Bono, Johnny Turk!
bay - it could be touch and go whether the guns on the warships would be able to aim effectively. To further help the attackers, there was a thick mist after dawn. The Russians were able to move some 32 pounders forward of their prepared positions and get their cavalry screen close to the Turkish fortifications undetected.
The battle opened with an opportunist cavalry advance by the Russian 1st Brigade of the Reserve Lancer Division and two sotnias of Cossacks on the Turkish left, along the line the Perekop Road. This area was only lightly held by Turkish infantry, but the Russians ran into such devastatingly accurate naval gunfire - the sea had moderated - from the British Valourous and Viper that the cavalry wheeled away in disarray. The stoical infantry, the Suzhdansky and Poltavsky Regiments, pressed on, but got pinned down by accurate fire from the mainly French force in the Couronne des Moulins, including grapeshot and canister from their guns, and they were forced to retire to their start lines.
A two hour artillery duel then followed. At hardly more than 700 metres range, damage to the defences was severe, but the Turks took heavy casualties unflinchingly and their artillery, some of it British officered, was creating equal havoc in the Russian ranks. A bizarre feel of a sporting contest was lent by the Tartar civilians packed on the flat roofs and enthusiastically cheering the defenders on. The fact that several Russian overshots swept a few roofs clean did not deter them in the least. The open ground between the batteries and the town was alive with frantic activity - ammunition and buckets of water carried up to the guns, wounded carried and dragged back into town. The pervasive chant 'Allah! Allah!'permeated through the cacophony and smoke of the deadly pyrotechnics of combat.
For a time it looked as if the battle would end in stalemate. General Khrulev again launched his cavalry against the Turkish left but two Lancaster shells from Viper, lethal against cavalry in the open, caused such carnage that the momentum of the charge was lost. As Omar Pasha sensed the Russian infantry moving across to mass on his right, he asked Captain Hastings on the Curacao, the senior Naval Officer, to redirect Viper to the right end of the bay. When Khrulev saw this he launched the Cavalry one more time on the town's left, but Valourous rate of
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