Commerce and shipping were the source of Holland's enormous wealth. The seventeenth-century Dutch were a trading, sea-faring people. The great sister ports of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, situated at the twin mouths of the Rhine, were at the junction of Europe's canals, its most important rivers and the oceans of the world. Almost everything passing in and out of Europe, up and down Europe's coast and across the sea passed through Holland. English tin, Spanish wool, Swedish iron, French wines, Russian furs, Indian spices and teas, Norwegian timber and Irish wool flowed into the Netherlands to be graded, finished, woven, blended, sorted and shipped out again on the watery highways.
To carry these goods, the Dutch had a near-monopoly on the world's shipping. Four thousand Dutch merchantmen—more merchant ships than those possessed by the rest of the world combined—sailed the world's oceans. The Dutch East India Company, founded in 1602, and the newer West India Company had offices in every major port in the world. Dutch seamen, combining the vigor of the explorer with the calculation of the trader, were always seeking new markets and new ports. As ships sailed ceaselessly to and fro, goods and profits piled up and the Dutch merchant republic became richer and richer. New services were developed in the city of Amsterdam to protect and encourage trade: insurance was devised to spread the risks; banks and the stock exchange found ways to deal in credit and to float public loans on an unprecedented scale to finance great commercial enterprises; printers printed contracts and bills of lading and all the multiple paper forms necessary to organize, advertise and confirm the thousands of business transactions occurring daily. Wealth bred confidence, confidence bred credit, credit bred more wealth, and Holland's power and fame spread farther. Holland was the true model of the rich, successful mercantile state, a commerical paradise to which young men came from all over Protestant Europe, especially England and Scotland, to learn the commerical and financial techniques of Holland's supremacy.
It was to this glittering mecca of commerce, sea power, culture and world empire that an eager young Russian named Peter Mikhailov was hurrying across Germany in the late summer of 1697.
At Pereslavl, at Archangel, at Voronezh, talking with Dutch shipwrights and sea captains, Peter had often heard the name of Zaandam. This Dutch town on the banks of the great gulf of the Ij, ten miles north of Amsterdam, was said to build the finest ships in Holland. In the fifty private shipbuilding yards in and around the town, as many as 350 ships a year were constructed, and so rapid and expert were the Zaandamers reputed to be that from the moment a keej was laid until the vessel was ready for sea, not more than five weeks were allowed to pass. Over the years, Peter's desire to visit and learn to build ships in Zaandam had taken firm root. Now, as he traveled across Germany, he told his comrades that he meant to remain in Zaandam through the autumn and winter learning shipbuilding. When he reached the Rhine at Emmerich near the Dutch frontier, he was so impatient that he hired a boat and, leaving most of the Embassy behind, sailed straight down the river, passing through Amsterdam without even stopping to rest.
Early on Sunday morning, August 18, Peter and his six companions were sailing along a canal approaching Zaandam when the Tsar noticed a familiar figure sitting in a rowboat, fishing for eels. It was Gerrit Kist, a Dutch blacksmith who had worked with Peter in Moscow. Overjoyed to see a familiar face, Peter boomed out a greeting. Kist, snatched from his thoughts and raising his eyes to see the Tsar of Russia sailing by, almost fell out of his boat. Steering for the bank and jumping from his boat, Peter hugged Kist excitedly and swore him to secrecy regarding his presence. Then, finding that Kist lived nearby, the Tsar immediately announced that he would stay with the blacksmith. Kist had many objections, arguing that his house was too small and plain for a monarch, and proposing instead the house of a widow who lived just behind his own house. With an offer of seven florins, the widow was persuaded to move in with her father. Thus, within a few hours Peter was happily settled into a tiny wooden house consisting of two small rooms, two windows, a tiled stove and a curtained, airless sleeping closet so small that he could not fully stretch out. Two of his companions stayed with him; the other four found nearby quarters.
Because it was Sunday, the shipyards were closed, but Peter was intensely excited and found it impossible to sit quietly and do nothing. He went out into the streets, which were filled with people strolling on a summer Sunday afternoon. The crowd, attracted by the news that a strange boat had arrived carrying-foreigners in exotic costumes, began to notice him. Annoyed, he tried to find refuge at the Otter Inn, but there also people stared at him. It was only the beginning.
