Navarin (ship)
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|---|---|
 Navarin |
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| Overview | |
| Type | Ship of the line |
| Shipyard |
New Admiralty Shipyard / |
| Keel laying | July 13, 1889 |
| Launch | October 20, 1891 |
| delivery | September 12, 1895 |
| Namesake | Battle of Navarino 1827 |
| Whereabouts | sunk at Tsushima on May 28, 1905 |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
10206 t |
| length |
105.9 m |
| width |
20.42 m |
| Draft |
8.5 m |
| crew |
622 men |
| drive |
12 cylinder boilers |
| speed |
15.5 kn |
| Range |
? sm at? Kn |
| Armament |
• 4 × 305 mm cannon |
| Armor | |
| Belt armor |
400 mm |
| Towers |
300 mm |
| Command post |
250 mm |
The Nawarin ( Russian Наварин ) was a ship of the line of the Imperial Russian Navy . The construction of the ship, developed from the British Trafalgar class , began in 1889 at the Galerny shipyard / New Admiralty shipyard in Saint Petersburg . The launch took place on October 20, 1891, and in 1896 the ship came into service.
In 1904 the Nawarin was one of the ships of the Baltic Fleet sent to East Asia . The night after the battle at Tsushima , she was torpedoed by Japanese destroyers and sank. Only three survivors could be recovered.
Building history
The Nawarin was the first Russian ship of the line with the design of a bow and stern twin tower for the main artillery, which was typical for the time. The British battleships of the Trafalgar class and their predecessors served as models . She remained a single ship in the Russian fleet.
The hull of the ship had 93 frames and six main compartments, nine watertight bulkheads and a double floor between frames 20 and 76. Two longitudinal bulkheads between frames 31 and 65 also ensured the vital equipment of the ship. The composite armor was 69.5 m long and 2.13 m high and up to 400 mm thick, but was reduced to a thickness of 300 mm at the ends. Above the belt armor there was further armor protection around the casemates with a maximum thickness of 300 mm, 49.3 m in length and 2.4 m in height. The towers were also armored 300 mm thick, with a ceiling thickness of 50 mm.
The main armament consisted of four 305 mm L / 35 cannons manufactured by the Obukhov works in St. Petersburg. In addition, twelve 152 mm L / 35 cannons from the same manufacturer were set up as middle artillery in casemates. The torpedo boat defense consisted of 47 mm and 37 mm guns, which had been manufactured in Russia under a French license. In addition, the ship of the line received six 380 mm torpedo tubes in the bow, stern and two on each side. Like every Russian ship of this size, she also had two Baranovsky style landing guns .
The drive concerned two triple expansion - steam engines , the twelve- cylinder boilers were supplied with steam. The coal-fired boilers generated up to 14.6 atm. Pressure. They were arranged in four boiler rooms, each with its own chimney, which led to the characteristic appearance of the ship with two chimneys behind and next to each other.
Mission history
The ship was launched on the 64th anniversary of the eponymous Battle of Navarino , in which an Anglo-French-Russian squadron had destroyed the Egyptian-Turkish fleet and thus helped to make Greece's independence possible. On October 5, 1893, the Nawarin ran out for the first tests. Even during the next test drives in July 1894, the ship was not completed, parts of the armor and armament were missing. During the two-day test drive, it was found that the machine performance was insufficient. After various changes, tests began again on September 29, 1894, in which the Nawarin reached 16.3 knots with a displacement of 10,107 tons. The displacement was about 700 t above plan and further reduced the already low freeboard. On November 10th, an endurance test was carried out in which an engine output of 9,194 PSi and a speed of 15.85 knots were achieved in the shortened six-hour test, with a top speed of 16.14 knots. The acceptance test began on September 12, 1895.
Use in the Mediterranean
On May 10, 1896, Admiral Pavel Andrejew , the new commander of the Russian Mediterranean Fleet, set his flag on the Navarin . With 616 officers and sailors on board, the liner should now move to the Mediterranean. On July 7, 1896, the Nawarin reached Kiel and then ran via Kristiansand and Portland to Cádiz until May 27 .
The Nawarin continued to Piraeus via Algeria during a heavy storm . From there, the first mission took place on September 10, 1896 in the Bay of Mersin on the southern Anatolian coast, before returning to Piraeus after five days, where she stayed until October 13, and then went to the Bay of Chania and to carry out exercises with medium and light weapons there until November 3rd. Via Smyrna , where she stayed from November 6th to December 12th, she returned to Piraeus.
The ship visited the island of Poros in early 1897 and then belonged to the international naval forces off Crete during the Greco-Turkish war after the landing of Greek troops on February 15, 1897 on Crete. A committee of the commanding admirals of Great Britain, France, Russia and Italy organized the independent Cretan state that was forming and initially led to the island being divided into zones, whereby the protective powers also wanted to secure the hinterland from the coastal areas they controlled. The British administered the prefecture of Heraklion , the Russians Rethymno , the French Lasithi and Sitia, and the Italians Chania and Sfakia .
