BEEIKG^S FIRST EXPEDITION". 9 



Flag, and made a knight of the order of Alexander 

 Nevsky. 



In Peter the Great^s remarkable house in St. Peters- 

 burg there is preserved, among many other relics, a yawl 

 which is called the grandfather of the fleet. With this, 

 Peter had begun his nautical experiments, and in 1723, 

 when he celebrated the founding of his fleet, he rowed 

 down the Neva in it. Peter himself was at the rudder, 

 Apraxin was cockswain, and Admiral Cruys, Yice- 

 Admiral Gordon, Sievers and Menshikoff were at the 

 oars. On this occasion the Czar embraced Cruys and 

 called him his father. 



During his whole life Cruys preserved a warm affec- 

 tion for his native land; hence it was natural that the 

 Scandinavian colony in St. Petersburg gathered about 

 him. His successor as vice-president of the council of 

 the Admiralty, and as master of ordnance, was the former 

 Danish naval lieutenant Peter Sievers, who likewise ele- 

 vated himself to most important positions, and exerted a 

 highly beneficial influence upon the development of the 

 Eussian fleet. At the side of these two heroes, moreover, 

 there were others, as Admirals Daniel Wilster and Peter 

 Bredal, Commander Thure Trane, and also Skeving, 

 Herzenberg, Peder Grib, ''Tordenskj old's* brave com- 

 rade in arms," and many others. 



For a long time Vitus Bering was one of Cruys's most 

 intimate associates, and these two, with Admiral Sievers, 

 form an honorable trio in that foreign navy. Bering was 

 soon appointed to a position in the Baltic fleet, and 



* Peter Tordenskjold (1691-1720), a Norwegian in the Danish Norse ser- 

 vice—the greatest naval hero Scandinavia has ever produced.— Tr. 



