Vasily Merkushov
Capt (1st Rank) Vasily Aleksandrovich Merkushov was born in 1884 and entered the Naval Cadet Corps as a midshipman at age 14. By 1905, he was in the Russian Navy’s fledging new submarine service and, by 1911 had conducted the first dives under the ice as commander of the submarine Кефаль. The Great War saw him in command of the sub Okun in the Baltic which famously bent its periscope in an attack on the German cruiser Augsburg. He later survived a ramming in his tiny boat by the battleship Wittelsbach that left him with life long spinal problems. Cashiered after the Revolution, he found his way to Odessa by November 1918 and cast his lot with the Whites, commanding a naval detachment ashore and the auxiliary cruiser Tsarevich Georgyin the Azov Sea. He was at the helm of the steamship Kharaks during the evacuation of the Don Cossacks from Kerch in November and Wrangels ultimate withdrawl to Constantinople then spent the next two years shuttling assorted Russian exile craft from Constantinople to Bizerte and Marseille. Settling in Paris once the White Fleet was liquidated, he wrote several books and articles on Russian naval operations and remained active in exile organizations. He passed there in 1949, aged 64.