Latest / The Romanov Dynasty: Rise, Power, and Bloody End — Fexingo History / Alexei and the Russian Navy: A Fleet Built on Blood and Bureaucracy
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the Romanovs on land — their armies, their palaces, their secret police. But there's one realm where they had to learn everything from scratch, and that's the sea. Russia was famously landlocked for centuries, and the story of how they built a navy is one of the most unlikely, bloody chapters in the dynasty's history. Lucas: It starts not with Peter the Great, as you might think, but with his father, Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. In the 1660s, he had a wild idea: build a warship that could sail the Caspian Sea and protect Russian trade routes. It was a harebrained scheme to some, but it led to the first real Russian warship, the Oryol — the Eagle. Luna: Wait, really? I thought Peter the Great was the one who dragged Russia into the naval age. Lucas: Right, that's the standard story, but the Oryol predates Peter by decades. It was built at a shipyard on the Oka River, near a village called Dedinovo, and it was a joint project with Dutch and Scottish shipwrights — craftsmen like Kasper van der Burgh and Lambert Yantse. They'd been hired specifically to teach Russian carpenters the ropes. Lucas: The ship was launched in 1668, a three-masted frigate armed with 22 guns. It was actually a pretty impressive piece of engineering for a country that had zero naval tradition. But here's the twist: the Oryol never really got to sail. It was moored at Astrakhan, waiting for orders, when Stepan Razin's Cossack rebellion swept through and the rebels captured the ship and burned it to the waterline. Luna: That's almost poetic — the first Russian warship destroyed by the very people it was supposed to control. Lucas: It is, and it set the tone. After that, the tsars went back to ignoring the sea for another couple of decades. But the dream didn't die. And then you get Peter the Great, and he's a teenager who discovers a small boat — some say a gift from his father, some say a forgotten relic — and he becomes obsessed. He starts learning everything he can about navigation and shipbuilding. Lucas: Peter actually traveled to the Netherlands and England in the 1690s, working incognito in shipyards under the name Pyotr Mikhailov. He wanted to learn the craft firsthand, and he did — he learned to build ships with his own hands. But what he really needed was a fleet, and that meant forcing his own people to build one. Lucas: His first big naval project was the Azov fleet, built to support his campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. He set up shipyards at Voronezh, on the Don River, and he conscripted thousands of peasants and clergy to work there. It was a brutal, rushed program — they were building galleys and warships in a matter of months, often in the dead of winter. Luna: It sounds like a logistical nightmare. Did the boats even float? Lucas: Some of them did, barely. The first Azov campaign in 1695 failed because the Ottomans could supply their fortress by sea, and Peter had no naval power to stop them. So he threw everything into building a fleet over the winter. By the summer of 1696, he had a flotilla of galleys and gunboats — enough to blockade Azov and take the city. That was his first naval victory, and it was a huge morale booster. Lucas: But the Azov fleet was really just a stepping stone. The real prize was the Baltic Sea, and that meant taking on the Swedish Empire, which dominated the region. Peter formed an alliance with Denmark and Saxony, and in 1700 they declared war on Sweden — the Great Northern War. But the war started terribly for Russia, with a crushing defeat at Narva. Luna: Narva — that's where the Russian army basically disintegrated, right? Lucas: Exactly. The Swedish king, Charles XII, was only 18 at the time, but he routed Peter's much larger army. The Russians were humiliated, and Peter did what he always did in the face of disaster: he doubled down. He rebuilt the army, and he also started building a real Baltic fleet from scratch. He established the Admiralty in St. Petersburg in 1703, and he ordered shipyards all along the Neva River and the Gulf of Finland. Lucas: The ships were mostly galleys and small frigates, built with timber from the vast northern forests. They were designed for coastal operations and to ferry troops, not for grand sea battles. But they were exactly what Russia needed. The Swedes had a powerful deep-water navy, but they couldn't match the Russians' ability to build and deploy oared galleys in the shallow archipelagos. Luna: That's clever — using geography as a weapon. Lucas: For sure. The turning point came in 1714 at the Battle of Gangut, in the Baltic. The Russian galley fleet, commanded by Admiral Franz Lefort — well, actually, Lefort had died earlier, but the fleet was led by officers like Fyodor Apraksin and Peter himself — they managed to outmaneuver a Swedish squadron and capture ten ships. It was Russia's first major naval victory, and it gave them control of the Gulf of Finland, which was huge. Lucas: So by the end of the Great Northern War in 1721, Russia had a Baltic fleet of over a hundred ships, and the country was finally a naval power. But the cost was