Naval Career
Ushakov was born in 1745 in the village of Burnakovo, in the Moscow Governorate, to a family of minor nobility; his father had served as a sergeant of the Preobrazhensky Regiment of the imperial guard. He entered the Imperial Russian Navy in 1761, served in the Baltic Fleet, and afterward transferred to the Don and Azov flotilla.
In the Russo-Turkish War of 1787-1792 he won a succession of victories over the Ottoman fleet, at Fidonisi in 1788 and at the Kerch Strait, Tendra, and Cape Kaliakra in 1790 and 1791. Promoted to full admiral in 1798, he commanded a combined Russian-Ottoman squadron in the Mediterranean during the war against France, taking the Ionian Islands, besieging and capturing Corfu, and blockading French positions in Italy. The tradition holds that in the course of forty-three naval engagements under his command he lost neither a battle nor a ship. He was noted for tactics of close engagement, concentration against enemy flagships, and the keeping of a reserve.
Piety and Later Life
Ushakov was remembered for his Christian piety in the midst of his naval service; while in the Mediterranean he visited Corfu to venerate the relics of Saint Spyridon and supported the Orthodox Christians there. Recalled to Russia in 1800, he resigned from service in 1807. He declined a militia command in 1812 but donated his savings to the war effort.
He settled near the Sanaksar Monastery in Mordovia, attending its services on Sundays and feast days and, during Lent, remaining in the monastery to fast with the monks. Beyond his gifts to the monastery, he frequently gave alms to the poor and needy. He died in 1817 at the age of seventy-two and was buried at the Sanaksar Monastery beside the church.
Glorification
After the Sanaksar Monastery was returned to the Russian Orthodox Church, his grave was rediscovered in 1994. He was glorified as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church in the early twenty-first century, his local glorification in 2001 being followed by wider recognition in 2004, and he was named a patron of the Russian Navy. A reliquary fashioned in the shape of a ship was made to enshrine his relics.
He is to be distinguished from his relative Saint Theodore of Sanaksar (1719-1791), a monastic saint of the same family.