Early Monday morning, Peter hurried to a store on the dike and bought carpenter's tools. Then he went to the private shipyard of Lynst Rogge and, under the name Peter Mikhailov, signed himself up as a common workman. He began working happily, shaping timbers with his hatchet and constantly asking the foreman the name of every object he saw. After work, he began visiting the wives and parents of Dutch shipbuilders still in Russia, explaining to them that he worked side by side with their sons and husbands, declaring with pleasure, 'I, too, am a carpenter.' He called on the widow of a Dutch carpenter who had died in Russia, to whom he had previously sent a gift of 500 florins. The widow told him that she had often prayed for a chance to tell the Tsar how much his gift had meant to her. Touched and pleased, Peter sat down and had supper with her.
On Tuesday, anxious to be out on the water, Peter bought a small rowboat, having haggled over the price in the best Dutch fashion. He obtained it for forty florins, and then he and the seller went to a tavern and shared a pitcher of beer.
Despite Peter's wish that no one learn his identity, the secret quickly began to evaporate. On Monday morning, Peter had ordered his companions to shed their Russian robes for the red jackets and white canvas trousers of Dutch workmen, but, even so, the Russians did not look like Dutchmen. Peter's own great height made real anonymity impossible, and by Tuesday everyone in Zaandam knew that 'a person of great importance' was in town. This was confirmed by an incident on Tuesday afternoon when Peter, walking down a street and eating plums from his hat, offered some to a group of boys he encountered. There was not enough fruit to go around, and the boys began to follow him. When he tried to chase them away, they pelted him with stones and mud. Peter took shelter in the Three Swans Inn and sent for help. The Burgomaster himself came and Peter was forced to explain who he was and why he was there. The Burgomaster immediately issued an order forbidding Zaandamers to trouble or insult 'distinguished persons who wish to remain unknown.'
Soon, the most 'distinguished person' was precisely identified. A Zaandam shipwright working in Russia had written home to his father that the Great Embassy was coming to Holland and that the Tsar would probably be with it, traveling incognito. He advised his father that Peter would be easy to recognize because of his great height, the shaking or twitching of his head and left arm, and the small wart on his right cheek. The father had just read this letter aloud on Wednesday to everyone in Pomp's barber shop when a tall man with exactly those distinguishing marks walked in. Like barbers everywhere, Pomp regarded it as part of his calling to pass along all local gossip, and he forthwith broadcast the news that the tallest of the strangers was the Tsar of Muscovy. To verify Pomp's report, people hurried to Kist, who was harboring the stranger and who was known to be familiar with the Tsar from his years in Russia. Kist, faithful to Peter's wish, stoutly denied his guest's identity until his wife said, 'Gerrit, I cannot stand it any longer. Stop lying.'
Even though Peter's secret was out, he still tried to maintain his incognito. He refused an invitation to dine with the leading merchants of Zaandam and declined to eat fish cooked in the special Zaandam style with the Burgomaster and his councilors. To both these invitations, Peter replied that there was no one of importance present; the Tsar had not yet come. When one leading merchant came to Peter's comrades to offer a larger house with a garden filled with fruit trees which would be more suitable for them and their master, they replied that they were not noblemen but servants, and that their present accommodations were ample.
News of the Tsar's appearance in Zaandam spread rapidly across Holland. Many people flatly refused to believe it, and numerous bets were placed. Two merchants who had met Peter at Archangel hurried to Zaandam. Seeing him at his house on Thursday morning, they came out, pale with emotion, and declared, 'Certainly, it is the Tsar, but how and why is he here?' Another acquaintance from Archangel told Peter of his amazement at seeing him in Holland in workman's clothes. Peter replied simply, 'You see it,' and refused to say anything else on the subject.
On Thursday, Peter bought a sailboat for 450 florins and installed a new mast and bowsprit with his own hands. When the sun rose on Friday, he was sailing on the Ij, tiller in hand. That afternoon, after dinner, he went sailing again, but as he cruised on the Ij, he saw a large number of boats putting out from Zaandam to join him. To escape, he steered for shore and jumped out, only to find himself in the middle of another curious crowd, pushing to see him and staring at him as if he were an animal in the zoo. In anger, Peter cuffed one spectator on the head, provoking the crowd to shout at the victim, 'Bravo! Marsje, now you have been knighted!' By this time, the numbers of people in boats and on the shore had grown so great that Peter secluded himself in an inn and would not return to Zaandam until darkness fell.
