Granville made an extended account of the economic, political and cultural life during his visit to St. Petersburg. One of the things he described was the Admiralty complex at St. Petersburg. His book was published in 1829, his account dated around end 1827.
P. 54: "Close to the Senate-house, and forming the opposite
p. 55: side of Isaac-square, is the western wing of the Admiralty, an edifice which, in its present state, may with truth be said to be without parallel in Europe. Its principal front on the land side measures considerably more than one-third of an English mile in length, and its depth extends to six hundred and seventy-two feet down to the water's-edge. The exterior of this vast building has been greatly embellished and completely modernized within the last five years. The moat and ramparts by which it was surrounded like a castle, and on which cannons were mounted, have disappeared, and a handsome promenade is substituted. The centre of the principal facade is occupied by a handsome large gate, not unlike a triumphal arch, seventy-five feet high, surmounted by a rich Doric entablature, in the frieze of which is a massive and bold bas-relief. The principal entrance is through this gate, which is flanked by two colossal groups placed on granite pedestals, and bearing the celestial and terrestrial globes of huge dimensions. The relief of the frieze represents Russia seated on a rock beneath laurel trees, with the emblems of strength and plenty by her side, and Peter receiving the trident from the hands of Neptune; while the Goddess of Wisdom, who stands beside the Emperor, contemplates the majestic stream of the Neva. At each angle of the entablature a statue, sixteen feet high, is placed, and from the centre rise the lofty tower and cupola, the former of which is quadrilateral, and surrounded by a canopied gallery, adorned with Ionic columns, each bearing an allegorical statue. The cupola has a graceful elliptic curve in four compartments, in one of which, facing the square, is a large clock. A lantern surmounts the cupola, with a narrow gallery around it, defended by a light iron balustrade; and from the lantern springs with tapering elegance the spire, to a height of eighty-four feet, including the colossal vane in the semblance of a ship under full sails. This spire is covered with the finest ducat gold, and from its great elevation, catching and reflecting the first and last
p. 56”rays of the sun, exhibits a most brilliant appearance, and is seen from every quarter of the metropolis, often serving as a beacon to guide the traveller towards this common and well-known centre of St. Petersburgh. On either side of the grand entrance, the building projects two hundred and fifty feet, with a rusticated basement, and a principal, or only story, pierced with eleven handsome windows, with rustic architraves, and horizontal cornices, surmounted by a running frieze, which contains naval trophies in bas-relief. Beyond this line of the building, right and left, the general elevation again changes its character, and assumes a loftier style, forming of itself a whole worthy to serve as a facade to a princely mansion. Three distinct members are distinguishable in this division of the main structure. The first is a portion of the building one hundred and twenty feet long, somewhat in advance of the general line of the edifice, composed of a basement story, having three well-proportioned Doric doors, and supporting a handsome portico of twelve Doric columns, with a pediment of excellent proportions attached to the principal story and attic. The windows are placed in each intercolumniation, and those of the principal floor are embellished with Doric balustrades. The pediment contains in bas-relief the figures of several Genii presenting to Russia the fruits of science and industry. A statue is placed on each of the acroteria, as well as on the centre of the pediment; and colossal recumbent figures of the principal rivers in the empire, upon large oblong pedestals of granite, are disposed near to the doors. The second and third portions of the building are on each side of the portico just mentioned, where the rustic basement and principal story and attic are continued about sixty-three feet further, and a colonnade of six pillars, of the Doric order, appears at each end, thus terminating the general front of the edifice. The sides or wings of the Admiralty present an elevation similar to that just described, except that the central
