Balaklava

Balaklava, a small Greek fishing-village with 700 inhabitants, in the Crimea, 8 miles SE. of Sebastopol, from which it is separated by a rocky peninsula. The harbour, which affords secure anchorage for the largest ships, till 1860 was a naval station. It is perfectly landlocked, the entrance being so narrow as scarcely to admit more than one vessel at a time. To the east, overlooking the bay from a rocky eminence, are the ruins of a Genoese fortress. Balaklava is the Symbolon Limen of Strabo, and the Cembalo of the Genoese (1365-1475), who were expelled by the Turks, as these were in turn by the Russians, when Catharine II. made it the seat of a Greek colony. From September 1854 to June 1856 it was the British headquarters during the Crimean War (q.v.), and the famous charge of the Six Hundred (25th October 1854) has made the name glorious as Thermopylæ.