It was a violent and divided season, but by the time Peter was 22 years old he had wrested power back from his sister and had had her exiled.
The young Peter the Great was a progressive; openly contemptuous of ossified institutions. He was wild and hedonistic. He was arguably agoraphobic. He had a love of the grotesque; dwarves were part of his entourage and he was obsessed with deformed curiosities. He was arrogant, yet there was a humility of industry about him. It was important to the tsar that he mastered any task he might order a subordinate to do. He was a man completely at odds with the heritage bequeathed him. The Russia of the late seventeenth century was a superstitious, backward and feudal nation. In the minds of most Western Europeans, Russia had barely trotted out of the Middle Ages. Peter the Great was an avid student of European ideas, architecture, fashion and warfare. He was determined to modernise Russia, use his formidable character to drag it, wailing if necessary, into a new era and command the attention and respect of the nations he had worshipped from afar. He forcibly reformed many of Russia’s great institutions. He changed the Russian calendar to make it consistent with that of Western Europe. He banned the wearing of beards; on the surface a flippant reform but one that struck at the heart of the church where facial hair took on a totemic significance. He sent the sons of aristocrats to Western Europe to be educated. But Peter the Great understood that, for Russia to make any impression on the world stage, it was essential that it establish a credible and powerful naval presence in the Baltic. Without a navy, trade would be impossible. Sweden controlled the Baltic and, by extension, trade in that part of Europe. Sweden needed to be dealt with.