O’Connor updated Deane on what he heard about William Hay and why he was back in Russia. He knew that Hay had given his host Henry Stirling new instructions. O’Connor believed that Stirling had been told to ‘reside at the Russian court’. O’Connor had heard half morsels of conversation about ‘twelve ships of war’ that were ‘to be bought in Russia for the use of the Pretender’. The money for the purchase was put up by the papacy and by Spain. O’Connor told Deane he would try and get more information but encouraged him that if that was not possible, what was missing would almost certainly be contained in the letters he intended to deliver to Deane. O’Connor funnelled more rumours about William Hay and other enemies to John Deane. Hay’s official reason for buying Russian ships was as a representative of the Mississippi Company. Hay and Stirling had been at Kronslot shortly after Deane’s departure and had visited most of the ships in harbour there. O’Connor told Deane that he believed Golovkin was to be sent to Stockholm as an envoy. O’Connor finally confirmed what Deane had long suspected, that the Jacobites had known he was coming to Russia and had elaborately prepared to frustrate him the moment he entered their territory.
Deane naturally had his doubts about O’Connor. Deane’s enemies were not stupid. Deane had considered the fact that O’Connor might well be acting ‘the double part’ – spying on Deane for the Jacobites by pretending to betray the cause. But having weighed all the circumstances, Deane believed that O’Connor’s overtures were genuine. What finally convinced Deane was the intense determination O’Connor had shown to return to Ireland and live there for the rest of his days.
The day before Deane was due to leave St Petersburg, O’Connor contacted him. He told Deane that William Hay was set to leave Russia ten days hence. Deane told O’Connor to time his own departure ‘for at least fourteen days after’. But if Hay stayed then O’Connor was to leave ten or twelve days after Deane.
It was time to go. John Deane’s luggage was eventually returned to him the day before he was due to leave.
14
That Violent Spirit Now Ceasing
John Deane left St Petersburg on 22 June in the early hours of the morning. He paid a final visit to his old friend Apraxin. Once again the two men drank coffee together and talked. Their conversation was conducted in the presence of Apraxin’s secretaries. Both men lamented the role the Factory had played in evicting Deane from Russia. They mutually acknowledged the sad truth that the Factory could not have operated with such impunity without Russian patronage.
The conversation had been relatively formal and looked like it had drawn to a close. John Deane rose to leave. Apraxin stopped him. He asked Deane if he had anything he wished to say to him alone, at which the Admiral’s secretaries withdrew from the room. John Deane spoke for a while, justifying his conduct in Russia. He placed immense weight on the Factory’s attempts to blacken his name by invoking his court martial as the significant element in his defeat. Apraxin expressed regret that Deane’s past had been used in such a manner. He reassured Deane that had he been present in St Petersburg he would have ‘endeavoured to prevent it’. Apraxin believed that what had transpired over the last few weeks would not damage Deane’s reputation back home.
‘You have the dismission that I gave you?’ Apraxin asked.
‘Yes,’ Deane replied.
Deane told Apraxin that the ‘dismission’ to which the admiral referred, the papers that the admiral had given him when Peter the Great had expelled him from Russia, had been shown to both Viscount Townsend and the king himself.
‘Well then, they will certainly believe me to be as good a judge of you as an officer, as any that shall write against you.’
Apraxin asked Deane if he could do anything for him.
Deane asked Apraxin to think well of George I and take Townsend’s message as sincere. He wished for Apraxin to ‘continue his kindness’ to the king and ‘not easily credit’ Jacobite rumours that over-exaggerated their support in Great Britain. Deane reassured Apraxin that ‘everything was entirely easy and calm in Great Britain,’ but admitted that as far as a minor Jacobite presence in his country was concerned, ‘the spirit of that party was never quite distinguished’.
Apraxin stood up. He told Deane that he would be England’s friend in working towards reconciliation. Apraxin ended the conversation on a note of warning. He seemed to classify himself as part of an older, nobler stock of Russian that prized peace with Great Britain, but he cautioned Deane that ‘there are younger men that have different ways of thinking’. Apraxin saluted Deane and the two men parted company.
John Deane left Kronslot on 23 June. Aboard the ship were two friends of Deane’s, Captain Commodore Lane and Richard Brown, the master builder who had turned Deane’s beloved Samson into such a formidable warship. John Deane also shared passage with certain officers who he believed had come aboard ‘chiefly to satisfy their curiosity’ about him ‘and to make observations’; men Deane suspected ‘should be very glad to accompany me out of Russia’.
John Deane was headed for Stockholm to inform Stephen Poyntz of ‘the state of affairs’. He continued his journey by boat and was put ashore at Gothland on 5 July. Deane ordered that his baggage be delivered to a Mr Tighe. Deane rode to Wisby looking for a vessel that could transport him to Stockholm. His travelling alias was that of a merchant. Deane needed to move quickly but couldn’t find any commercial vessel that wasn’t departing ‘in several days’ time’. The only swift option was to try and persuade a fishing boat to take him onboard. No fisherman would transport him so long as he was alone and pretending to be a merchant. They would transport him if he could drum up a few more paying passengers to make it worth their while. Deane tried and failed. He dropped the pretence of being a merchant and ‘declared himself a seaman’. One of the fishing boats welcomed him aboard. Deane left Wisby on 8 July and was set ashore at Aiver two days later. It took two more boat journeys to get him to Stockholm. He met Poyntz where he was given travel documents for the rest of the journey. Deane wrote to his confidantes in Russia instructing them to send a messenger to Poyntz in the event of an emergency.
Deane arrived in Hamburg on 19 July. He left instructions with the man he had ordered to meet O’Connor to look after the Irishman when he eventually arrived. Deane sat down and wrote a letter to O’Connor reassuring him that he would do everything in his capacity to secure the pardon the Irishman craved. John Deane left Hamburg and travelled on to Hanover. He arrived in Hanover on 19 July.
Deane wrote his account of the short brutal tenure in Kronslot and St Petersburg. He charted the twists and turns of his adventures with Apraxin, Golovkin, O’Connor and the Factory. But Deane also included his observations on the state of Russia under Catherine I. It seemed a vastly different country from the one he had served not that long ago. It was a more dissolute place than he remembered and seemed even more subject to factions than it had been under the tsar. The new Russia was a place afflicted by a strange inertia and a sense of rapid decay. Yet despite this, Russia was drunk on confidence. Deane believed that this had more to do with foreign perceptions of Russian strength than the sad reality of the state of their navy. The three ships that Deane had observed in Elsinor had caused panic among the Danes. At dinner with Apraxin, John Deane had witnessed Prince Menishikoff launch into a ruthless broadside at the king of Denmark’s expense for being so frightened of the three Russian ships that he had forced his own people to work on the Sabbath in preparation for an anticipated Russian onslaught.