Even before the Great Northern War, Tsar Peter I began building the Russian Baltic Fleet, which played a very important military role in the second phase of that conflict in the aforementioned body of water. Before the conflict, Russia did not have a sufficient number of ships and educated officers, master shipbuilders, or skilled shipyard workers. As a result, foreigners were hired, who were in the vast majority of the Russian fleet at the time. They also received very high honoraria, as mentioned in the reports of British diplomats from Russia, which will be the source basis for this discussion. They did not overlook the training of their cardinals both at home and in other European countries. Ships, on the other hand, which formed the basis of the Baltic fleet, were most often purchased from England and the Netherlands. Based on the surviving documents of British diplomats, it is possible to reconstruct the state of the fleet and the composition of the foreigners serving in it, the number of fees they received, and the number of ships purchased abroad for the Russian Navy.