The ship made a cruise to the Mediterranean after they were installed, and before returning to the Baltic Fleet, where she remained for the rest of her career.

Petr Veliky was deemed obsolete by the late 1890s, but she was not ordered to be converted into a gunnery training ship until 1903.

She remained in service with the Soviets, in various secondary roles, until she was finally stricken from the Navy List in 1959 and subsequently scrapped.

Petr Veliky had its genesis in the visit of the American twin-turret monitor USS Miantonomoh to Kronstadt in August 1866, that inspired Rear Admiral A.

A. Popov to submit a preliminary design for a low-freeboard, breastwork monitor with a full suite of sails and masts.

In May Popov proposed to add a small superstructure forward of the breastwork to improve seakeeping and overhanging side armor as used on the monitors during the American Civil War.

The visit of the British naval architect Edward Reed in June 1871 prompted changes in the design of the breastwork.

[2] Kreiser was renamed Petr Veliky on 11 June 1872, in honor of the bicentennial of Peter the Great's birth.

[4] The ship's hull was subdivided by one centerline longitudinal, nine transverse and two wing watertight bulkheads, and it had a complete double bottom.

Although a lively roller, she was considered a passable sea-boat even though water flooded in between the gap between the gun turrets and the deck whenever the sea swept over her forecastle.

[5] Petr Veliky had two three-cylinder horizontal return connecting rod-steam engines, each driving a single propeller.

The engines were designed to produce a total of 9,000 indicated horsepower (6,700 kW) to give the ship a maximum speed of around 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph).

The ship carried a maximum of 1,213 long tons (1,232 t) of coal, which gave her an economical range of 2,900 nautical miles (5,400 km; 3,300 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).

Baird was forced to replace almost all of the piping by May 1877, but during a new series of sea trials in the following month, the ship only reached 11.8 knots (21.9 km/h; 13.6 mph).

The funnel was raised by about 20 feet (6.1 m) in an attempt to improve the draft to the boiler and 24 stokers were also added to the ship's crew during the winter of 1877–78, but neither had much effect.

While Petr Veliky was not really maneuverable enough to make full use of these weapons, they were a formidable deterrent to other ships trying to ram.

The Imperial Russian Navy began to investigate replacing the ship's machinery in 1878, and a contract was finally signed with John Elder & Co., in Glasgow, Scotland, in October 1880, based on the Navy's favorable experience with the company's construction of the Imperial yacht Livadia.

New vertical compound steam engines and twelve cylindrical boilers with a working pressure of 70 psi (483 kPa; 5 kgf/cm2) replaced the original defective machinery.

On 4 February 1882 Petr Veliky conducted sea trials with her new machinery and reached a speed of 14.36 knots (26.59 km/h; 16.53 mph) with an engine output of 8,296 indicated horsepower (6,186 kW).

Petr Veliky made port visits at Algiers, Athens, Corfu, Naples, La Spezia and Toulon before being recalled.

[13] A new design was approved on 2 February 1904, although the Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg had already begun cutting the ship down to the berth deck.

The new boilers only supplied enough steam to give the engines 5,500 indicated horsepower (4,100 kW), although a second funnel had to be added to accommodate their exhaust.

[14] The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, almost as soon as her re-design was approved, meant that work on her slowed to a crawl, and did not resume until early 1907.