Many of us at least once in our lives have heard the expression that Moscow is a port of five seas. But if you pick up a map of the Moscow region, nobody will find a single sea nearby. Why did they start to say that? Let's start in order.
Boating
In ancient times, there were no cars, no trains, no planes, and it was always necessary to deliver food and various other cargoes to cities. The fleet came to the rescue. Of course, the ships in antiquity were not the same as they are now. Today they can sail against the tide with the help of an engine, and before the ships were dragged on the ropes. This work was done by horses. A man harnessed and led them along the coastline. However, it was difficult for horses, but it was even more difficult for a person to do such work.
Confirmation of this fact is the picture of Ilya Repin , entitled "Barge Haulers on the Volga." On it, the artist depicted a crowd of burlak men tormented by hard work, who pull the ship on ropes. Their faces were burnt from the scorching sun, their foreheads were covered with sweat, their clothes turned to shreds from hard work. It is terrible to think how much energy and health was given by these people in order to transport the goods to where necessary. Sometimes a person had to move loaded ships in this way even through forests and meadows in order for the ship to continue its journey along the river. Since then, the expression has gone that ships do not sail, but go.
Muscovites know that in their area there is the town of Volokolamsk. The name of this city consists of two roots: “dragging” and “llama”. This settlement arose precisely in the transshipment place where the ship was pulled out of the water of the Lama River and dragged along the ground to the Voloshny riverbed. Such ship sailing continued for many centuries, but in the 18th century the emperor Peter the Great got the idea to build a special canal. But the first mention of the port of five seas in history will be even later.
Man-made rivers
Sovereign Peter the First came up with the opportunity to shorten the waterway for the ship. Imagine that from Moscow to Ryazan the ship needs to sail not 200 kilometers, like a car, but much more. The thing is that the rivers are very winding, they have many twists and turns, so the waterway is longer than the highway.
Our emperor invented to dig a deep gutter in those places of the river where it bends very much, then close the old channel by the river without letting water in, and fill a new gutter with it. That's how Peter's idea straightened some rivers!
Indeed, such a road was more convenient and shorter than the former. Surprisingly, such an idea allowed to build waterways in those places where they never existed. So that a person would not have to carry ships on himself, it was enough to dig a deep channel, and the highway for the fleet was erected.
You may be surprised, but the active sovereign still embodied the reality of such a project. The Vyshnevolotsky Canal was built under his leadership. This reservoir connected two rivers: Tvertsu and Tsnu. So from the Volga ships fell into the Baltic Sea. The port of the five seas was later built in a similar manner.
Unrealized plans
Sovereign Peter the Great at one time conceived to connect the Moscow River and the Volga. But these plans were not destined to be fulfilled. In the XVIII century, the emperor gave the order to draw up an estimate for the construction, and when it was prepared, having got acquainted with it, Peter the First said in disappointment: “However!”
The construction of such a canal for that period turned out to be very expensive and long, since there was no equipment that could do this quickly and without human casualties. And we are getting closer to answering the question: why is Moscow called the port of the five seas?
The capital is thirsty
Each of us knows that there is drinking water in the tap due to the fact that the city was built on the banks of the river. So it was with Moscow. On the threshold of the twentieth century, the capital begins to develop so quickly that the townspeople are short of clean water. The city authorities urgently needed to take any measures.
And in 1931, it was decided to connect the main river of the capital with the Volga. Only she could help Moscow in this situation. The next year, the construction of the Great Moscow Canal began. The grandiose construction lasted 5 years, and in the spring of 1937 the canal was successfully erected.
Its length was 128 kilometers. In the same spring, March 23, the Volga was stopped for 3 minutes, and the canal was filled with Volga water. The Ivankovo reservoir was filled, on April 18, water from the Volga watered the inhabitants of the capital!
It turns out that not all Muscovites know how long the water they drink has covered.
Moscow is a port city of five seas
Here is the answer to the question. The opening of the channel was during the reign of Joseph Stalin. This expression came from the lips of the head of the Soviet state. The meaning of this phrase was that after the construction of the Moscow and Volga-Don canals from the main city, you can get to:
- Black Sea.
- Sea of Azov.
- White sea.
- The Baltic Sea.
- The Caspian Sea.
The status of “port of five seas” can be assigned not only to Moscow, but also to all those cities that have water links with the capital. These cities include Uglich, Volgograd, Kazan and so on. It was common for the Generalissimo of the Soviet Union to erect such large-scale projects, so it was Stalin who came up with the idea of making a port of the five seas in Moscow.