Mutiny: The True Events That Inspired The Hunt for Red October

THE MUTINIES

On the fourteenth of June 1905 the crew of a brand-new Russian battleship that was engaged in a live fire exercise off the Black Sea island of Tendra murdered the captain and most of the officers and took over the ship. This was at a time in Tsarist Russia in which the people were in open rebellion against their government. Fighting was going on in all the major cities in the east. And in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Odessa workers were on strike.

The ship had taken on a load of rotten meat, crawling with maggots, and the men refused to eat it even after the doctor said it was okay. The captain ordered the crew mustered on deck, where he picked out several of the men to use as examples. He was going to have them shot to death for betraying a direct order.

The first mate ordered the guard to open fire, but he refused and the bloody mutiny began.

She was the battleship Knyaz Potemkin Tavrichesky, of which a famous movie was made in 1925. But hers wasn’t the only navy crew to mutiny during that year and the next two. There was the battleship

Georgiy Pobedonosets, the training ship Prut, the cruisers Ochakov and Pamyat Azova, and the destroyers Svirepy and Skory, among others.

The real reason behind all those mutinies was the same, and it wasn’t rotten meat. It was a rotten government. Change was coming.

What do a handful of men and officers aboard a warship think that they can accomplish against an entire nation, even one in turmoil?

Do they expect that their actions can make a difference?

The mutiny of the battleship Potemkin signaled the beginning of the end for the Tsarist Russian government, just as the mutiny aboard the frigate Storozhevoy signaled the beginning of the end for the Communist Russian government.

It was a rebirth of sorts for the crew, for the ship, and for the nation.