Tsar Nicholas II

George Cini's article Awareness Week at National Archives (October 12) makes interesting reading, emphasising as it does the not so well-known fact that "Malta's economic, cultural and social development is related directly to its maritime history".

Unfortunately, the interpretation given to "a ship's manifest... showing members of the Russian Tsar's family who landed in Malta", is misleading. Both the caption of the manifest and the article infer that Tsar Nicholas II's name had been included in the ship's passenger list but as "he did not make it to Malta" his name was crossed out in ink.

Tsar Nicholas II could not "make it to Malta" in 1919 because he, together with the Tsarina and their five children, had been murdered by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Neither could the Grand Duke Nicholas and his wife, because they were very far away from the Crimea at that time.

The Tsar was Nicholas's first cousin once removed; a field Marshal who had been the Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Armies in World War I (1914-18). He died peacefully in bed in 1929, and his wife - the Grand Duchess Anastasia (Stana), Princess of Montenegro - died in 1935.

The Grand Duke Peter and the Grand Duchess Militsa (also a Princess of Montenegro, and Anastasia's elder sister) likewise could not travel to Malta on HMS Marlborough for they too were nowhere near the Crimea at the time. Peter, who during the Tsar's reign had been Viceroy of the Caucasus, died in exile in 1931; so did Militsa 20 years later.

The Princes Feodor, Nikita, Dimitri, Rotislav and Vassili did, in fact, accompany their mother, the Grand Duchess Xenia (1875-1960) to Malta on HMS Marlborough and, eight days later, to England where their mother spent the rest of her days in exile.