A little help here please with clarification on this. This thread is about Nilolai Pavlovich Sablin , commander of the Imperial yacht Standart 1906-1914, Imperial Family intimate, and who had a notable friendship with Olga . Apparently he wrote a brief memoir of this period, though curiously it is little read or cited by few experts here , which is surprising since it should be a goldmine of IF lore and anecdotes. Perhaps it has something to do with his bailing out on Nicholas and the family, 3/9/1917.
And then there is Nikolai Vasilievich Sablin, no relation to NP. Well all right, but he was a second captain serving at the time as NP on the Standart and wrote a book on that period :Desyat let na Imperatorskoi Yaxte Standart (Ten Years On The Imperial Yacht Standart). It has a lot of anecdotes on the IF as well as hundreds of photos. But it was only published in Russia in 2009. So where was it til then? I don't know his years, date of death, but it will have been written post-Romanov downfall and he must have sat on it, presumably his family coming forth with it in this century. I know its being in Russsian hinders its usefulness here in the West and for Romanov enthusiasts generally, but I'm still surprised so little from it seems to have been talked about or referred to.
So I guess my question is a general one: What do we know of Nikolai Vasilievich Sablin, the story of the book's whereabouts and publication history, and , mainly, what does he have to say about Imperial Family life on Standart? I understand the photos on it are pretty good and I would imagine his anecdotes about the Romanovs would be as well. So what's the story on NV?
