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Mykolayiv began with a shipyard

The birth of our city is closely connected with the building of its first shipyard. General-Governor Grygoriy Oleksandrovych Potyomkin-Tavriches'kyy placed special emphasis on the shipyard, charging his first assistant and friend "to start a shipyard on the Ingul river" with order № 282 of 27 April 1789.

The workmen who built the first Mykolayiv shipyard came from many places. Some were Russian soldiers, some were Turkish prisoners captured during the 1787 - 1791 war between Russia and Turkey. These men became the first citizens on Mikolayiv.

The General-governor of Malorossia, Prince Grigoriy Potemkin-Tavritcheskiy had considered the construction of shipyards an extremely important thing. With his order # 282, dated by April 27, year 1789, he commanded to his first assistant and friend Mikhail Faleyev: " Establish a shipyard at Ingul!".

The works of the yard were constructed quickly and on 10 November of the same year Potyomkin asked Ekaterina II to give Mykolayiv the rank of city. That recognition took some time, and finally was given in October 1790.

In August of 1790, the shipyard's first product, an armored ship-frigate "Saint Nikolay" was launched. An enormous number of military, trade and commercial vessels were built in that shipyard. The years from 1833-1853, when Myhail Petrovych Lazarev was Commander in Chief of the Black Sea Fleet, were particularly productive. . During that time, a reconstruction of the shipyard was completed and the first iron vessels on the Black Sea were built in our city. For one hundred years Mykolayiv was home base for Russia's Black Sea Naval Command.

Over the years, the shipyard has had many names: "New Shipyard", "Ingul shipyard", "Ust-Ingul", and "the shipyard on Ingul." Presently it is called "The Black Sea Shipbuilding Plant, named after 61 Communards". Today, few big ship building plants still operate in Mykolayiv.






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