Deane described the early days of Peter the Great’s new capital in his document. The importance of the city to the tsar was paramount. Deane believed that in the city’s infancy the tsar ‘would have willingly condescended to deliver up all his conquests, upon condition of reserving to himself St Petersburg’. Deane’s attitude toward the city seemed to be one of incredulity, not quite believing that anybody could have the hubris to undertake such a building project. He described the ground around St Petersburg as a ‘morass and wilderness, producing little or nothing for the support of man’. In Deane’s opinion the ground needed to be cultivated in order to produce food for the city’s population but the tsar forbade it, prohibiting ‘the cutting up of the least tree or shrub within twenty, and in some parts within thirty miles thereof’. Deane noted the city’s indefensibility. According to Deane, St Petersburg, ‘being built on several islands and standing on a vast extent of ground, will not possibly admit of fortifications’. Deane noted the city’s flammability, St Petersburg buildings being mostly made of wood. According to Deane, St Petersburg’s best chance of defending itself lay in ‘rendering the avenues impassable’. In making this observation Deane afforded himself another opportunity to assault the character of the Russian military. He reasoned that such a tactic suited ‘admirably well with the temper of the Russian soldiery, ever reputed better at ambuscade, or defence of a place where they lie covered, than in the bravery of an open assault’. In saying this, John Deane was effectively calling the Russian soldiers cowards.
Deane wrote down his thoughts on the function and deployment of the Russian navy now that the war with Sweden had ended. In peacetime the priority of Peter the Great was to establish trade treaties, ‘to obtain the privilege of exporting, in his own ships, the product of his own dominions’. Then there was the problem of England and Holland. Now that the war was over the two technically friendly nations were likely to take offence at the fact that Peter the Great was ‘victualling his ships at much cheaper rates than they’. There was also the question of monopoly. The spoils of the recent war had ‘drawn in a manner, the whole commerce of his dominion into the Baltic; and necessitated the general system of Russian imports and exports’. Deane suspected that the tsar would exempt his own ships from paying tolls. Peter the Great also had plans to connect his provinces internally by canals, further improving trade. The tsar’s next great horizon was to ‘grasp into his hands the Persian trade’. Deane concluded this section of the document by predicting that the tsar wanted, ‘a port in the hithermost parts of the Baltic for the bringing these designs to maturity’, but encouraged whoever might read his report that the tsar’s plans were ‘as yet but in embryo…’.
Deane wrote of rumours of the tsar’s plans to send his fleet to the Mediterranean, the possibility of further conflict with the Turks, the benefit of such a campaign to a still inexperienced navy and the danger to Peter the Great of mass desertions once his men saw, ‘the preferable standards of living in other countries…’. Deane gave details of Russian galley building and timber transportation. He wrote how frequently Peter the Great would need to replace his ships to maintain its strength. Deane conceded the strong possibility that Peter the Great could indeed build a navy to match and dominate the Swedes and the Danes. John Deane compared the command structures of the Russian navy with the English navy. He foresaw problems for the tsar when Russians were promoted above their levels of competence, an endemic problem in the Russian navy. Deane appeared to abate his blanket denunciation of Russians for a sentence or two by conceding that, ‘There are some men of capacity among the Russians,’ but couldn’t resist stating that, ‘foreigners ever desire to leave ’em ashore…’. Deane believed that the Russians struggled to sail well in bad weather and that an ‘inferior force’ could ‘attack and destroy’ them if they engaged the Russians during a ‘strong gale of wind’.
Deane seemed be to working up a head of steam for a page-long rant about Russian incompetence. The specific context for the rant was the ill treatment and humiliation of any foreigner who had the nerve to gainsay the tsar in matters of naval wisdom regarding handling a ship in foul weather. Deane’s riposte gave full vent to the barely suppressed hatred he felt for his former paymasters and the nominally latent contempt he had for the majority of his peers, Russian cowardice and incompetence being the two frequent and recurrent gobs of venom spat by Captain John Deane from the pages of his document at Peter the Great’s indigenous subordinates:
And how much less will they be able to do it, after ten or twelve days’ continuance at sea, when many are seasick, or otherwise in ill state of health, and the rest thunderstruck with terror of an approaching engagement […] The officers from a sense of their people’s inexperience will be fearful of opening their ports or loosening their guns, lest by ill steerage, or other mismanagement, the sea run in at their portholes, or the guns break loose and endanger their sinking, especially among the Russians, whose known property is ever to recoil from danger, even when immediate presence of mind is requisite to repel an otherwise unavoidable ruin […] And even in calm moderate weather, when the people are in condition to behave something better, yet the enemy has great advantage through the badness of their powder; and commanders acquainted with the hazard they run, above all things dread the blowing up of their ships, through the fear, ignorance and confusion of the undisciplined multitude.
The storm in Deane seemed to blow itself out somewhat for the concluding pages of the document. Deane reported on the Russian ironworks, the peacetime fate of his own last great vessel, the Devonshire, which had become a transport ship for weapons, ammunition, wax and paper. He reported on details of disputes between officers regarding matters of advancement and pay. He wrote about building work, new ships, further disputations, strategy, deployment and trade. Deane concluded his document with a detailed inventory of the Russian fleet and its officers. His final observations of Peter the Great’s prospects as a naval superpower were sober and criticaclass="underline"
I am fully of the opinion though the number of his ships is increased, yet his seamen, properly so called, are not more numerous, within these last four years. And the vast charge he is yearly at to discipline his men and keep his fleet to its present height, whilst or no service is done him in return of such expense, much inevitably exhaust his treasures and render him less formidable. All future designs and expectations must abide in a state of inexecution till his affairs in Asia stand on a less precarious footing; and should he in turn meet with adverse fortune, it would past all peradventure ruin many if not most of his undertakings.
It was a back-handed compliment to Peter the Great. John Deane acknowledged that the Russian navy, for better or worse, was held together by the industry and will of the tsar. The project’s success would perish if its architect were to die suddenly. It was an astute and prophetic observation. Deane’s once prospective saviour turned author of his present torment, died an agonising death a year later from an infected bladder. The potency of his navy died with him.
But where was John Deane in his own document? And to what extent did the ‘Shadow Man of Boon Island’ truly reveal himself?
Unlike his accounts of the New England shipwreck, John Deane relegated himself to a supporting player in the wider narrative of Peter the Great’s maritime adventure. Deane did not put his name to the document. The authorship was ascribed to ‘A Contemporary Englishman’. Deane appeared to give no more weight to his own exploits than he did to numerous others that sailed and fought alongside him. He referred to himself in the third person. He seemed to so divorce himself from the sailor named John Deane he was writing about as to give no indication that the author and the sailor were one and the same person. To confuse matters even further, he made passing reference to another John Deane who worked for Peter the Great as a master builder. Long after he had died, future readers of the anonymous document would assume that the two John Deane’s were the same person. Deane relayed his own campaigning career with a detachment that seemed to indicate the desire for anonymity. Yet Deane was careful to justify his role in the Kronslot disaster and made sure that the reader understood where the blame ought to lie. Deane also omitted crucial information about himself. There was no mention in the document of the incident at the Gulf of Danzig where Deane was forced to hand over the two merchantmen to the English and the Dutch. There was no mention of the subsequent court martial and Deane’s commuted sentence transporting timber from Kazan. The only reference to John Deane’s expulsion from Russia was oblique. In his final inventory of all the commanding officers that had served the tsar in the Baltic campaign, Deane listed his own name. The entry simply reads: ‘Deane, John; England; Captain, dismissed in 1722.’