In August 1855 a Franco-British naval force captured and destroyed the Russian Bomarsund fortress on Åland Islands. In the same month, the Western Allied Baltic Fleet tried to destroy heavily defended Russian dockyards at Sveaborg outside Helsinki. More than 1000 enemy guns tested the strength of the fortress for two days. Despite the shelling, the sailors of the 120-gun ship Rossiya, led by Captain Viktor Poplonsky, defended the entrance to the harbor. The Allies fired over 20,000 shells but failed to defeat the Russian batteries. A massive new fleet of more than 350 gunboats and mortar vessels was prepared[by whom?], but before the attack was launched, the war ended.