Peter the Great learned to sail on a stray English boat, then built Russia a navy
At sixteen, exiled to a country estate, Peter found an old English boat, had it repaired and taught himself to sail. He went on to launch a Russian fleet, found Saint Petersburg as his new capital, and turn a tsardom into an empire, often by force and fear.
Peter was born on 9 June 1672 to Tsar Alexei and his second wife, Natalya Naryshkina. When his half-brother Feodor III died childless in 1682, the families of Alexei's two wives fought over the crown. The nobles' council first chose ten-year-old Peter, but a revolt of the streltsy musketeers, led by his half-sister Sophia, killed relatives and friends before his eyes. He and the frail Ivan V became joint tsars, with Sophia ruling as regent, and a hole in the back of their throne let a hidden adviser prompt the boys.
Pushed out to Preobrazhenskoye from 1682 to 1689, he spent those years on what interested him: the boat, a sextant he could not yet use, sundials, arithmetic, fortification, drums and fireworks. Dutch carpenters and a bookish friend from Moscow's German Quarter taught him their language and trades, and he drilled a toy army in mock battles. His mother married him to Eudoxia Lopukhina in 1689, a union he later ended by forcing her into a convent. That same summer, warned of a plot, he fled by night to a fortified monastery, gathered backers and toppled Sophia.
Real control came only after his mother died in 1694, and he ruled alone once Ivan died in 1696. Standing about 2.03 metres tall and troubled by facial tics, he served in the navy from its lowest ranks up to admiral. Wanting access to warm seas, he failed to take the Ottoman fortress of Azov in 1695, built some thirty ships at Voronezh over the winter and captured it the following July.
Reform followed reform: a new calendar in 1699, Russia's first newspaper and a simplified alphabet in 1703, the Senate in 1711 and the Table of Ranks in 1722. He moved the capital to Saint Petersburg in 1712, hired European architects for it, and founded the Academy of Sciences in 1724. Revolts, including the Bulavin uprising, were crushed. Victory over Sweden in the Great Northern War brought him the Baltic coast and the title of emperor in 1721, four years before his death in February 1725.
Source: Peter the Great