p. 57: portico, and lateral hexastyle colonnades, are on a more extended scale. The plan of this vast edifice, seen from the interior, within which we were admitted by permission, presents a long and the two short sides of a parallelogram of buildings, under which is a corridor or piazza supporting the apartment of the principal story. A second range of buildings runs parallel with the three sides of the former, and comprehends an assemblage of magazines, block, cordage, and tool-houses, carpenters and smiths' shops, stores, and boat- houses. These parallel ranges are separated from the main building by a canal over which a central and two lateral bridges are thrown. These canals terminate in a square basin at the extremity of the wings of the Admiralty, and in front of the colossal gateways, which afford an entrance within the wings from the river side. In the inner area, measuring I39 sajénes one way, or 973 feet, and 65 sajénes, or 455 feet the other, there are four uncovered slips for the construction of the largest, and two for that of the smallest class of vessels of war.(1) A three-deck ship, and one of seventy-four guns, had just been launched from them, and appeared to me to be very fine vessels. The outer, or more important ranges of buildings, besides the piazzas, have on the ground-floor a succession of arched rooms, some of which are used as offices, others as dwellings for the resident employés, and the greater part as storehouses. Above these run the grand suites of rooms, consisting of long and beautifully ornamented galleries, a library, council room, general assembly rooms, and one of the finest parade staircases I have any where seen. The stairs are arranged in double opposite flights: a grand p. 58 open gallery extends round three sides, lighted by large windows, and double ranges of rich Corinthian columns of great size support the soffit arranged in square ornamented compartments. The disposition of the rooms and the nature and arrangement of the objects contained in them, I was enabled to examine and study at leisure, thanks to the good offices of Count Woronzow and his aid-de-camp, Prince H-, who, on this as on all other occasions, were all kindness and attention; and also through the courteous and ready assistance proffered, unasked, by two superior naval officers holding a high rank, and performing duty at the time within the Admiralty. One of them had served on board an English man-of-war. There is "a long narrow gallery running at the back and on one side of the principal or central line of buildings, and over the piazzas, in which are arranged in large glass cases along the wall, and between, as well as in each of the windows, a great number of objects of Natural History, particularly zoological specimens presented by Russian navigators and travellers, or procured through consular and commercial agents." Some of these, as may be expected, are rare and interesting; but, in general, neither the arrangement, nor the mode and style of their preparation, appeared to be of the best description. The trifling collection of minerals, too, would be scarcely worth noticing, were it not that some specimens are interesting on account of their localities. These curiosities, in fact, are misplaced in this establishment; for, although the objects are obtained through the means of the public naval service, it does not follow that they should not be committed to the care of those who are solely occupied with natural sciences, and deposited in a public building for that purpose." I submitted partly the notes of Granville dealing with a description of the collection.
p. 61: "In the third room there is a very large plan, in relief, of St. Petersburgh, as it was fifty years ago, and a great variety of nautical instruments, in handsome glass cases. These are chiefly English; and among them I observed an excellent quadrant, made by Rowley, upwards of a century and a half ago. The collection of nautical instruments is continued in the fifth room, thus showing, in one continued view, the progressive inventions and improvements made by different nations in this department; and in the intervening room, a succession of models of machines, from the oldest to the most modern of them, for rope and cable-making, is displayed in a similar manner. One of the most beautifully proportioned and extensive salles in this Museum, is that of the models of ships of war, of various sizes, and boats, most of which are kept in large glass cases, and are disposed in such a manner as to exhibit progressively not only the different processes and methods of constructing vessels of that description, but also of docking, refitting, careening, and rigging them, followed by almost every maritime nation or people on the face of the globe. In the subdivision of these models, which contains all kinds of canoes, from the simplest to the
p. 62: most complicated, I was desired to inspect one in particular, made with a species of bulrushes of great length, tied in bundles, and fastened together so as to form the bottom, sides, head, and stern of the canoe. These are the canoes in general use in the "Isle de Paques". One of the naval officers who escorted us, and who had navigated in those seas, saw them used by the inhabitants. The sea necessarily penetrates through the rushes into the canoe, but as necessarily runs out again, and therefore it can never be swamped. In the Isle de Paques there is no wood to be found, and the fish caught in those seas are not of sufficient size to afford them materials for constructing better canoes, as some other islanders have done, who use the bones and skin of the fish for that purpose. The original model of the Admiralty itself, as built by Zacharoff, with its bastions, four drawbridges, the Neva running in a deep moat around it, and the five slips and two large boat-houses, as it existed down to 1816, with an exterior altogether resembling that of a citadel, is preserved in the adjacent saloon; and certainly the changes which have taken place in the building since that time, by order of Alexander, and which I have detailed, have removed a great eye-sore from the best part of the town, and added a grand and most imposing feature of grandeur to the metropolis." "The seventh room presents one of the most complete series of models of large vessels of different constructions: and among others, that of a carriage-vessel invented by General