enormous — not just in money and resources, but in human life. Thousands of peasants died building the ships, and the conditions were dreadful. It was a brutal, forced modernization. Luna: It's hard to imagine that much suffering for a handful of galleys. But I guess that's how empires are built. Lucas: It really is. And it wasn't just the building — it was also the institutional side. Peter created the Admiralty, established naval academies, and sent young nobles abroad to study shipbuilding. It was a whole cultural shift, moving from a landlocked mentality to a maritime one. And that shift didn't just affect the military; it opened Russia to the world, to trade and ideas. But it also created a class of conscripted sailors and laborers who were basically treated like serfs. Lucas: And that's a pattern we see throughout Romanov history — grand ambitions, often brilliant, but paid for with the sweat and blood of the common people. The navy was no exception. It was a tool of empire, but it was also a tool of oppression. Luna: So when did the Russians actually start to feel like a real naval power, not just a copycat? Lucas: I think Gangut was the moment. It proved they could beat the Swedes at their own game, at least in the shallow waters. But it wasn't until later, under Catherine the Great, that the Russian navy became a truly formidable force on the open seas. She built on Peter's foundation, and she had some spectacular victories, like the destruction of the Ottoman fleet at Chesma in 1770. But that's a story for another day. Luna: I want to hear that. But first, I have to say — the way you tell it, the navy is almost like a living thing, born out of desperation. Lucas: It kind of was. Peter had this vision of Russia as a great maritime nation, and he was willing to do whatever it took to make that happen, even if it meant impressing thousands of people into forced labor. And that's the thing — the Russian Empire was built on extremes. No middle ground. Either you're a land power, or you're a sea power, and Peter said, 'We're going to be both.' Luna: And yet, every step forward seems to have left scars that never healed. Lucas: Exactly. And that's something that lingers into the modern era. But before we get too deep into that, I want to step back for a second, because we've been having these conversations for a while now, and if you've been following along — whether you've listened to every episode or just a few — I want to say that it's genuinely because of listeners like you that we can keep doing this. A couple of dollars a month is what keeps these going, and if you've gotten something out of them, you can support the show at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small thing, but it makes a real difference. Luna: Yeah, I think a lot of us appreciate what you do here. It's not just the facts, it's the way you make us feel like we're sitting in a room with the past. Lucas: That means a lot. And speaking of the past, let's get back to it. So after Gangut, Peter didn't rest on his laurels. He kept pushing for a deeper-water navy, and he even started building ships of the line — the big battleships that could fight in the open sea. But he died in 1725, and the momentum kind of stalled. His successors, for the most part, didn't share his passion for the sea. Lucas: It took a while for the navy to regain its strength, and it wasn't until the late 18th century, under Catherine, that it really came into its own. But the seeds were planted in those early, messy decades. The Oryol, the Azov fleet, the galleys at Gangut — they all set the stage for Russia's emergence as a naval power. Luna: It's amazing how much of it comes down to one man's obsession. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's a reminder that history is often driven by individuals who refuse to accept the status quo. Peter looked at Russia and saw a country that was being held back by its lack of access to the sea, and he decided to change that at any cost. That determination, for better or worse, reshaped the nation. Lucas: Now, one thing that often gets overlooked is the role of the navy in the growth of the Russian Empire's economy. The Baltic fleet, in particular, opened up trade routes to Europe, and that brought in wealth and new ideas. But it also made Russia more vulnerable to European politics, which would have huge consequences later. You could argue that Peter solved one problem by creating another. Luna: It's like that saying, be careful what you wish for. Lucas: Yeah, exactly. And that's one of the threads we'll be pulling on in future episodes — how the Romanovs' obsession with empire and prestige kept leading them into more and more complex situations. The navy was a huge part of that, and it's a story that deserves more attention. Lucas: So if you want to dive deeper into any of this, I'd suggest checking out the book 'The Russian Navy: A History' by John Hattendorf, or even just reading about the Battle of Gangut online. It's a fascinating piece of military history that's rarely told in English. Luna: I'll have to look that up. Thanks for guiding us through the rough waters, Lucas. Lucas: Anytime. And remember, if you have a specific aspect of Romanov history you'd like us to explore, you can always drop us a line. We read every message.