Winged soldiers

There are also a number of curious events associated with the Sea Mail Pigeon Station. A man, Michael Ozols, was caught cheating - hawks shot near the station were well paid, and the man noticed that he was showing chicken legs instead of predator claws.

The first experiments with birds began in the spring of 1898. The winged liaison officers were taken and released from the ship 20 miles offshore. Good luck - nine out of 20 pigeons have returned, three of them have lost the "important papers". Lieutenant Captain Olimp Kvascov was transferred to Sveaborg Fortress for failure and loss of crown property (one pigeon was valued at 2.68 rubles). As it turned out later, the spring encouraged some combatants to move to the attic of the townhouses near the free pigeons. In the summer of 1901, the experiments were continued by releasing the birds from the ships in the roadstead of the port of Danzig. This time, Russian diplomats had to find out, because for some reason the Prussians have expressed outrage at the peculiar operation of the Russian navy in the territorial waters of Germany with the peaceful flights of the Liepaja fortress. In February 1904, smoke from warships of the 2nd Pacific Squadron was carried out during the raid on the port of Liepaja. 200 pigeons were "commanded" from the station to naval sites in the Korean and Japanese seas. On November 5, when the cruiser Oleg was in the departing armada 200 miles from Liepaja, the propeller broke. The commander, second-rank captain Oton Richter, did not believe in the miracle, but at 2 o'clock in the afternoon ordered the release of five pigeons from the deck with a mail. On the morning of November 6 at The report carried by the 4 two pigeons was on the desk of Admiral Ireck, Commander of the Liepaja Base. The pigeons of Liepāja station also took part in the large maneuvers of the Russian Baltic Fleet in the summer of 1907. For example, the minesweepers Ukrainec, Gaidamak and Vsadnik launched 25 pigeons 30 miles offshore, seven of which disappeared. The largest batch of pigeons, 197, was placed on a transport ship in the hangar and released from cages 50 miles away. 13 pigeons did not return. Until 1914, postal pigeons were used relatively successfully in communications from Liepaja with Russian coastal artillery batteries in present-day Hiiumaa and Saaremaa.