AMPHIBIOUS flagship HMS Albion made an historic visit to St Petersburg – despite port guides telling the bridge team it couldn’t be done.

The 176-metre (578ft) ship arrived at Lt Schmidt Pier in the centre of the ‘Venice of the North’ having turned around with inches to spare at either side of the River Nevsky.

Albion is the largest foreign warship to visit St Petersburg – and the Russians made a suitable fuss of her accordingly.

“It was clear from the moment that you turned into the Bolshaya Neva, filling the field of view across the river, that Albion’s visit to St Petersburg was going to have a significant impact,” said Capt Gary Newton, Britain’s Naval Attaché in Moscow.

A military band serenaded the assault ship as she berthed with Heart of Oak and once safely alongside 40 media swarmed aboard, drawn, in part, by the presence of Britain’s Ambassador to Russia, Anthony Brenton. (Albion’s visit coincided with the Foreign Office’s request for the extradition of a suspect in connection with the poisoning of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.)

Among other dignitaries hosted by Albion during her stay was The Iron Lady, not Mrs T, but Valentina Matvienko, Governor of St Petersburg, who happens to share a sobriquet with the former British premier.

While the media were drawn to the visit of bigwigs, Albion’s ship’s company (well, the male contingent) were strangely drawn to Russian actress Liza Boyarskaya (she appeared inter alia in Downfall, the film about the last days of Hitler which was made in St Petersburg).

The actress was onboard for a fashion shoot by the Russian edition of Vogue magazine (it won’t appear until the November edition) and was escorted by Royal Marines and sailors throughout her stay; she responded to Albion’s hospitality by providing the volunteers with front-row seats at her production of King Lear.

On a more sombre note, sailors paid their respects at Piskarovskoye Cemetery, under the ever-watchful eye of Mother Russia.

More than half a million victims of the siege of Leningrad – as the city was known under Soviet rule – are buried in huge mass graves (each one contains 10,000 dead).

Albion paraded an unarmed ten-man guard in a ceremony of remembrance attended by the ship’s CO Capt Tim Lowe, Mr Brenton and Capt Newton.

Similarly humbling was a visit to a special needs school in the city, where 20 sailors volunteered to fit equipment in a new gymnasium and generally giving the building a fresh look.

As a ‘thank you’, pupils performed a short concert and presented the sailors were various pictures they had produced.

“We all left wishing that we had had longer to get more done for them,” said POLOGS(CS) Hasler.

“What the children did for us far outweighed what we were able to do for them.”

That charitable work brought the curtain down on Albion’s three-day stay on the Nevsky.

Barely 24 hours later, the assault ship found herself in Helsinki, where she was greeted by Finnish assault craft.