VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
On November 5, 1704, a little more than a year after the founding of St Petersburg, Peter the Great laid down a new wharf - Admiralty House. In the past three centuries the Admiralty shipyard has produced more than 2,600 ships and vessels of all classes and designations.
The first vessel hit the water in April 1706, followed in September 1709 by the first open sea ship: the 54-gun bearing Poltava.
In 1725, the yard built and tested a prototype of the first submarine - Yefim Nikonov's "hidden boat."
In August 1815, the Charles Baird foundry, which was later integrated into Admiralty Shipyard, built Russia's first steamship Elisaveta.
Among the ships launched at the shipyard was the Aurora, the legendary cruiser that fought in the Russo-Japanese War and in two world wars.
From its founding through 1917, the yard built more than 1,000 ships and vessels, including more than 800 oared and sail vessels, 25 armoured ships, eight 1st rank cruisers, and two battleships, Gangut and Poltava.
The Baird Foundry (1792) fulfilled numerous orders for the city:
- the Alexander Column on Palace Square;
- the main and side domes of St. Isaac's Cathedral;
- the ironworks for suspension bridges in St Petersburg, etc.
In the pre-WWII period, the yard built 69 submarines, or one-third of all the Soviet submarine fleet, and 316 motor torpedo boats. During the war, many orders were fulfilled for the front's needs.
In the post-war period, it built the nuclear-powered ice-breaker Lenin, 14 fish processing vessels, the mother ship Vostok, which turned out 288,000 tins of canned fish a day, barges, floating docks, port ice-breakers, space command and control ships of the Marshal Krylov type, 4 Project 68 cruisers, over 150 diesel-electric submarines, and many other ships and vessels.
Admiralty Shipyard also builds oil tankers, of which it has produced 55. Among the latest are seven Pulkovo-type tankers of 28,400 tons deadweight, now delivered to purchasers.
For LUKoil, the shipyard has constructed 5 ice-class tankers of 20,000 tons deadweight. Recently, it delivered eight tankers of 47,000 tons deadweight to the Sovkomflot company.
Fulfilling Sovkomflot orders, it has also built two reinforced ice-class tankers of 70,000 tons deadweight - the Mikhail Ulyanov and Kirill Lavrov.
Currently, it is building a naval rescue ship - Igor Belousov - and has launched two ice-class fire fighting tugs for the Sakhalin II programme.
A research vessel is on the drawing boards for the Russian Arctic expedition.
The Admiralty Shipyard continues to specialise in submarine construction. To date, it has built 303 submarines (including 41 nuclear-powered submarines) and is proceeding with dockside trials of a 4th-generation diesel electric submarine St Peterburg for the Russian Navy. It has likewise laid down two sisterships of the same project - Kronstadt and Sevastopol.
The shipyard has delivered 35 diesel-electric submarines to foreign buyers. Two Project 636 diesel-powered submarines have been completed and will soon be delivered to Algeria.
The first Russian third-generation deep-water submersible Rus has been delivered to the navy. It can dive to a depth of 6,000 metres. A similar craft, Konsul, is under construction. (A total of 68 submersibles and submarines have been constructed at the yard.)
In recent years the shipyard has been diversifying into small-sized boats. For the moment, it has produced over 5,000 Master-type boats from an aluminium-magnesium alloy.
