Editor’s Office of the Russkiy Mir Portal
The Russian Ministry of Defence sent aircrafts with military medical professionals and medical equipment to residents of Italy, where the situation with the coronavirus has been the most acute. It is appropriate to recall today another, kind of forgotten chapter of the feat by Russian navy sailors who were not far from the Italian city of Messina in 1908, when the horrible earthquake took place there.
On December 28, 1908, there was an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 centered in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the Apennine Peninsula. As the result, the cities of Messina, Reggio Calabria and Palmi were destroyed. That earthquake is still considered to be the strongest in Europe: according to various sources, one to two hundred thousand people died that time.
Russian ship in the harbour of Messina, 1908. Photo credit: topwar.ru
Those were the days when Russian warships - two battleships, the Tsesarevich and the Slava, and two cruisers, the Bogatyr and the Admiral Makarov - were in the Mediterranean Sea for military training exercises. What is more, their crews consisted mainly of recent graduates of the Marine Corps of Peter the Great and the Engineering Institute. Such composition can be explained by the critical need to train personnel for the command squad of warships after the end of the Russo-Japanese War, which had weakened the navy. The two-month exercises in the Mediterranean were to provide yesterday’s cadets with required experience.
Here is how the midshipman Alexander Manstein describes the eve of the earthquake in The Gangut victory and other feats by sailors and ships of the Russian navy (St. Petersburg, 1914): “On the night of December 16, everything was calm in the squad. The crew rested after a hard day. The officers had long gone to their cabins, and only the watch keepers were awake. Wonderful southern night, which can also be experienced at the Black Sea only, wandered over Sicily. Silence held sway in the air.
Suddenly, at about three o'clock, a far-away rumble was heard, and there was a blow as if a huge mine had exploded somewhere in the distance; soon after that – there was the second and then the third ones. After some time, a kind of unusual dead swell entered the bay, rocking the ships. Everything was so strange and unexpected that at first no one could figure out what had happened. It was clear that something unusual had occurred and it was not so far away; Etna must be preparing some kind of surprise.”
But in the morning the terrible news came: there was a horrible earthquake in southern Italy and Sicily. Residential buildings were destroyed, many people were killed; local authorities were absolutely powerless and addressed the Russian admiral Vladimir Litvinov, who commanded the detachment, with the plea for help.
“The admiral immediately gathered commanders and announced that in the evening the detachment would unmoor to be in Messina by dawn. The decision was enthusiastically welcomed by crews on the ships. It is difficult to describe the feelings that everyone experienced at those moments. There was deep compassion, as well as sincere desire to help unfortunate Italians, whose hospitality the detachment had been enjoying, as much as they could,” writes the midshipman Manstein. And at the end of the day, the Russian sailors learnt horrible details: the city of Messina had been destroyed almost to the ground, almost all the inhabitants had been buried under the ruins.
Ruined Messina. Photo credit: salik.biz
“Distance from the port of Augusta to Messina is about 80 miles. Making 11 to 12 knots, the detachment could reach the Strait by four in the morning. That night there was an unusual movement on ships, which continued far after midnight; no one was up to sleep. In saloons, officers discussed the order of work and assigned responsibilities: they divided the crew into groups, calculated required entrenching tools, which were to be used in actual service for the first time after the war, and made up the general action plan.
Work in ship hospitals was in full swing. All medical forces were mobilized, emergency reserves were taken out of the stowage compartment; applications, bandages, ointments, and ablution solutions were being prepared; long story short, doctors and their assistants of all ranks switched to martial law, anticipating great and serious work.
Naval cadets were also extremely active in their premises. For a time, all household inconveniences and service-related troubles, which used to overshadow serene mood of this glorious youth, were forgotten. Daily interests paled into insignificance, being superseded by the single feeling of youthful impatience and longing for the great cause of humanity,” shares the midshipman in his book.
The closer Russian ships approached Messina, the more horrible view opened up to the sailors. There were collapsed walls, fallen domes of churches, ruined houses... There were fires burning away in some places. And small groups of people huddled by the water, right along the port. Terrifying silence in the city and port was particularly striking.
That sense of disaster seemed to be transmitted even to the ships - everyone spoke in a low voice and followed commands silently. Many took off their caps and crossed themselves. And as soon as the ships anchored, the first teams of command squad immediately went ashore. On the shore, the situation was even more saddening.
“Everything was totally ruined. Palaces and hotels on the embankment, which seemed rather preserved from a distance, in fact, almost all were completely destroyed: only the facades survived, and the rest - roofs, ceilings, floors and some walls - collapsed and formed a pile of horrible shapeless debris having buried underneath all people who had been caught by the earthquake inside.
The streets were congested with stones and whole walls that had fallen across them. Many houses turned into piles of gray rubbish with fragments of rafters, beams and furniture protruding from them. In some of buildings, only one wall collapsed, and the remaining three, as well as part of the floors and ceilings, survived, so the whole furnishing of rooms on three and four floors was visible just as on the stage of the theater.
In the midst of sheer ruins, no one could be seen; all those able to move got out and crowded together on the embankment. It was painful to look at those unfortunate ones. They were all dressed in a haphazard manner: the clothes they had first grabbed running out of the houses were what they had on.
And majority of them had horror and suffering or despair on their faces. Others, as if they had petrified, sat or stood with motionless, senseless faces. Some, who had apparently lost their minds, muttered something, gestured, and sobbed, then laughed. There were few who kept certain presence of mind and tried to help the most helpless ones.
All those things caught my eye in the first minute, but were forgotten right away - there was no time to stop over it.
Our detachment was the first to come to Messina, and it was the first to help those unfortunate people who had been buried alive; the survivors also needed to be taken care of,” the Russian officer describes those events.
Russian sailors clear the debris in Messina. Photo credit: wikipedia.org
Russian sailors immediately set to work. Dressing stations and a kind of hospital were organized right at the site, and injured people were brought there. It is clear that there was a great shortage of doctors and medical aidmen; so officers and sailors took care of the injured people and applied dressings for them. Tables for doctors to provide first aid, perform operations and apply bandages were set up in the open air. Many hundreds of lives were saved by that very immediate help, even if it had not been performed in the most thorough way.
Well, the other part of the crew worked on the ruins, trying to pull out and save as many people as possible. Russian sailors made their way to places that seemed impossible to get to; they cleared the debris with their hands, risking their own lives. Alas, some of them did not manage to get out of the debris and died along with those they were carrying.
Eyewitnesses reported that the Russian sailors had worked almost around the clock, refusing food and rest - they had to be forced to go to ships by orders. It was not only about saving those injured and calming down people frantic with grief, but also about stopping looters. The earthquake destroyed the local prison, and hundreds of prisoners scattered in ruins in attempt to profit from someone else’s misery. The Italian reporter testified: “... Retaking the safe of the Sicilian bank from the bandits, the Russian sailors had to fight a group of robbers, which outnumbered them three times. Six sailors were injured.”
Here is what the commander of the Tsesarevich battleship wrote to the commander of the detachment Rear Admiral Vladimir Litvinov: “... The engineer officer of the ship under my command, junior captain Fedorov exposed his life to very serious danger while digging out a man who had been under ruins of a building in Messina - he selflessly crawled into the dug cave, and then, being covered by collapsed debris, he was luckily saved only due to the fact that the adjacent wall collapsed in the opposite direction. If the wall collapsed in the direction of the ruined building, the cave where junior captain Fedorov was would not withstand the load, and he would be crushed. Taking into account such a selfless and humanitarian act, I ask Your Excellency to solicit honouring him with the medal for the salvation of those who were dying.”
Russian ships transported hundreds of injured people to neighbouring cities. There, the crew purchased dressings, disinfectants and immediately returned to Messina.
Italian newspapers quoted locals who used to say about Russian sailors the following: “They were sent to us by Heaven, not the sea!”
Later, Italian doctors wrote to the Russian minister of maritime affairs: “... We lack words to describe Your Excellency the care, more than the fraternal one, that we were surrounded with... Russian sailors inscribed their names with golden letters for eternal gratitude of whole Italy... Long live Russia!!!” In total, Russian sailors provided helped to about 2,400 affected people.
Monument to Russian sailors in Messina. Photo credit: topwar.ru
Grateful Messina did not forget its saviors. Two years after the earthquake, a gold medal was cast with money raised by local residents. It was presented to the commander of the cruiser Aurora, who came to Messina harbour in March 1910. Also, the statuary of Russian sailors saving people from debris of buildings was installed with the money of the inhabitants of the city. Messina preserved names of the streets in honour of the Russian sailors: “The Street of Russian Heroes-Sailors of 1908”, “The Street of Russian Sailors”, “The Street of Russian Sailors of the Baltic Squadron”.
Later on, in Saint Petersburg, while shaking hands with Rear Admiral Litvinov, commander of the squadron, Emperor Nicholas II has defined the actions of the sailors with the following words: “Admiral, in few days you and your sailors did more than my diplomats had accomplished for my entire emperorship...”
