the ship had constantly increased from the of the 1867 design to the of the June 1869 design. Construction of the ship, now named Kreiser (Cruiser), began even before the design was approved, but changes to the design continued to be made. The masts and rigging were deleted, presumably shortly after the loss of the British masted turret ship in a storm on 7 September 1870, although the exact date is not known. The decision between a ram and telescoping spar torpedoes in the ship's bow was not made until November 1870. The visit of the British naval architect Edward Reed in June 1871 prompted changes in the design of the breastwork. It was increased in thickness from to and extended to the sides of the ship in accordance with suggestions by Reed. Kreiser was renamed Petr Veliky on 11 June 1872, in honor of the bicentennial of Peter the Great's birth. Petr Veliky was long at the waterline and long overall, with a beam of and a designed draft of . Her displacement as completed was , almost more than her designed displacement of . The ship's hull was subdivided by one centerline longitudinal, nine transverse and two wing watertight bulkheads, and it had a complete double bottom. Petr Veliky had a high metacentric height of . 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. Propulsion Petr Veliky had two three-cylinder horizontal return connecting rod-steam engines, each driving a single propeller. Steam was provided by 12 rectangular boilers with a working pressure of . The engines were designed to produce a total of to give the ship a maximum speed of around . The ship carried a maximum of of coal, which gave her an economical range of at . The machinery was built by the Baird Works for the price of 1,019,000 rubles, but proved to be defective. Inferior metal was used in the boilers and multiple cracks and breaks were found in the piping. Cracks were also found in the engine cylinders that Baird had attempted to patch and then puttied over. 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 . The