PERRY, CAPTAIN JOHN, was a famous engineer, who resided long in Russia, having been recommended to the czar Peter while in England, as a person capable of serving him on a variety of occasions relating to his new design of establishing a fleet, making his rivers navigable, &c. His salary in this service was 3000. per annum, besides travelling expences and subsistence money on whatever service he should be employed, together with a further reward to his satisfaction at the conclusion of any work he should finish. After some conversation with the czar himself, particularly respecting a communication between the rivers Volga and Don, he was employed on that work for three summers successively; but not being well supplied with men, partly on account of the ill success of the czar's arms against the Swedes at the battle of Narva, and partly by the discouragement of the governor of Astracan, he was ordered at the end of 1707 to stop, and next year was employed in refitting the ships at Veronise, and 1709 in making the river of that name navigable; but after repeated disappointments, and a variety of fruitless applications for his salary, he at last quitted the kingdom, under the protection of Mr Whitworth, the English ambassador, in 1712. (See
his narrative in the Preface to The State of Russia). In 1721 he was employed in stopping with success the breach at Dagenham, in which several other undertakers had failed; and the same year about the harbour at Dublin, to the objections against which he then published an Answer. He was author of The State of Russia, 1716, 8vo, and An Account of the stopping of Dagenham Breach, 1721, 8vo; and died Feb. 11. 1733.