Quickly absorbing lessons learnt from the allies' 1854 expedition into the Baltic, the Russians had not only strengthened their major fortresses but had thickened up the land forces presence considerably. From Polangen on the Courland coast roughly at the bottom of the map to Torneo at the top of the gulf of Bothnia, there were now 170 thousand troops deployed. A Corps of Observation consisting of Cossacks and Bashkirs had been set up and the whole coastline was linked by telegraph allowing any enemy incursion to be instantly reported. There were now 60 thousand troops in the Kronstadt - St Petersburg area. Dundas had to tell the Admiralty that he couldn't attack Kronstadt given the forces at his disposal.
Napier wouldn't have got away with it, but Dundas did - ironically, had the fleet had the shallow draught armoured floating batteries requested by Napier, they would have passed above the mines and at least carried out an effective bombardment. But they sailed away, to the derision of the watching St Petersburgers, including US Ambassador Seymour, quick to highlight reports of allied atrocities against neighbouring fishing villages. These, including allegations of getting close enough under a flag of truce to slaughter civilians, were never satisfactorily refuted.
Matters came to a head when some captured Finnish merchant seamen were taken ashore at Hangoe-udd from HMS Cossack allegedly under flag of truce. Instead of dropping the Finns and rowing straight back, the British party decided to stroll along with them to the next village to take on fresh stores. This was incidentally not allowed under internationally agreed truce provisions, nor were the muskets and considerable stocks of ammunition in the whaler. The party ran into a Russian ambush and were all either killed, injured, or taken prisoner, save one mulatto seaman who got back to tell the tale. There was a collossal rumpus afterwards as to who was at fault - the Cossack should have been flying a white flag but wasn't, and the upshot was a restriction on the agreeed locations where flags of truce would be honoured. Strangely such incidents were a feature of both Baltic campaigns, though never in the Crimea or Sea of Azov. Trevor Royle in his authoritative study of the War interestingly advances the theory that the British Navy had become intensely frustrated by the promise and expectation of major action which never materialised.
Meanwhile much aggressive spirit was dissipated by Captain Yelverton's little raider unit of two frigates and a gun boat, which was creating a fair amount of havoc mainly on the north east side of the Gulf of Finland. The formula was a sound one - cruise along the coast away from population centres until you found a fort, which usually meant it was guarding isolated military installations, stores depots, ship light repair yards and the like. Go in all guns blazing, and either you would get seen off by a hot reception - otherwise there would be no return fire, or it would soon cease, meaning that the Russians had withdrawn. You were then free to go ashore and wreak whatever mayhem your mood of the day dictated. You might limit your looting and burning to military targets or you might include civilian homes as well. This type of independant roving commission was tailormade for the traditional freewheeling British mariner and they were good at it. Overall the damage to the Russian war effort was minimal but it caused intense irritation to them out of all proportion - conversely it was good propaganda for the allies and enjoyed by their public back home.
