Background
Nikolai Essen was born on December 11, 1860, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire.
Nikolai Essen was born on December 11, 1860, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire.
Essen graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1880 and after a two-year foreign cruise, attended the engineering department of the Nikolayev Naval Academy from 1883 to 1886. He was commissioned as lieutenant in 1891, and served with the Russian Pacific Fleet from 1892 to 1896, and with the Russian Mediterranean Squadron from 1897.
He returned to the Far East in 1902 to command a cruiser, and the war against Japan brought him speedy promotion. After distinguishing himself in the conflict's first naval engagements, Essen received command of a battleship at the unusually tender age of forty-four. His calls for offensive strikes against the Japanese fleet went unheard, as timid and indecisive naval leaders at Port Arthur lapsed into fatal inactivity. As the enemy besieged the Russian stronghold, Essen was shifted to shore duty. He directed the defense of the crucial Tiger Peninsula, guarding the entrance to the harbor. When the Russian defense collapsed in January 1905, Essen was taken prisoner. His wartime exploits had marked him for higher command, however, and he arrived home to a hero's welcome and to promotion to the rank of captain.
By 1908 Essen was a rear admiral, his elevation in recognition of his success in leading the First Mine Division of the Baltic Fleet and his performance in the 1908 maneuvers. From 1909 until his death he com-manded the entire Baltic Fleet, enjoying the reputation of the navy's most capable admiral.
Essen found his main assignment from 1909 until the outbreak of World War I to consist of preparing Russia's Baltic defenses to stand up to an assault by the superior forces of the German navy. A constant nightmare for Russia's military leaders was an enemy amphibious landing in the Gulf of Finland, followed by a lightning attack on St. Petersburg. Essen responded by placing extensive mine fields at the entrance to the gulf and within the gulf as well; the latter he combined with carefully placed coastal artillery batteries. Essen demanded and, in August 1912, received control over the coastal fortresses defending the gulf. But the energetic commander detested the passive role his fleet seemed destined to play. He insisted on training his officers and crews in offensive operations. Rather than bobbing at anchor behind mine fields, Essen's Baltic Fleet in the years before 1914 was more frequently to be found at sea for long periods, practicing its skills in all seasons and temperatures. In the midst of this prewar activity, Essen (in 1913) received his promotion to admiral.
The outbreak of World War I in August 1914 found Essen's fleet in its prepared defensive posture. Given German naval superiority, especially in battleships, this appeared inevitable. Even the German decision to concentrate in the North Sea to face Great Britain thus narrowing the odds against Russia in the Baltic did not strike an offensive spark in Essen's superiors. Russian inactivity seemed doubly assured when the Baltic Fleet was placed under the control of the army general commanding the area around St. Petersburg. Putting the fleet at the disposal of the Sixth Army at the start of the conflict seemed to chain Essen and his ships to the defense of the capital.
The admiral dutifully kept his large ships safe at anchor. But with the assistance of aggressive younger officers like Captain Kolchak, Admiral von Essen set his cruisers and destroyers to work in offensive mine-laying operations. The long, dark nights of the winter, 1914/1915, permitted Essen's ships to slip southward, mining the approaches of Danzig and striking traffic between the Kiel Canal and the German Baltic ports. But for the caution imposed on him by army leaders, Essen would doubtless have moved still further; he tried, but failed, to get permission to launch cruiser raids to snap the sea link between Sweden's iron mines and German industry.
By the time of his death on May 20, 1915, Essen had established offensive mining operations as the edge of Russia's naval sword in the Baltic. Essen s immediate successors Admiral V. A. Kanin and Admiral A. I. Nepenin followed the same basic pattern of operations, but without Essen's driving energies and fierce aggressiveness. The March Revolution of 1917, however, turned the Baltic Fleet from a fighting unit into a storm center of political unrest. The most violent disturbances took place on shore and on the battleships that had stood for so long without an enemy to confront them. Essen's destroyers and other smaller vessels remained manned and ready for at least part of the revolutionary year. But it seems unlikely even Essen could have held the bitter, idle, and politicized crews of the capital ships in order as the revolution dismantled the Baltic Fleet.