Odessa was conquered by Potemkin, who ordered a town and fortress to be built there - though it was neither named nor started until after his death. When the Prince took the Ottoman fort of Hadjibey in 1789, he recognized that it was an outstanding and strategic site, ordered the old castle to be blown up and personally chose the site of the port and settlement. Work was to start immediately.
This was being done when he died, but the town was formally founded three years later by his protege Jose (Osip) de Ribas, the Spanish adventurer from Naples who had helped Orlov-Chesmensky kidnap 'Princess Tarak- anova'. 'General (later Admiral) de Ribas was accomplished in mind, artifice and talent, but no saint,' according to Langeron. His portrait by Lampi shows his foxy, ruthless and subtle face. In 1776, he married the illegitimate daughter of Catherine's friend and artistic supremo Ivan Betskoi, who had had an affair with the Empress's mother. They became one of the most politically adept couples in Petersburg. Henceforth, wherever the Prince was, Ribas was never far away. Always vigorous and competent, whether building Potemkin's ships, commanding his fleets or procuring his mistresses, Ribas joined Popov and Faleev as Potemkin's three superlative men of action.[42]
Catherine named the port after Odessos - the Ancient Greek town that was believed to be nearby - but she feminized it to Odessa. It remains one of the jewels of Potemkin's legacy.87
'I report that the first ship to be launched will be called the Glory of Catherine - Ekaterinoslav,' wrote Potemkin over-enthusiastically to his Empress. 'Please allow me to give it this name.' The name 'Ekaterinoslav' had become an obsession. Cities, ships and regiments groaned under its grandeur. This concerned the prudent Empress: 'Please don't give too grandiose names to the ships, lest such loud names become a burden to them ... Do what you like with the names but free the reins because it's better to be than to seem.'88 But Potemkin was not going to change Catherine's Glory even to protect the glory of Catherine at her own behest. So he ignored her request and, in September, proudly announced the launch from his Kherson shipyards of the sixty-six- gun ship-of-the-line named Catherine's Glory.39 This is a most characteristic exchange.[43]
The Prince was right to be excited because ships-of-the-line, those hulking floating fortresses with their rows of over forty or fifty guns, the same as some entire armies, were the eighteenth century's most prestigious weapons - the equivalent of aircraft carriers. (Catherine granted Potemkin the initial 2.4 million roubles to finance this on 26 June 1786.) The construction of a whole fleet of them has been compared by a modern historian to the cost and effort of a space programme. However, Potemkin's critics claim that the ships were rotten, if they were built at all. This was nonsense. Pole Carew carefully examined the shipbuilding in progress. There were three ships-of-the-line of sixty-six guns in an 'advanced state' while frigates of thirty and forty guns had already been launched. Four more keels were laid. The state was not the only shipbuilder there - Faleev was building his merchantmen too. Down at Gluboka, thirty-five versts towards the sea, there were already seven more frigates of between twenty-four and thirty-two guns. When Miranda, who had no European prejudices and broad military experience, visited five years later, he reported that neither the timber nor the design of the ships could be bettered and considered the workmanship of a better standard than those of either Spanish or French vessels. They were built, he said, offering the highest praise one could give a ship in those days, 'in the English manner'.90
This showed that he knew what he was talking about, for the German, French and Russian critics of Potemkin's ships did not realize that his timber came from the same places as timber for English warships. Furthermore, they were built by sailors and engineers trained in England such as Potemkin's admiral Nikolai Mordvinov (who married an English girl) and the engineer Korsakov. Indeed, by 1786, Kherson had an English ambience. 'Mordvinov and Korsakov both are much more like Englishmen than any foreigners I ever met,' decided that ardent traveller Lady Craven.91 Yet Kaiser Joseph, who was no expert on naval matters, claimed the ships were 'built of green timber, worm eaten'.92
By 1787, the Prince had created a formidable fleet that the British Ambassador put at twenty-seven battleships. If one counts ships-of-the-lirie as having over forty guns, he had twenty-four of them, built in nine years, starting at Kherson. Later Sebastopol's perfect harbour became the naval base of Potemkin's fleet and Nikolaev its main shipyard. This, together with the 280 the co-tsar
thirty-seven ships-of-the-line of the Baltic Fleet, instantly placed Russian seapower almost equal to Spain, just behind France - though far behind the 174 ships-of-the-line of Britain, the world's only naval superpower.
Potemkin is the father of the Black Sea Fleet, just as Peter the Great created the Baltic one. The Prince was proudest of his fleet. It was his special 'child' and he poses in Lampi's rare portrait in his white uniform as Grand Admiral of the Black Sea and Caspian Fleets with the Euxine (Black) Sea behind him. Catherine knew it was his creation. 'It might seem an exaggeration,' a British envoy recorded Serenissimus saying, at the end of his life, 'but he could, almost literally, say that every plank, used in building the fleet, was carried on his shoulders.'93
His other Herculean effort was to attract the ordinary folk to populate these vast empty territories. The settlement of colonists and ex-soldiers on the frontiers was an old Russian practice but Potemkin's campaign of recruitment, in which Catherine issued manifestos offering all manner of incentives to settlers - no taxes for ten years, free cattle or farming equipment, spirits or brewery franchises - was astonishing in its imagination, scale and success. Hundreds of thousands were moved, housed, and settled, and received welfare gifts of ploughs, money and oxen. Frederick the Great had set the standard of colonization during the retablissement of his war-torn territories by tolerating all sects, so that, by the time of his death, 20 per cent of Prussians were immigrants. The Prince had a modern understanding of the power of public-relations. He advertised in foreign newspapers and created a network of recruiting agents across Europe. 'The foreign newspapers', he explained to Catherine, 'are full of praises for the new settlements set up in New Russia and Azov.' The public would read about the privileges granted to the Armenian and Greek settlers and 'realize their full value'. He also recommended the modern idea of using Russian embassies to help recruitment. Potemkin had been an enthusiastic colonist since coming to power. Even in the mid- 1770s, he was recruiting immigrants for his new settlements on the Mozdok Line of the north Caucasus.94 His ideal settlers would plant, plough, trade and manufacture in peacetime, and, when war came, ride out against the Turks.95
Potemkin's first settlers were the Albanians, from Orlov-Chesmensky's Mediterranean fleet of 1769, and the Crimean Christians. The former initially settled in Yenikale, the latter in their own towns like Mariupol. The Albanians were soldier-farmers. Potemkin founded schools and hospitals as well as towns for these immigrants. Once the Crimea was annexed, Potemkin formed the Albanians into regiments and settled them at Balaklava. The Prince specifically designated Mariupol for the Crimean Greeks. As with all his towns, he supervised its development, adding to it throughout his career. By 1781 the Azov Governor reported that much of it was built. There were four churches, the Greeks had their own court and it grew into a prosperous Greek trading town. Later Potemkin founded Nachkichevan, on the lower Don near Azov, and Gregoripol (named after himself, of course), on the Dniester, for the Armenians.96