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The frontier port of Petropavlovsk, Kamchatka, was an army outpost which acquired an artillery company at some point before the garrison was dissolved in 1812 and the port became regional capital in 1813.

According to Clerke, in 1779, "only a sergeant and ten soldiers lived there". Frances Barkley wrote that on her arrival in 1792 she was "surprised by the report of three great Guns". According to Viskovatov's Uniforms of Russian army during the Napoleonic war, volume 8, by 1801 there was an Artillery Garrison Company in the port. In 1804, Löwenstern, Krusenstern, and Langsdorff of the Nadezhda all mentioned artillery officers. Viskovatov, volume 12, has quite a lot on the distinctions between sorts of army artillery companies, but doesn't describe this one.

When was the Petropavlovsk artillery company established?

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  • There are at least three "St. Peter and St. Paul forts", all translated into English as Petropavlovsk, in the territory of the former Russian Empire. To be sure that you have not mistaken one reference for another, please expand your question to outline everything you already know, and where that information is to be found, so further duplication of your existing efforts need not continue. Aug 4, 2018 at 2:57
  • You and I both found Viskovatov's works on Google Books. I am adding the link that the text search apparently misses. He makes it clear when the reference is to Kamchatka. The other authors wrote travelogues that included stops in Kamchatka. Löwenstern's journal was translated recently by Moessner. I think the other books were published contemporaneously. Aug 4, 2018 at 4:34

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The artillery company seems to have been formed between 1773 and 1780.

According to Город над Авачинской бухтой by Витер, Magnus Carl von Böhm, chief of Kamchatka from 1773 to 1779, sent 32 soldiers with two officers to Petropavlovsk. These built an artillery battery at the entrance to the harbor.

According to Clerke in Kamchatka, 1779: New Information for an Anniversary Note by Crownheart-Vaughan, officials from Catherine the Great on down got very interested in reinforcing Petropavlovsk after the English visits. The governor (I think governor-general) at Irkutsk sent "four cannoneers, [and] three noncommissioned officers" along with new commandant Reineke, who according to de Lesseps, was installed in 1780.

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