The 375.7 foot four-masted barque Padua was completed in 1926 in Bremerhaven Germany for the Hamburg shipowners F. Laeisz, owners of the famous "P" Line. The last Cape Horner to have been built, she first worked as a cargo ship on the Chilean nitrate route, then operated in the Australian grain trade until the Second World War which she spent laid up at Flensburg, North Germany.

In January 1946 she was towed to Swinemunde and handed over to the Soviet Navy as a war prize. She was renamed Kruzenshtern after the Russian navigator and explorer Adam Johann von Krusenstern (1770-1846).

As part of the Soviet Baltic fleet she remained in harbor until 1959 when she underwent a major refit. Her first set of engines were installed at that time. She was operated by the Soviet Navy's Hydrographic Department from 1961 to 1965 and conducted hydrographic and oceanographical surveys for the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in the Atlantic, Caribbean, and Mediterranean as well as serving as a schoolship for naval cadets.

In 1965 she was transferred to the USSR Ministry of Fisheries and began her career as a training ship for future fisheries officers. She was modernized from 1968-72 when her current set of engines were installed and her hull was painted. She can be identified by her massive black hull which is accented with a wide white stripe. Harking back to earlier days when attacks from pirates were a real threat, the hull is marked with black 'portholes' which from a distance look just like gunports. She resumed her training cruises, normally 2 months long, in 1972. Her complement is 76 crew and 202 cadets.

In 1974 she was the first Soviet ship, with Tovarishch, to take part in a Tall Ship's Race where she was awarded the Cutty Sark (friendship) Trophy. In 1976 she took part in the US Bicentennial trans-Atlantic Tall Ships Race. Since then she has been a frequent and popular participant in the races and other international windjammer gatherings. She took part in the 1990 Tall Ships Race and the 1992 Columbus Regatta and can be seen at Sail Amsterdam again in 2000.