92

THE RUSSIAN FLEET

The principal captains remaining at Kronslotand Revel were Hoogstraten, Falkenberg, Armitage,Bering, Brant, Bents, Chapezan, Zotoff, Van Rosen,Delap, Muconoff, Hay, Little, Wilster, Stubbs,Antufiof, Kasheloff.

Lord Duffus, arriving this summer at St. Peters-burg, was, by the first report, to be superintendentof the yard, where the ships are built, and navalmagazines kept, with a salary of 1,000 roubles perannum ; 1 this charge, in part, agreeing with acommissioner’s of one of his Majesty s yards in GreatBritain.

Several storeships of the greatest burden wereemployed this summer in transporting large timberfrom Finland, for the use of the haven they intendedto begin this winter at Rager Wik, it being theproperest season for works of this kind, when all isfast frozen over. Great numbers of people werealso assembled, to get stones together to be appliedto this work ; and barracks built for their accommo-dation in the extremity of the cold weather. Yetnotwithstanding these great preparations, little wasdone this winter towards forming the harbour;many coincidents contributing to retard, at least fora time, its accomplishment. For the undertakersof the canal of communication betwixt the Volkovand Neva, to avoid some hills in the way, conductingtheir channel all along the low ground in a semicircleof a great extent, were at last unable to carry ontheir works through a large morass ; and the Tsar,understanding this, at his return from Persia orderedaway Captain-Commodore Lane, before appointed

1 The salary of a commissioner in an English dockyard was 500/.,late in the seventeenth and early in the eighteenth centuries(British Archæological Association , February 2, 1898 ; Notes on aMS. of Edward Battine, by I. Chalkley Gould, pp. 236, 245,248). See post, p. ioo, note 1.