Russian battleship Potemkin
The Russian battleship Potemkin was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet. She became famous during the Revolution of 1905, when her crew mutinied against their officers. This event later formed the basis for Sergei Eisenstein's 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin.
After the mutineers sought asylum in Constanța, Romania, and after the Russians recovered the ship, her name was changed to Panteleimon. She accidentally sank a Russian submarine in 1909 and was badly damaged when she ran aground in 1911. During World War I, Panteleimon participated in the Battle of Cape Sarych in late 1914. She covered several bombardments of the Bosphorus fortifications in early 1915, including one where the ship was attacked by the Ottoman battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim – Panteleimon and the other Russian pre-dreadnoughts present drove her off before she could inflict any serious damage. The ship was relegated to secondary roles after Russia's first dreadnought battleship entered service in late 1915. She was by then obsolete and was reduced to reserve in 1918 in Sevastopol.
Panteleimon was captured when the Germans took Sevastopol in May 1918 and was handed over to the Allies after the Armistice in November 1918. When the British withdrew from Sevastopol in 1919, they destroyed her engines to prevent the advancing Bolsheviks from using them against the White Russians. The ship was abandoned when the Whites evacuated the Crimean Peninsula in 1920 and was finally scrapped by the Soviets in 1923.
Background and description
Planning began in 1895 for a new battleship that would utilise a slipway slated to become available at the Nikolayev Admiralty Shipyard in 1896. The Naval Staff and the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral K. P. Pilkin, agreed on a copy of the design, but they were over-ruled by General Admiral Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich. The General Admiral decided that the long range and less powerful guns of the Peresvet class were inappropriate for the narrow confines of the Black Sea, and ordered the design of an improved version of the battleship instead. The improvements included a higher forecastle to improve the ship's seakeeping qualities, Krupp cemented armour and Belleville boilers. The design process was complicated by numerous changes demanded by various departments of the Naval Technical Committee. The ship's design was finally approved on 12 June 1897, although design changes continued to be made that slowed the ship's construction.Potemkin was long at the waterline and long overall. She had a beam of and a maximum draught of. The battleship displaced, more than her designed displacement of. The ship's crew consisted of 26 officers and 705 enlisted men.
Potemkin had a pair of three-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each of which drove one propeller, that had a total designed output of. Twenty-two Belleville boilers provided steam to the engines at a pressure of. The 8 boilers in the forward boiler room were oil-fired and the remaining 14 were coal-fired. During her sea trials on 31 October 1903, she reached a top speed of. Leaking oil caused a serious fire on 2 January 1904 that caused the navy to convert her boilers to coal firing at a cost of 20,000 rubles. The ship carried a maximum of of coal at full load that provided a range of at a speed of.
Armament
The battleship's main battery consisted of four 40-calibre guns mounted in twin-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. The electrically operated turrets were derived from the design of those used by the s. These guns had a maximum elevation of +15° and their rate of fire was very slow, only one round every four minutes during gunnery trials. They fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of. At an elevation of +10° the guns had a range of. Potemkin carried 60 rounds for each gun.The sixteen 45-calibre, 152 mm 45 caliber Pattern 1892| Canet Pattern 1891 quick-firing guns were mounted in casemates. Twelve of these were placed on the sides of the hull and the other four were positioned at the corners of the superstructure. They fired shells that weighed with a muzzle velocity of. They had a maximum range of when fired at an elevation of +20°. The ship stowed 160 rounds per gun.
Smaller guns were carried for close-range defence against torpedo boats. These included fourteen 50-calibre Canet QF 75mm 50 caliber Pattern 1892| guns: four in hull embrasures and the remaining ten mounted on the superstructure. Potemkin carried 300 shells for each gun. They fired an shell at a muzzle velocity of to a maximum range of. She also mounted six Hotchkiss guns. Four of these were mounted in the fighting top and two on the superstructure. They fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of.
Potemkin had five underwater torpedo tubes: one in the bow and two on each broadside. She carried three torpedoes for each tube. The model of torpedo in use changed over time; the first torpedo that the ship would have been equipped with was the M1904. It had a warhead weight of and a speed of with a maximum range of.
In 1907, telescopic sights were fitted for the 12-inch and 6-inch guns. In that or the following year rangefinders were installed. The bow torpedo tube was removed in 1910–1911, as was the fighting top. The following year the main-gun turret machinery was upgraded and the guns were modified to improve their rate of fire to one round every 40 seconds.
Two anti-aircraft guns were mounted on Potemkins superstructure on 3–6 June 1915; they were supplemented by two 75 mm AA guns, one on top of each turret, probably during 1916. In February 1916, the ship's four remaining torpedo tubes were removed. At some point during World War I, her 75 mm guns were also removed.
Protection
The maximum thickness of the Krupp cemented armour waterline belt was which reduced to abreast the magazines. It covered of the ship's length and plates protected the waterline to the ends of the ship. The belt was high, of which was below the waterline, and tapered down to a thickness of at its bottom edge. The main part of the belt terminated in transverse bulkheads.Above the belt was the upper strake of six-inch armour that was long and closed off by six-inch transverse bulkheads fore and aft. The upper casemate protected the six-inch guns and was five inches thick on all sides. The sides of the turrets were thick and they had a two-inch roof. The conning tower's sides were nine inches thick. The nickel-steel armour deck was two inches thick on the flat amidships, but thick on the slope connecting it to the armour belt. Fore and aft of the armoured citadel, the deck was to the bow and stern. In 1910–1911, additional armour plates were added fore and aft; their exact location is unknown, but they were probably used to extend the height of the two-inch armour strake at the ends of the ship.
