Righteous Theodore Ushakov

Theodore (Fyodor) Ushakov was born on 13 February 1745 in Burnakovo, Yaroslavl province, into a modest noble family; his uncle was St Theodore of Sanaksar, a guardsman turned monk. He entered the Naval Cadet Corps in 1761, served in the Baltic and then in the new Black Sea Fleet, and in the Russo-Turkish war of 1787–1791 won the battles of Fidonisi (1788), Kerch Strait and Tendra (1790) and Kaliakra (1791), commanding the Black Sea Fleet from 1790.

In 1798–1800 he led a Russian squadron in the Mediterranean, freed the Ionian Islands from the French and on 19 February 1799 took the fortress of Corfu, for which Paul I made him a full admiral; at Pascha he had the relics of St Spyridon carried in procession around the fortress. He later wrote that under his command no ship had been lost and no sailor taken prisoner.

Retiring at the end of 1806, from 1810 he lived in the village of Alekseevka near the Sanaksar Monastery, attending its services, spending weeks of Great Lent there and giving generously to the monastery and the poor; in 1812 he was elected head of the Tambov militia. He died on 2 October 1817 and was buried beside his uncle. He was glorified as a locally venerated saint of the Saransk diocese on 5 August 2001 and for the whole Russian Church by the Council of Bishops in 2004. He is venerated as a patron of the Russian navy.