Battle of Kinburn (1855)

Battle of Kinburn

Illustration of the ironclad batteries bombarding Kinburn

Date	17 October 1855
Location	tip of the Kinburn Peninsula
Result	Allied victory

Belligerents

French Empire

United Kingdom

Russian Empire

Commanders and leaders

Armand Joseph Bruat

Edmund Lyons

Maxim Kokhanovitch

Strength

10 ships of the line
3 ironclad batteries
8,000 soldiers

1,500 soldiers
80 guns

The Battle of Kinburn was a combined land-naval engagement during the final stage of the Crimean War. It took place on the tip of the Kinburn Peninsula (on the south shore of the Dnieper River estuary in what is now Ukraine) on 17 October 1855. During the battle, a combined fleet of vessels from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy bombarded Russian coastal fortifications after it had been besieged by an Anglo-French ground force. Three French ironclad batteries bore the brunt of the attack, which saw the main Russian fortress destroyed in an action that lasted about three hours.

The battle, although it was strategically insignificant and had little effect on the outcome of the war, is notable as the first time modern ironclad warships had been used in action. Although frequently hit, the French ships destroyed the Russian forts within three hours, suffering minimal casualties in the process. This battle convinced contemporary navies to abandon wooden warships and focus on armour plating, which instigated a naval arms race between the two victors that lasted for more than a decade.

In September 1854, the Anglo-French army that had been at Varna was ferried across the Black Sea and landed on the Crimean Peninsula. They then fought their way to the main Russian naval base on the peninsula, the city of Sevastopol, which they placed under siege. The Russian garrison eventually withdrew from the city in early September 1855, freeing the French and British fleets for other tasks. A discussion ensued over what target should be attacked next; the French and British high commands considered driving from the Crimea to Kherson and launching major campaigns in Bessarabia or the Caucasus. Instead, at the urging of French commanders, they settled on a smaller-scale operation to seize the Russian fort at Kinburn, which protected the mouth of the Dneiper. The British argued that to seize Kinburn without advancing to Nikolaev would only serve to warn the Russians of the threat to the port. Fox Maule-Ramsay, then the British Secretary of State for War, suggested that without a plan to exploit the capture of the fortress, the only purpose of the operation would be to give the fleets something to do.

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