There are about eight hundred bridges in St. Petersburg! The Emperor wanted Saint Petersburg to become the largest seaport in Europe and believed that its residents should move around the city by boat, just like in Amsterdam. He instilled a love of water through personal example. In winter, when the Neva River was frozen, and people could travel across it by sled or on foot, a court jester would be the first to descend onto the frozen river. He would beat a drum and then cross to the other side accompanied by a team with ropes and boards—just in case. And in the spring, Peter the Great would open the navigation season: first, three cannon shots were fired, and then the Emperor would cross by boat. At that time, there were only two bridges in the city, both wooden: the Ioannovsky Bridge, connecting Birch and Hare Islands, and the Anichkov Bridge, used for delivering building materials. There were two reasons for this. First, the water level in the Neva River rose so much every year that the floods would simply wash away any such structures. "On the third day, the wind from the west-southwest brought in such water as they say has never been seen. In my chambers, the water was 21 inches above the floor; and in the garden and on the other side of the street, people freely traveled by boat... on the roofs and trees, as if during a flood, there sat not only men but women as well...," Peter wrote in a letter to Alexander Menshikov. Second, bridges would have greatly hindered commercial navigation. And third, ferrying people and goods across the river was a profitable business that filled the state treasury. In 1727, two years after Peter the Great's death, the first pontoon bridge appeared in St. Petersburg—the Isaakievsky Bridge, which allowed passage to Vasilyevsky Island. It was supported by 26 flatboats, known as ploshkouts. Until 1754, crossing it was toll-based—one kopeck per person and five kopecks per carriage. And in 1850, St. Petersburg saw its first permanent bridge between Admiralty Island and Vasilyevsky Island—the Blagoveshchensky Bridge.