MORDVINOV N.S. - naval minister of Russia

[Anatol]

Count Nikolai Semenovich Mordvinov ( 1 [12] May 1755 [2] , St. Petersburg - 30 March [ 11 April ] 1845 [3] , ibid.) - Russian naval and statesman, son of Admiral S. I. Mordvinova , one of the organizers of the Black Sea Fleet , chairman of the Black Sea Admiralty Board (1792–1799), first naval minister of the Russian Empire (in 1802), chairman of the Free Economic Society (1823–1840), Anglomaniac. Senator (1802).
Mordvinov was an admiral's son and started his career in the Navy at an early аge.Аlready in 1766 he was sent by his father to serve in the navy as a midshipman and two years later he was promoted to midshipman . In 1774 he was sent to England to improve his maritime skills, where he stayed for 3 years, became acquainted with its way of life and developed sympathy for its institutions .
With promotion to captain of the 2nd rank, he was appointed commander of the battleship " St. George the Victorious " (1781), a year later he accepted the new 74-gun ship " Tsar Constantine ", with which he sailed the Mediterranean Sea in 1783 . In the port of Livorno he married an Englishwoman, Henrietta Cobley, whom he brought with him to Russia.
During the second Turkish war , in 1787, commanding the Sevastopol squadron, he led the siege of Ochakov from the sea . In 1790, due to a disagreement with those in command in the region, mainly with Potemkin , he left the service.
In 1792, he took the place of chairman of the Black Sea Admiralty Board . In this post, he entered into a struggle with another famous administrator of Novorossiya , Deribas , which continued into the next reign.
He was awarded on November 24, 1792 the Order of St. Alexander Nevsky .
On September 23, 1797, he was promoted to the rank of admiral.
In 1799, he was appointed Vice-President of the Admiralty. Three years later, when the Admiralty was transformed into the Navy Ministry, he became the first Navy Minister of Imperial Russia, but ceded this post to Pavel Chichagov within three months.
Mordvinov's independent-mindedness and Anglophile way of life made him a darling of the Muscovite society. In 1806, the Muscovite nobility elected him to lead a volunteer corps rallied against Napoleon. He became particularly popular with young liberals, who admired his courage to oppose the government when needed.
In 1823, Mordvinov was elected President of the Free Economic Society, a high-profile position which he filled for 17 years. During his term in office, he outlined his economic views in a number of writings. Mordvinov died at the age of 90 in St Petersburg.
PMR 2019; [P].
Crimea 2020;30.
Source: https://ru-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki.