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Updated: June 17, 2025
A grander sight could not be conceived than that of twenty splendid line-of-battle ships, formed in two lines, steaming straight up to the frowning batteries of Cronstadt.
There are places, for instance, like Cronstadt, which, at one time inhabited mainly by drunkards, became before the war a "holy town." Apart from Father Ivan and his peculiar reputation, there were hundreds of other pilgrims who, though quite unknown on their arrival, soon gained there a lucrative notoriety. His popularity attracted representatives of all classes of society.
Before the present season closes, his iron navy will be composed of twenty steamships and four floating batteries. During the contest with Russia, England would not venture to expose her wooden ships of the line to the close fire of the batteries either at Cronstadt or Sebastopol, and found it safer to shell them at a respectful distance and with indifferent success.
Petersburg Canal was planned, and in a very few years the larger class of steamers might have to deliver their cargoes at Cronstadt, as before, if the waterway to St. Petersburg be not adapted to their growing dimensions. "The dredging between the embankments of the canal was done by an improved process, which may interest those connected with such works.
The bottom is pure sand, and there are full ten fathoms of water within a hundred yards of the shore! And then those high islands protecting the entrance! A fort on that point and a battery over yonder would close in the whole bay, with its five hundred square miles of area, against every invader, and make it as safe as Cronstadt!"
Petersburg, as well as being the chief naval station of the Empire. The two fortifications of Sweaborg and Cronstadt insure to Russia the possession of the Gulf of Finland, no matter what force is brought against them. The arsenals and docks are here very extensive and unsurpassed in completeness.
Had it been a purely logical question he was dealing with, he might not have been quite puzzled; but to apply logic here, as he was attempting to do, was like not like attacking a fortification with a penknife, for a penknife might win its way through the granite ribs of Cronstadt it was like attacking an eclipse with a broomstick: there was a solution to the difficulty; but as the difficulty itself was deeper than he knew, so the answer to it lay higher than he could reach was in fact at once grander and finer than he was yet capable of understanding.
The revelations of the spy went for nothing; and, after the cutlasses of the lads in blue-jackets had been sharpened to a razor-like degree of keenness, those blades, for some occult reason, were not allowed to cut deep enough; the only cutting and running into the bargain being done by the Russian fleet, which, safely ensconced in the harbour of Cronstadt, defied us from behind the walls of fortresses which we did not care to bombard.
William Simpson, our special artist, "will be understood by stating that a cargo might be brought from England by a steamer in a week, but it would take three weeks at least to transport the same cargo from Cronstadt to St. Petersburg. Of course, much of this time was lost by custom house formalities. Sometimes it has taken even longer than is here stated, which made the delivery of goods at St.
Early in the spring of 1705 the Swedish fleet, consisting of twenty-two ships of war, each carrying about sixty guns, besides six frigates, two bomb ketches and two fire ships, approached Cronstadt. At the same time a large number of transports landed a strong body of troops to assail the forts in the rear. This was the most formidable attack Charles XII. had yet attempted in his wars.
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