At the far end of oceanic seaways: St. Petersburg shipping in the eighteenth century

Since the late sixteenth century, parallel with the growth of West-European ocean shipping, seaborne connections between the North and Baltic seas increased constantly. The rising maritime powers, the Dutch Republic and Great Britain, carried to the Baltic colonial and manufacturing produce in exchange for grain and raw materials, thus connecting the area with their oceanic trades. These commodity flows are amply illuminated by the Sound Toll records. In contrast, evidence of intra-Baltic shipping is fragmentary and imperfect, with many gaps. Such an imbalance of sources implies a drawback: we do not know how dominant the West-European connections actually were in Baltic shipping. Fortunately, there are a few primary records that shed light on intra-Baltic shipping, notably the ship-lists of the port of Cronstadt published by the Russian and German-language journal Sankt Peterburgskije Vedomosti/St. Petersburgische Zeitung from 1744. The port of Cronstadt is particularly interesting as it constitutes the extreme eastern terminus of sea routes from the wider world. No comprehensive data from these ship-lists have hitherto been published. Utilising them, this article analyses the main trends in the development of St. Petersburg's shipping connections within the Baltic Sea as well as with the regions beyond the Danish Sound.