Admiral Ephraim Small of the Mexican Navy.
Admiral Ephraim Small was the commander of the Mexican Pacific Fleet during the Great Northern War with the Russian Empire.
As tension grew between the United States of Mexico and the Russian Empire over violations of the California-Alaska border, Chief of State Benito Hermión ordered Admiral Small to prepare the Pacific Fleet for a cruise to Hawaii on 4 May 1898. This was apparently a feint on Hermión's part, because Small appeared in San Francisco harbor 26 days later to land 20,000 crack marines for the defense of San Francisco. The marines repulsed an attack by a Russian regiment, then pursued the Russians north, crossing the border into Alaska on 11 June.
Admiral Small landed more marines at Nikolaevsk on 5 July, and these moved south to trap a Russian army under General Mikhail Kornilov. The following month, Kornilov surrendered to General Richard Stockton, while Small landed additional units along the Alaska coast, assisted by Captain Nicholas Seger's force from the Caribbean. By early October 1898, all of Alaska except the Aleutian Islands was under Mexican control.
A Mexican naval force began the occupation of the Aleutians on 28 May 1899, but this also proved to be a feint, providing cover for Mexican landings on the coast of Siberia. Elements of the Pacific Fleet landed marines unopposed at Petropavlovsk on 28 June, and these marines proceeded to free thousands of Russian political prisoners being held in camps in the Kamchatka Peninsula. A second unopposed landing took place at Okhotsk on 15 July. However, by this time the Russian navy was preparing for action against Admiral Small's fleet, which took place on the morning of 23 July in the Battle of the Okhotsk Sea. The Mexican Pacific Fleet sank 16 Russian ships, including two battleships. The Pacific Fleet suffered no lost ships, and the only casualties suffered were nine dead and fourteen wounded when a boiler exploded on the battleship Andrew Jackson. The Pacific Fleet went on to land additional troops at Nikolaevsk-on-Amur on 26 July.
Seven thousand of the freed Russian political prisoners were organized into the Free Russian Brigade, and with their assistance, the Mexican marines were able to link up their three beachheads on 10 August, while also marching inland and securing all territory within 200 miles of the coast. By early October, all the major population centers north of the Kolyma River were in Mexican hands, and Admiral Small had been appointed Administrator of Siberia, with his headquarters at Udsk. Small permitted the former prisoners to form a Provisional Free Russian Government under Premier George Tsukansky, which was recognized by Hermión as the legitimate authority in Siberia on 23 November 1899.
Mexican and Free Russian forces continued to expand west into Siberia as the Russian Empire collapsed during the Russian Revolution of 1900. However, following Hermión's overthrow on 16 October 1901, Kramer Associates President Diego Cortez y Catalán, operating through provisional president Martin Cole, ordered Small to cease offensive operations, and prepare to hand over military control of Siberia to the Free Russian government under Premier Boris Tschakev. The last Mexican military units were withdrawn from Siberia in 1903.
Sobel's sources for Ephraim Small's military career are Michael Suzanov's Siberia Under Mexican Domination: The First Year (London, 1910); Andrew Stirling's The Secret History of the Great Northern War (London, 1923); Felix Noland's A Military History of the Great Northern War (London, 1925); Carl Needham's The Great Northern War (New York, 1963); and C. Hadley McCoy's The Beginning of Modern Times (London, 1965).