p. 63: Bentham, in which he went, while in the Russian service, and under the auspices of the great Potemkin, from St. Petersburgh to the river Amour, for the purpose of carrying into effect a favourite project which this ingenious officer had devised for building ships at the mouth of that river, where it enters the sea of Okhotsk, so as to have a sea-port for ships of war as well as merchantmen in the Pacific, some degrees farther South than the already existing stations. The death of the great favourite put an end to the scheme. General Bentham entered the Russian service early in life, in which he was a contemporary with the famed Paul Jones, and with General Fanshawe, another Englishman, lately deceased, at Warsaw, a most meritorious and highly esteemed officer. General Bentham's services as a naval engineer under the reign of Catherine, are not the only claims he possesses to the esteem of the Russians. His active and ingenious mind was for ever on the alert to invent and improve; and from what he has effected in the naval department of his own country, while connected with it, his countrymen will be able to judge of the good he must have done to Russia. He is the inventor, among other things, of those large schooners carrying sixteen or eighteen pound carronades, which had a movable keel, and were calculated to navigate in shallow seas, like flat-bottomed vessels. In one of these, the Millbrook, I sailed for some time, and I can bear witness to her superiority over any other schooner then in the service. The great weight of metal which she was able to carry, with a crew as small as that of a common ten-gun brig, enabled one of her commanders to defeat a French frigate, which had attacked the Millbrook while at anchor off Oporto. The Millbrook was afterwards shipwrecked and sunk off the Berlenghas' rocks, opposite the Portuguese coast, in April 1808, at which time I was serving in her as medical officer. General Sir Samuel Bentham is as much attached to naval tactics and con- p. 64 struction now, though advanced in years, as he was when in the vigour of youth. I have, with great delight, conversed with him on the subject of his carriage-ship, and his journey through deserts, over ridges of mountains, and across some of the largest rivers in Russia, with no other accommodation than was afforded by that identical machine, a model of which is very properly preserved in the Admiralty Museum, and which served either as a boat or a carriage, as occasion required; and I found him as much alive to every circumstance attending that dangerous trip, as if it had been performed the year before. The two next objects which the Russian officers showed us in this room with becoming pride, were the model of a boat which gave to the father of Peter the Great, Alexis Michaelowitch, a taste for having a Navy, and which, for that reason, is styled by the Russians the "Grand Father of the Russian Navy;" and the identical arm-chair in which Peter used to sit when he presided at the Council Board of the Admiralty. The boat itself is preserved in a boat-house on the left bank of the Neva. One looks with interest, awakened by historical recollections, on the model here exhibited of the ship of the line, the "Magi", mounted by Orloff at the sea-fight of Tchesmè in 1770. Fifty-seven years afterwards, the Mahomedan nation was destined to see the Russian Navy assisting to renew the terrific scenes of that combat in another of its ports, and under the directing influence of an English Commander. At the time of my visiting the Admiralty, the news of the battle of Navarino had been received at St. Petersburgh, where it caused great joy for several days. Our two Russian naval officers, therefore, while looking at the model of the Flag-ship which triumphed at Tchesmè, could scarcely avoid comparing the one brilliant action with the other. After paying a visit to the map-room, which contains a valuable collection of charts, we passed into the great coun-
p. 65: cil-chamber, in which is a full-length portrait of the reigning Emperor; and having admired the Library, rich in naval works, recently formed and placed in its present grand and imposing situation, we took leave of our polite and very affable conductors, both of whom understood and spoke English with facility, pleased with and instructed by what we had seen."
Source
A.B. Granville. St. Petersburgh. A journal of travels to and from that capital; through Flanders, the Rhenish provinces, Prussia, Russia, Poland, Silesia, Saxony, the Federated States of Germany, and France. London, 1829. Digitized by Google.
Note
1. Original footnote: "In giving the measurements of this dock-yard in the first edition, I was misled by a rough calculation made on the spot in paces. I have since procured the official plan with its correspondent scale, and the above are the correct dimensions. The longest slip is 364 feet long and 70 feet wide."
