Nikolai Ottovich von Essen country of citizenship Russian Empire
Nikolai Ottovich von Essen (Russian: Никола́й О́ттович Э́ссен, tr. Nikoláy Óttovich Éssen; 23 December [O.S. 11] 1860 – 20 May [O.S. 7] 1915) was a Russian naval commander and admiral descended from the Baltic German noble Essen family. For more than two centuries, his ancestors had served in the Imperial Russian Navy, and seven had been awarded the Order of St. George, the highest military award of the Russian Empire. Essen was regarded  as one of the most prominent admirals of the Russian naval force during World War I (1914–1918).Biography
Nikolai Ottovich von Essen was born on 23 December [O.S. 11] 1860 in St. Petersburg, Russia, to Imperial Senator Otto Wilhelm von Essen, into the wealthy noble family of Essen. Early on in his life, Essen received home education; he was well-educated and fluent in English, French, Russian, and his native German. He graduated from the Naval Cadet Corps in 1880, after a two-year foreign cruise, attended the engineering department of the Nikolayev Naval Academy from 1883 to 1886. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1891 and served with the Russian Pacific Fleet from 1892 to 1896, and with the Russian Mediterranean Squadron from 1897.In the early part of his career, he commanded Minesweeper No. 120 (1897–98), the gunboat Grozyachiy (1898–1900), and the steamship Slavianka (1901–1902) in the Black Sea. After a brief assignment as an instructor at the Naval Cadet Corps, he was appointed captain of the cruiser Novik (1902–1904), which was stationed at Vladivostok.
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