The era of the Board of Longitude's existence, between 1714 and 1828, was also a remarkable period in the history of Russia's navy. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Tsar Peter I set about reforming the Russian military following disastrous campaigns in the Great Northern War with Sweden, and created a substantial Baltic fleet centred on the new capital, St Petersburg. 1 To provide expertise for training sailors on Russian ships, Peter turned west, and in particular to Britain. These efforts inaugurated a steady traffic of experts and students between Britain and Russia in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which helped transform Russian navigation practices into a form resembling, and sometimes advancing on, those of Britain. This essay explores the British role in developing Russian navigation and makes three arguments. First, while the Russians evidently relied greatly on British expertise during this period, the traffic was not one way. Russian institutions provided theoretical expertise, practical experimental resources, and generous patronage that played a role in shaping British solutions to navigational problems including finding longitude at sea. Russians were not passive recipients of British expertise, and some techniques, at least, emerged from transnational co-operation and the circulation of knowledge. 2 Second, an examination of the techniques used to navigate on Russian ships makes clear that officers did not rely on any single method, such as an accurate chronometer, but used several This situation changed in the reign of Tsar Peter I (c.1698-1725), who encouraged navigational education in Russia as part of an effort to build up a new imperial navy with newfound access to the Baltic via St Petersburg, the new port capital founded in 1703. Peter was personally interested in western navigation and studied with the Dutch master Jan Albertusz van Dam during a visit to the Dutch Republic in 1697. 7 He trusted foreigners to improve navigation in Russia and often positioned navigation at the forefront of broader educational reforms. Russian students were sent abroad to Venice and Dalmatia in the 1690s to learn navigation. 8 In 1701 Peter opened a School of Navigation in Moscow, while Russia's first book on navigation, published the same year, derived from the sea-manuals of the Dutch writer Abraham de Graaf. 9 Despite this Dutch connection, Peter chose to hire Scots and English to run the new Moscow school, reflecting both the high reputation of British navigation and a tradition of hiring Scots to serve in the Russian court. 10 Heading the new school was the mathematician and astronomer Henry Farquharson of Marischal College, Aberdeen, together with two alumni of the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital -Stephen Gwyn and Richard Price. Ryan has traced the history of the Moscow School of Navigation and notes that it was one of the first institutions to teach geometry, trigonometry and astronomy in Russia, to some 200 students aged between 12 and 17. 11 An extant manusc...
