Peter the Great

R

Resolution

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 Feb 2006
Messages
3,472
Visit site
It seems that Peter the Great was a keen sailor in his youth, learning how to sail on an old English sailing boat that he came across in Russia. The sailing bug seems to have stayed with him much of his life. I am sure that someone will have studied this and written about it. Any recommendations?
Peter (not the great)
 
His favourite yacht is in it's own museum building just outside the St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

He studied shipbuilding in England and got the Russian Navy really going.
 
Leighb said:
His favourite yacht is in it's own museum building just outside the St Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg.

He studied shipbuilding in England and got the Russian Navy really going.
Click to expand...
He also studied shipbuilding in the Netherlands. I read somewhere he sent his craftsmen to the Netherlands as well to learn, and that would be the reason for the vast number of nautical terms in Russian being derived from Dutch. I have to take the author's word for it as I do not read Russian.
 
There's a weird and ugly statue of him steering an out-of-scale boat, on the river near the centre of Moscow. I was told that it was actually made to represent Columbus discovering America, for some city in the US, but when they saw the finished product they rejected it due to its weirdness and ugliness. The then-Mayor of Moscow (mid '90s) bought it on the cheap and said it would do just as well for Veliky Pyotr founding the Russian Navy :D

Pete
 
I remember hearing he worked incognito in a shipyard in Hull or Hartlepool in his youth to learn ship building. Quite an interesting chap.

I've not read any of Massies books on Russia, but his books on the Royal Navy are superb in my opinion.
 
К
Resolution said:
It was watching my wife watching one of Lucy Worsley's programs that reminded me to follow up this subject. The wife has long claimed distant dotted line descent from Peter the G, so I suspect that a visit to St Petersburg is going to be required eventually. Lots of palaces to visit, are there any maritime museums?
Click to expand...

Конечно!
 
I was on holiday last year staying north of Amsterdam in a place called Zaandam. There is a statue there of Peter the Great and a museum called Czar Peter's House where he stayed at the end of the 16th century whilst studying shipbuilding.
 
Also a statue at Deptford

IMGP1086.jpg
 
Last edited:
Russian nautical terms do indeed use a lot of Dutch / German words. Hardly surprising given that Peter studied shipbuilding in Holland and England as already said earlier. The Russian Navy used a lot of foreigners in its officer corps in the beginning - it happens most of them were Dutch/German, hence the influx of Dutch/German naval terms...
 
Looks as though the poor chap suffers from more widespread dreadful statuary than we'd suspected.
That thing above is appalling! Was he really a pinhead? Did he really wear a denim skirt just like one of my 1980s girlfriend's? And what's with the crapping midget? Poor old Pyotyr, I guess the "sculptor" really didn't like him.
 
IIRC he also ran up some large debts down his local in Deptford and was on the verge of being arrested for debt, which lead to the introduction of the concept of diplomatic immunity.

He also said; "I would rather be an English Admiral than the Russian Czar" - Amazing if brutal reformer of Russia.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top