Construction and career
Construction of Potemkin began on 27 December 1897 and she was laid down at the Nikolayev Admiralty Shipyard on 10 October 1898. She was named in honour of Prince Grigory Potemkin, a Russian soldier and statesman. The ship was launched on 9 October 1900 and transferred to Sevastopol for fitting out on 4 July 1902. She began sea trials in September 1903 and these continued, off and on, until early 1905 when her gun turrets were completed.Mutiny
During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, many of the Black Sea Fleet's most experienced officers and enlisted men were transferred to the ships in the Pacific to replace losses. This left the fleet with primarily raw recruits and less capable officers. With the news of the disastrous Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, morale dropped to an all-time low, and any minor incident could be enough to spark a major catastrophe. Taking advantage of the situation, plus the disruption caused by the ongoing riots and uprisings, the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Organisation of the Black Sea Fleet, called "Tsentralka", had started preparations for a simultaneous mutiny on all of the ships of the fleet, although the timing had not been decided.On 27 June 1905, Potemkin was at gunnery practice near Tendra Spit off the Ukrainian coast when many enlisted men refused to eat the borscht made from rotten meat infested with maggots. Brought aboard the warship the previous day from shore suppliers, the carcasses had been passed as suitable for eating by the ship's senior surgeon Dr Sergei Smirnov after several perfunctory examinations.
The uprising was triggered when Ippolit Giliarovsky, the ship's second in command, allegedly threatened to shoot crew members for their refusal. He summoned the ship's marine guards as well as a tarpaulin to protect the ship's deck from any blood in an attempt to intimidate the crew. Giliarovsky was killed after he mortally wounded Grigory Vakulinchuk, one of the mutiny's leaders. The mutineers killed seven of the Potemkins eighteen officers, including Captain Evgeny Golikov, Executive Officer Giliarovsky and Surgeon Smirnov; and captured the accompanying torpedo boat . They organised a ship's committee of 25 sailors, led by Afanasi Matushenko, to run the battleship.
File:Leader of Potemkin revolt.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Matushenko, the leader of the mutiny, is seen to the left of centre. Photo taken July 1905, after arrival at Constanța – officer at left is in Romanian uniform.
The committee decided to head for Odessa flying a red flag and arrived there later that day at 22:00. A general strike had been called in the city and there was some rioting as police tried to quell the strikers. The following day the mutineers refused to supply a landing party to help the striking revolutionaries take over the city, preferring instead to await the arrival of the other battleships of the Black Sea Fleet. Later that day the mutineers aboard Potemkin captured a military transport, Vekha, that had arrived in the city. The riots continued as much of the port area was destroyed by fire. On the afternoon of 29 June, Vakulinchuk's funeral turned into a political demonstration and the army attempted to ambush the sailors who participated in the funeral. In retaliation, Potemkin fired two six-inch shells at the theatre where a high-level military meeting was scheduled to take place, but missed.
Vice Admiral Grigoriy Chukhnin, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, issued an order to send two squadrons to Odessa either to force Potemkins crew to give up or sink the battleship. Potemkin sortied on the morning of 30 June to meet the three battleships Tri Sviatitelia,, and of the first squadron, but the loyal ships turned away. The second squadron arrived with the battleships and later that morning, and Vice Admiral Aleksander Krieger, acting commander of the Black Sea Fleet, ordered the ships to proceed to Odessa. Potemkin sortied again and sailed through the combined squadrons as Krieger failed to order his ships to fire. Captain Kolands of Dvenadsat Apostolov attempted to ram Potemkin and then detonate his ship's magazines, but he was thwarted by members of his crew. Krieger ordered his ships to fall back, but the crew of Georgii Pobedonosets mutinied and joined Potemkin.
The following morning, loyalist members of Georgii Pobedonosets retook control of the ship and ran her aground in Odessa harbour. The crew of Potemkin, together with Ismail, decided to sail for Constanța later that day where they could restock food, water and coal. The Romanians refused to provide the supplies, backed by the presence of their small protected cruiser Elisabeta, so the ship's committee decided to sail for the small, barely defended port of Theodosia in the Crimea where they hoped to resupply. The ship arrived on the morning of 5 July, but the city's governor refused to give them anything other than food. The mutineers attempted to seize several barges of coal the following morning, but the port's garrison ambushed them and killed or captured 22 of the 30 sailors involved. They decided to return to Constanța that afternoon.
Potemkin reached its destination at 23:00 on 7 July and the Romanians agreed to give asylum to the crew if they would disarm themselves and surrender the battleship. Ismails crew decided the following morning to return to Sevastopol and turn themselves in, but Potemkins crew voted to accept the terms. Captain Nicolae Negru, commander of the port, came aboard at noon and hoisted the Romanian flag and then allowed the ship to enter the inner harbor. Before the crew disembarked, Matushenko ordered that Potemkins Kingston valves be opened so she would sink to the bottom.