Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past Wirral History Foreign graves in Flaybrick.

Russian grave in Flaybrick and wall plaque of Dutchman. Wonder what the story is behind these?

Question is, was the Vlastant here or was the lad plucked from the water by a British ship and he was brought here and later died.

Well the war was well over by then Bert plus Russia had been out of it for a lot longer. Perhaps they were something to do with the White Russians fighting the Bolsheviks? Could have been the flu epidemic?

He would have been buried at sea if our lot picked him up I would have thought?

The name on the first grave in Cyrillic reads "Midshipman Edward Paul", if that's any help. Strange name for a Russian! Perhaps he was actually local...

Not if he was still alive, thankfully

Perhaps this is him?

Aye Bert, should have read it properly. Must look into this one a bit further if possible. Intriguing and like something out of a spy mystery if the same bloke.

He is not on the CWGC site so couldn't have been British. Assume that is just the death registration Bert and they have just given the equivalent of the English name. Don't think they could do that though, could they?

In Cyrillic, Russian alphabet to us mere mortals, we can't do a search, so theorising, it would cause trouble for officialdom for ever more if it wasn't recorded in English. I bet there will be a note of it (Translated) some where.

The Vlastni or Vlastnyi was a 312-ton Vnimatelni-class torpedo boat destroyer built for the Russian Navy at Le Havre in France in 1901 as the Kefal. She served in the 2nd Destroyer Flotilla of the 1st Pacific Squadron during the Russo-Japanese War, and formed part of the fleet defending Port Arthur in 1904. When Port Arthur fell to the Japanese, many surviving Russian ships took refuge in neutral ports, Vlastni arriving at Chefoo in China in January 1905, where she was disarmed and interned. During World War I Vlastni operated in the White Sea area, where she was badly damaged in a gun battle with two German submarines in late 1916. She officially became part of the Arctic Sea Flotilla in 1917.

During British Navy operations in the Baltic in support of the White Russians against the Bolsheviks in late 1918, it appears that Vlastni and another destroyer called the Grozovoi were captured; the Defence Yearbook of 1920 records the vessels as being "in British hands." If they were interned at Birkenhead, presumably there might be something about them in the local papers of the time. Both destroyers were eventually returned to the Russians after the end of the Civil War, and Vlastni was sold to Germany for scrap in May 1921.