During the Great Patriotic War, the territory of the lighthouse was the last line of defense of Sevastopol before it fell. The lighthouse was completely demolished. After the war, it was rebuilt exactly as it used to be. The only thing that changed was the original spiral staircase: it became a 300-step stairway.
The writing set has a dedicatory inscription on the right side of a metal plaque: “From Yakov and Maria Leonovs”. Yakov Leonov served as an officer in the Black Sea Fleet, and Maria Leonova was the niece of the writer’s wife Khristina Mikhailovna.
The themes of Sevastopol, the fleet and the Crimean War were harbored in the writer’s mind since he was a child — he learned about them through the books he read and the stories of his father, a participant in the defense of Sevastopol.
Sergeyev-Tsensky wrote,
