In 1791, fleeing from the French Revolution, Traversay joined the Imperial Russian Navy, rising to commander-in-chief of the Black Sea Fleet in 1802.

His father, Jean-Francois chevallier de Traversay, was a French Navy lieutenant stationed in Martinique who later became a military governor of the island.

After a brief stay in Rochefort, where he joined the Free Masons and temporarily commanded a company of marines protecting the coast from British incursions, Traversay was assigned to the fleet of admiral d'Orvilliers.

On 8 July, the French fleet sailed into the Atlantic Ocean with orders to engage and destroy the British Navy and cooperate with American insurgents.

Two weeks later, he sailed to the Antilles again, this time as first officer of the frigate Iphigénie, under the command of Armand de Kersaint, which joined the fleet of admiral d'Estaing.

In September 1779, Cérès was in action in an abortive landing at Savannah, in April and May 1780 in the Battle of Martinique, and in two subsequent clashes between the fleets of admirals d'Estaing and Rodney.

In the late stages of war Iris continued reconnaissance, bounty hunting, and finally performed a diplomatic mission, bringing an offer of a ceasefire to British-occupied New York.

When news of the fall of the Bastille reached the island, local French troops revolted and were repatriated to Lorient on Traversay's Active.

Back in France, the French Navy was falling apart too; Traversay took a long leave, sending his family to a safe place in Switzerland.

In 1802, Alexander promoted Traversay to full admiral and appointed him commander-in-chief of the Black Sea Fleet and the governor of Kherson Oblast.

These two functions conflicted with each other; funds allocated for bases in Russia were consumed by the Corfu fleet and the bills of the fledgling Septinsular Republic.

A force of four ships-of-the-line (all that was left n home waters), under the command of admiral Pustoshkin, with Traversay on board, fired on the rebel fortress at point-blank range.

Traversay had to limit fleet exercises to the shallow and narrow eastern extremity of the Gulf of Finland, sarcastically often called the Marquis Puddle.

The third, also launched in 1819, led by Anjou, Shishmaryov, and Wrangel, traversed the Bering Strait and explored the Arctic coastline of Alaska and Russia, reaching 76° 15′N.

Alexander also allowed Traversay to move from the city to his country home in Romanshchina (near Luga, 120 kilometers from Saint Petersburg), and to run the Navy operations from there.

The tsar himself regularly visited Traversay in his country office, with the last meeting in Romanshchina occurring in September 1825, four weeks before Alexander's death at Taganrog.

During the first three years of the reign of Nicholas I, Traversay continued rebuilding the Baltic fleet after the disastrous flood of 1824, gradually passing his duties to younger officers.

Two of their children born in France and Switzerland, Claire (1785–1842) and Jean-Francois (future Alexander Ivanovich de Traversay, Sr.), lived long enough to acquire Russian citizenship.

Traversay, however, feared that the newborn would perish, too, and asked the empress to transfer her gift to Jean-Francois, who was renamed Alexander to retain the commission.

She was the daughter of Elisabeth Fabritius and her husband burgher Kaarle Bruun, a rich merchant and businessman in Hamina, Old Finland, the nearest chartered town to Traversay's command, the fortification on the Kymi River.