In the Pacific and Arctic, 1854 had been a good year for the Russians; 1855 was if anything, even better. There were three allied squadrons deployed in the region. Two were British; Admiral Stirling off the China Coast, and Commodore Elliott at Hong Kong. The third, off Kamchatka, was a joint command under Rear-Admiral Bruce and Contre-Amiral Fourrichon. It was Bruce's responsibility to keep Rear Admiral Putiatin's local Russian squadron blockaded in Petropavlovsk and Encounter and Barracouta had been detached for this specific purpose. Nonetheless Putiatin astutely took advantage of a local April fog to slip away unnoticed, carrying the complete garrrison and all military equipment and stores.
On 15th May the joint allied fleet of nine British and Five French ships sailed into Petropavlovsk harbour, bent on revenge for the previous year's debacle. They found the whole place deserted except for three Americans - the inhabitants had fled when they saw the sails. Where were the Russians? They had sailed west-south-west, and were heading for the River Amur, tucked in behind the island of Sakhalin well north of Vladivostock, when Elliott's reconnaissance group, also heading that way on the 20th of May, found them holed up in de Castries Bay in the Gulf of Tartary. Elliott with only 'two or three' vessels felt himself outgunned by Putiatin with his two powerful Men o'War, though nothing else. The British commodore decided that there was safety in numbers; the nearest help was Bruce, but he was busy attacking Petropavlovsk, so he sent a frigate to Stirling who was 1500 miles away at the time. What then possessed Elliott to go after his frigate instead of shadowing the Russians seems unclear - maybe he had forgotten something in his message. But the upshot was that when Stirling arrived back at the bay, the Russians, now under Admiral Zavoiska, had (surprise surprise) gone, and were safely anchored in the River Amur, which had a really tricky estuary full of shoals and sandbanks through which the allies would be unable to follow them. No doubt they were laughing heartily into their vodka!
There were other amazingly long voyages by allied squadrons, where the commanders simply seemed to be acting on wild hunches or demented tip offs. Fourrichon and Bruce crossed the entire North Pacific to the remote island of Sitka off the coast of Alaska, then belonging to Russia. It was a neutral port for the British, via a treaty of the Hudson Bay company, but the cunning plan was that the French were at liberty to engage the Russians. The only snag was that there were no Russians there, nor had there ever been.
