Circassian Ships in the Black Sea

The Russo-Circassian War. The Battle of Gagra (1838)

In February 1838, Admiral M. P. Lazarev reported to the Chief of the Main Naval Staff, A. S. Menshikov, about a fierce naval battle between the lugger “Glubokiy” and four Circassian galleys near the Gagra fortification.

For the Circassians (Adyghe), military campaigns were an integral part of their traditional worldview. However, their military enterprises were not limited exclusively to cavalry raids — their maritime expeditions have been known since antiquity. Circassian galleys, which the Greeks called “camarae,” equipped with a square or lateen sail, ploughed the waters of the entire Black Sea basin, attacking coastal cities and entire kingdoms.

According to the testimony of the prominent mid-15th-century Byzantine chronicler Laonikos Chalkokondyles: “Zygian (Circassian) pirates under the leadership of Artabil captured Trebizond in 1458, killed the Greek emperor, his son, and 300 subjects, and carried out a plundering raid deep into the Empire of Trebizond.” Maritime raids remained just as traditional an occupation for the Circassians as overland military campaigns to near and distant lands.

As the researcher A. B. Snisarenko notes in his work “Rulers of the Ancient Seas”: “Tribes of Achaeans and Zygians inhabited the mountainous coast of the North Caucasus, which was almost devoid of convenient harbours. These were tribes of professional pirates. Their fame was terrible… From Phasis to the Sindian Harbour, not a single vessel could feel safe — this is an indisputable fact. Pirates attacked merchant ships, plundered nearby cities, and even made quite prolonged raids into the southern and western regions of the Black Sea. The rulers of the coastal states provided them with anchorages and markets, concluded agreements with them, and bought the plundered goods.”

Circassian ships sometimes reached truly gigantic proportions and could accommodate a crew of up to 150 men. But most often these were vessels carrying 40–80 warriors on board. According to the Swiss researcher Frédéric Dubois de Montpéreux, the Circassians had two main types of galleys: keeled and flat-bottomed. The keeled vessels accommodated 50 to 60 people, while the lighter flat-bottomed ones held 18–24 people (Frédéric Dubois de Montpéreux, “Journey Around the Caucasus”).