In accordance with the custom of the Russian nobility, who add the Christian name of their father to their own, with the termination _owitch_, which signifies _the son of_, we find the Scottish admiral signing and designating himself "Samuel Carlovitch Greig." He was ever treated with the greatest consideration and honour by the Empress, who, in the year 1776, paid him the compliment of a visit--then esteemed an unparalleled act of condescension for the crowned head of Russia, who, among many absurd and hyperbolical titles, had (and perhaps still retains) the blasphemous one of "Chamberlain to Almighty God." On the 18th of July the Empress, attended by all the great officers of her state and household, went in a magnificent barge from Oranienbaum to Admiral Greig's ship, the yards of which he had manned. As soon as he had handed her on board, the Imperial standard was hoisted, and the whole fleet fired a salute, which was responded to by _nine hundred_ pieces of cannon in Cronstadt. Dinner was set in Greig's cabin for the Empress and a hundred guests, who were the principal officers of her marine and other departments. The whole fleet then weighed anchor, and Catherine, accompanied by the infamous Orloff, Field-Marshal Count Galitzin, and Count Bruce, the adjutant on duty, was rowed in her barge along the line amid another salute of cannon. Before returning to Oranienbaum she placed on Greig's breast the golden and eight-pointed star of St. Alexander Newski, with the red ribbon, which is worn over the left shoulder. During the peace, Greig was unremitting in his efforts to draw British officers into the service, and the number who offered their swords and valour to the Czarina soon conduced, by their skill and talent, to render her navy for the first time respectable and formidable in Europe.[10] Thus it was that, in 1799, in Lord Duncan's line of battle, August 24th, at the Texel, we find among the Russian ships of war, the _Ratisvan_, commanded by Captain Greig; and in September, under the same gallant admiral, the Scottish captains Scott, Dunn, Boyle, Maclagan, Ogilvie, and Rose, commanding the Russian ships _Alexander Newski_, 74; _Neptune_, 54; _Rafaill_, 44; _Revel_, 44; _Minerva_, 38; and _St. Nicholas_, 38, embarking the Russian troops at Revel; and thus it was, that when Russia, fifteen years before, projected a new war against the Turks, in consequence of their interference with the affairs of the independent Crimea, the Empress found her fleet to consist of upwards of ninety sail at Cronstadt, Revel, and in the Sea of Asoph.