About the book: 2006 / This book is based on materials confirming that from the 14th to the 17th centuries the Cossacks were formed in the south of the Slavic world as a class that lived primarily by sea. The navy of the Zaporozhye army was recruited for naval wars by Spain, France, and Sweden. Rus' owes its geographical discoveries in the Pacific Ocean to the seafaring Cossacks in the 17th century. At the beginning of the 18th century in the Russian Empire, the Cossacks were excluded from naval service. However, during the reign of Catherine II and Nicholas I, the Black Sea and Azov Cossack troops were formed from among the former Cossacks, who took part in the naval battles of the late 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. In the period from the 1870s to 1917, dozens of Cossacks and their descendants served in the regular Imperial Navy, reaching the ranks of admiral and glorifying the St. Andrew's flag, creating the first sea lines of the Russian merchant fleet. The book is the first to present and justify a fundamentally new concept of education and development Cossack troops from the 14th to the 20th centuries.