Elisabeta (1887)
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 Cruiser Elisabeta around 1900 |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Protected cruiser |
| Shipyard |
Armstrong, Mitchell & Co , |
| Keel laying | May 17, 1887 |
| Launch | December 29, 1887 |
| Namesake | Queen Elizabeth of Romania |
| Commissioning | September 19, 1888 |
| Whereabouts | 1926 demolished |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
1325 tn.l. |
| length |
overall: 73.15 m (240 ft ) |
| width |
10 m (33.5 ft) |
| Draft |
3.66 m (12 ft) |
| crew |
140-170 men |
| drive |
4 cylinder boilers |
| speed |
18.3 kn , with fan 19 kn |
| Armament |
4 × 15 cm L / 35 Krupp cannon |
| Coal supply |
250 tn.l., maximum 325 tn.l. |
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Armor decks command tower |
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The Elisabeta was a small armored cruiser that Armstrong, Mitchell & Co. built for Romania in 1887/1888 . She served mainly as a training ship. In 1895 she represented Romania at the opening of the Kiel Canal . Militarily it played no significant role. In July 1905 she accepted the surrender of the mutinous Russian liner Potjomkin in the Black Sea port of Constanța .
When Romania entered World War I , it was disarmed and shut down. Until it was demolished in 1926, it was used as a residential ship.
Building history
In 1887 Romania ordered a cruiser of 1300 t from Armstrong, Mitchell & Co., which was started on May 17, 1887 under construction number 517 at the shipyard in Elswick. When it was launched on December 29, 1887, it was named Elisabeta after the Romanian Queen Elisabeth zu Wied .
The Elisabeta was a single ship, even if her hull size was similar to the ships built for Japan , China , Austria-Hungary and Spain since 1880. The steel ship was 73.15 m long and 10 m wide and finally displaced 1325 tn.l. The Elisabeta was powered by two triple expansion machines that Hawthorn Leslie had supplied and which produced up to 4,714 PSi with four cylinder boilers with artificial draft. This meant that 18.3 kn could be achieved in the acceptance tests . The cruiser had a normal coal supply of 250 tn.l., a maximum of 322 tn.l. be carried. It was noticeable on delivery that the cruiser had barque rigging, which should not only serve as emergency sails.
The main armament of the Elisabeta consisted of four individual 15 cm L / 35 Krupp cannons, which were placed on semicircular bulges on the sides, but only allowed fire from the side. These weapons were only installed after arriving in Romania. Two 57 mm Nordenfelt cannons were installed as bow and stern guns. In addition, there were two 37-mm Hotchkiss cannons and four 356-mm surface torpedo tubes (bow, stern, broadside).
Armor protection was provided by an armored deck 25 to 37 mm thick, which was up to 88 mm thick in the bevels. In addition, the ship had a command post with an armor thickness of 76 mm.
The Elisabeta was modernized several times during her service. The yards were removed before the turn of the century, in 1904 two pole masts were installed, and movement under sails was no longer planned. From 1904 to 1907, rapid-fire guns of French origin were gradually re-armament in Galatz . First the old Krupp cannons on the sides were replaced by four 120 mm rapid fire guns, then the outdated bow and stern guns were replaced by four modern 75 mm guns in the front and rear. The old Hotchkiss cannons were also disembarked and the Elisabeta received modern machine guns to replace them .
Mission history
On September 19, 1888 the acceptance voyages of the Elisabeta ended and at the end of October the cruiser began to leave for Romania, where the ship arrived after three weeks and received its main armament in the naval arsenal of Galatz. On May 15, 1889, the cruiser began its first two-month training trip with a crew of 143 men, a dozen civilian instructors and 23 cadets. The Elisabeta visited Sulina and Constanza , Varna , Constantinople and Odessa . This was followed by another trip to the other side of the Black Sea and in 1890 the cruiser made similar training trips. Beginning in 1891 that began Elisabeta a five-month trip to the Mediterranean, where they first Konstantin Opel, then Smyrna and Piraeus visited where they by the Greek King George I was seen. Other ports visited included Villefranche , Antibes and Toulon in France, La Spezia , Livorno and Palermo in Italy, Cádiz in Spain and the British ports of Malta and Gibraltar . In 1892 she represented Romania together with Mircea at the Columbus celebrations for the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America in Livorno, Barcelona and Lisbon . In 1894, in addition to a shorter cruise in the Black Sea, another longer cruise in the Mediterranean was carried out. In 1895 the Elisabeta went again with the Mircea to Kiel to take part in the opening ceremony of the Kiel Canal and then visited Stockholm , where she was visited by the Swedish King Oskar II .
In 1898 the Elisabeta began a careful survey of the Romanian coast.
After a major overhaul and the reduction of the rig to two pole masts, the Elisabeta was put back into service on May 15, 1905. When she was in the port of Constanța, the Russian liner Potjomkin came there from Odessa on July 2, 1905 .
After the start of the Russian Revolution of 1905 , the crew of the liner had July 14th . / June 27, 1905 greg. mutinied in front of the island of Tendra and then in the port of Sevastopol against the imperial officers on board, especially against the commander Golikov, called "the dragon" by the sailors . The Potjomkin then went to Odessa with other mutinous ships . On entering Constanța, the Potjomkin demanded coal and supplies, which the Romanians steadfastly refused, although in the event of a fight they would have been considerably inferior to what is by far the strongest ship in the Black Sea. The mutineers then left the Romanian port again and called at Feodosia in the Crimea . There they received food, but no coal and water. The attempt to obtain this with a landing party failed bloody. The liner returned to Constan Consta and surrendered on June 25th, after almost exhaustion of the coal supply. / July 8th, 1905 greg. the Romanian authorities and the mutineers were interned. Formally, the Russian liner was handed over to the commander of the Elisabeta . The mutineers, who had been promised protection and right of residence in Romania, had secretly opened the sea valves, so that the liner lay aground in the evening. Romania later gave it back to Russia.
In 1906 the Elisabeta took part in the opening of the Bulgarian naval port in Varna with the torpedo boats Sborul and Naluca . On June 17, 1906, Elisabeta, now equipped with a Clayton radio telegraph, received a radio message from the Royal Romanian Naval Station in Constanationa for the first time , which, however, was not yet able to receive any radio messages. In the same year, the ship was still involved in exercises that trained an amphibious operation of a Romanian infantry battalion. In 1906 and 1907 the outdated Krupp and Nordenfeldt guns were replaced by French 120 mm and 75 mm guns from Saint-Chamond . On June 25, 1908, the Elisabeta was involved in the opening of the Romanian Naval School in Constanța, for which it should continue to be used.
During the First Balkan War , in which Romania remained neutral, the modernized and re-armed Elisabeta was stationed in Constantinople in 1912 and landed several seamen to protect the Romanian representation in the Ottoman capital. After the end of the war, she returned to Romania on June 15, 1913, one day before the war broke out again. She was stationed in Sulina to protect the mouth of the Danube .
When Romania entered the First World War , it was disarmed and its cannons placed on the Danube to defend against Austro-Hungarian river monitors. The old cruiser remained in Sulina as a guard ship armed only with machine guns and was used as a residential ship in Galatz and then again in Sulina after the war, before it was sold for demolition in 1926.
literature
- Peter Brooke: Warships for Export: Armstrong Warships 1867-1927. World Ship Society, Gravesend 1999, ISBN 0-905617-89-4 .
- Roger Chesneau, Eugène M. Koleśnik, NJM Campbell: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .