Docks at Sebastopol with ruins of Fort St Paul, 1855 (w/c over pencil)

Docks at Sebastopol with ruins of Fort St Paul, 1855. Watercolour and pencil by William Simpson (1823-1899), Crimean War, 1855. The six dry docks were the centrepiece of the Russian naval base of Sevastopol. Their destruction would be the single most important act in preventing the resurgence of any threat from Russia’s Black Sea fleet after the Crimean War (1854-1856). At the end of December 1855 and throughout the following January, a series of mines were exploded which obliterated them completely. Reproduced as Plate 26 in Simpson’s ‘Seat of War in the East’, Second Series, published by Paul and Dominic Colnaghi, London, 1856.