Colonel Eduard Totleben, a gifted Russian military engineer trained at the prestigious School of Engineering in Saint Petersburg, arrived in Sevastopol in summer, 1854, to oversee the improvement of the Black Sea port’s outdated defences. He was appalled at what he found. Little had been done over the past several decades to improve the city’s landward defences. Yet at the outset of the Crimean War it was just such a threat that had rapidly materialised when the British and French fleets suddenly appeared in the Black Sea, overwhelming the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
The old town of Sevastopol and the suburb of Karabel, where the dockyards and naval barracks were located, were protected on the landward side by a four-metre stone wall, but it was not strong enough to withstand a sustained artillery bombardment.
When it became apparent in July 1854 that large British and French armies planned to land on the Crimean Peninsula and strike out overland to capture the port, Totleben went to work to ensure the city’s defences could withstand a siege.
To his astonishment, Totleben found that the city’s arsenal contained neither sufficient building materials nor tools to improve the defences. He requested that these items be shipped to Sevastopol as quickly as possible. He also discovered that only about half of the cannon in the arsenal were serviceable. Added to all this, the garrison of 5,000 soldiers and 10,000 sailors
