"'A Dutch pilot or captain could come on my ship, and his orders in his own language would be understood by my crew: I mean simply the words of command, without explanations. On the other hand, a Dutch crew could understand my orders without suspecting they were in Russian.'"
"It is no wonder," said Fred, "that the Russians honor the memory of the great Peter, and that their largest ship of war bears his name. Am I right in regard to the ship?"
"It is the largest at present," replied the Doctor, "but there are three ships—the Tchesme, Sinope, and Catherine II.—to be completed in 1887, which will be larger than the Peter the Great. The latter is an iron-clad turret-ship of 8285 horse-power and 10,000 tons displacement. She carries eight guns, has two turrets, and her iron plating at the water-line is fourteen inches thick. She is three hundred and thirty feet long and sixty feet wide in her broadest part, and resembles the great mastless ships of the British navy, particularly those of the Dreadnought class. She was built at Cronstadt, in 1874; the other and larger ships I have named are on the ways at Sevastopol and Nicolaieff, on the Black Sea.
STEAM FRIGATE NEAR CRONSTADT.
"Without going into details, I will say that the Russian navy consists of two great divisions: the fleet of the Baltic and the fleet of the Black Sea. Each of these great divisions is subdivided into sections: the Baltic fleet into three, and the Black Sea fleet into two. The sections carry flags of different colors, white, blue, and red; this arrangement was taken from the Dutch, like the system of ship-building in Peter's time.
"At the beginning of 1885 the Baltic fleet consisted of two hundred and nine vessels, including thirty-three armor-clad and belted ships, forty-nine unarmored frigates, corvettes, clippers, and cruisers, and ninety-five torpedo-boats. Gun-boats, transports, and various other craft completed the list. The Black Sea fleet included ninety-eight vessels, of which seven were armor-clad; then there are the vessels of the Caspian Sea and the Siberian flotillas; and altogether the Russian navy comprised at that time 358 vessels, armed with 671 guns, with a measurement of 196,575 tons, and engines of 191,976 horse-power.
"Before we drop the subject of Russia's navy," the Doctor continued, "perhaps you would like to hear about the Popovkas."
Neither of the youths had heard of these things, and wondered what they could be. Doctor Bronson relieved their perplexity by explaining that the Popovkas were a new style of iron-clad ship intended for the defence of harbors, rather than for rapid cruising at sea.