Peter the Great
One summer day, Peter and an old Dutchman were visiting one of the country houses
belonging to the royal family. In a shed they discovered an old boat. Peter had never seen
anything like it.
“Timmerman!” called Peter. “What do you make of this?”
“It looks like an English sailboat, sir.”
“Why is it shaped like that? What does it do?”
The Dutchman smiled and opened his eyes very wide in amusement. “Why, it can sail into
the wind – upstream!”
“Is it possible?” Peter cried. “Can you sail it? Can you make it do that?”
“I’ll find you someone who can, after it’s fixed up a bit. It will need a new mast,
and some sails, and some patching here and there.”
When, at last, the boat was launched in the river, Peter watched breathlessly as it tacked
back and forth upstream into the wind. After that, Peter spent every spare moment learning
to sail. And on those sun-filled days Peter’s vision of the future began to take shape.
He dreamed of more boats, bigger boats. Someday, Russia must have a navy and a port to put
it in.
The young boy was growing into a man. Soon he would no longer play games; he would be
ready to begin his life’s work: bringing Russia into the modern world.
Peter spent more and more time in the German suburb as the years passed. He dressed like
the Europeans and tried to imitate their ways. What he longed for, more than anything else
in the world, was to see Europe for himself. There was so much to learn!
He decided to do what no Russian tsar had ever done: he would travel to the West. But he
would not travel in glory as the head of the great embassy, wasting precious time at
tiresome parties and receptions in his honor. He would leave all that to Francis Lefort,
his ambassador. Peter planned to travel disguised as a common soldier. As he now stood six
feet, seven inches tall, however, and carried himself with great authority, it was easy to
recognize him.
Before he left, Peter had a seal engraved for himself that read, “I am a pupil and need
to be taught.”
In the spring of 1697 a grand procession of sledges, carriages, and wagons left Russia,
carrying to the West 250 men – the ambassador, noblemen, priests, soldiers, clerks,
cooks, and musicians who made up the embassy. They carried with them a huge quantity of
sable furs with which they would pay their expenses. These men would be gone from all that
was familiar to them for a year and a half, visiting Latvia, Poland, Germany, and Austria,
but especially Holland and England, where Peter wanted to study shipbuilding.
It was the talk of Europe. Like creatures from another world these haughty Russians came,
with their peculiar dress and terrible manners. They were scornful of the West, yet
childlike in their amazement at all they saw. And the tsar pretending not to be the tsar
– it was too funny!
When Peter reached Holland he could scarcely wait to begin. Using his own tools, he would
work with his hands to learn shipbuilding as a carpenter learns it.
Early on the morning following his arrival, he hurried to the shipyard of Zaandam to
begin. But the Dutch were wild with curiosity to see this carpenter-tsar. Crowds came by
boat and on foot to stare at him. They pushed away the guards and poured into the
shipyard. At last Peter was forced to flee to Amsterdam. There he was able to work in
peace in the shipyard of the East India Company, closed to the public and surrounded by
walls.
Peter didn’t want the luxurious house offered to him. He chose instead the master
ropemaker’s house, where he lived with several of his men. He made his own fire, cooked
his meals, and mended his clothes. He even learned to make shoes. Every morning at dawn he
set out joyfully to the shipyard dressed as a Dutch workman. He was simply “Carpenter
Peter’’ to them.
After four months, the ship was finished. Peter was given papers that said he was a master
of the art of naval architecture. With great pride Peter would thereafter declare, “I,
too, am a carpenter!”