On March 3, the rear gun turret exploded on the Russian ship of the line Sissoi Veliki , also deployed off Crete , and the ship went to Toulon for repairs. The ship of the line Imperator Nikolai I arrived off Crete for reinforcement . Since the Nawarin only reached 12 knots with difficulty due to heavy growth on the hull , she went to Pula on July 1, 1897 .
First use in East Asia 1898–1901
In December 1897, the Russian government decided to send ships of the line to the Far East. Because the Nawarin and the Sissoi Veliki , who started their journey to East Asia from Toulon in December, were supposed to move there in the Mediterranean before new buildings were to follow. At the same time, the almost new armored cruiser Rossija and the old cruiser Vladimir Monomakh were sent from the Baltic Sea to East Asia. In January 1898, the Nawarin started with a crew of 608 in Greece. In Port Said she did not receive enough supplies, so that she had to take over coal and water again in Aden in order to be able to reach Colombo . On January 29, 1898, the Sissoi Veliki caught up with them , and they ran on together in the great heat. The Navarin proved to be quite unsuitable for these conditions. They paused for five days in Colombo. Then they continued the journey with the cruisers ( SMS Deutschland and SMS Gefion ) of the 2nd Division of the German cruiser squadron under Prince Heinrich of Prussia , the brother of the Emperor, which was on the march to East Asia , on February 3 to the Strait of Malacca , where the Russians called at Penang , while the Germans went to Singapore . After taking over the coal, the Russian ships continued on to Hong Kong via Singapore (17th) on the 15th . They met briefly on February 20 with the armored cruiser Admiral Nakhimov , who was marching home . After a few days there, the Nawarin went to Port Arthur , which was reached on March 16. The new base, however, did not offer sufficient conditions for supplying the Pacific squadron . To do this, the ships were dependent on Vladivostok and the Japanese Nagasaki . In August, several Nawarin officers were probably taken to a hospital in Nagasaki because of food poisoning ; an engineer died. From there the ship went to Vladivostok via Pusan .
On May 28, 1900, the Navarin brought Russian parts of the international expeditionary force to Taku , which was supposed to protect the interests of the European powers during the Boxer Rebellion in China . A Russian unit to which 71 man Navarin belonged, the Legation Quarter in Beijing defended. The ship stayed with the international associations off China during the Boxer Uprising and moved with parts of them to Shanghai in September .
Since the ships of the line of the Petropavlovsk class had meanwhile relocated to East Asia and further newbuildings were to be relocated there, the Navarin left Port Arthur on December 12, 1901 for Libau , which she reached on April 22, 1902 in order to be overhauled and modernized. This trip was carried out again together with the Sissoi Veliki . At the same time, the old cruisers Vladimir Monomakh and Dmitri Donskoi were withdrawn from East Asia.
A detailed examination of the two old liners that had returned from East Asia in the winter of 1902/1903 revealed a considerable need for retrofitting. Work on the Nawarin was not planned until 1905, and she served as an artillery training ship in the Baltic Sea. After the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War , some modifications were made because it was to be relocated to East Asia with other units of the Baltic Fleet to reinforce the squadron in Port Arthur. The most important change was the installation of a radio system, the boilers were also overhauled, and four of the 47 mm cannons above the medium artillery casemate were replaced by 76 mm Canet rapid-fire cannons . Two of the replaced 47mm cannons were installed on the towers. The 37 mm cannons in the combat marshes were replaced by machine guns. The planned replacement of the middle artillery with more modern rapid fire guns did not take place. The march to East Asia was delayed; the ships of the planned 2nd Division gathered in Reval , where they were only inspected by Tsar Nicholas II in September .
Use and loss in the Russo-Japanese War
After a final stock replenishment, which left Navarin on 15 October 1904 in the Admiral Dmitry von Fölkersam commanded the 2nd Division of the so-called Second Russian Pacific squadron Libau towards Asia. Your commandant was the captain 1st rank Baron Bruno von Vietinghoff (1849-1905). The division was formed by the Navarin , Osljabja as flagship , Sissoi Veliki and the old armored cruiser Admiral Nakhimov . The 2nd Pacific Squadron was supposed to relieve the 1st Pacific Squadron , which was trapped in Port Arthur , whose attempt to break out to Vladivostok had failed in the Battle of the Yellow Sea and had lost several ships to internment in neutral ports.
On October 2, the squadron split in Tangiers , Fölkersahm switched to the Sissoi Veliki and ran through the Mediterranean with part of the fleet ( Navarin , Swetlana , Schemtschug , Almas and several auxiliary ships), while the main part of the fleet circled Africa and finally Nosy Be (Madagascar). The squadron stayed there for eleven weeks. The Fölkersahm department ran through the Mediterranean, received auxiliary ships from the Black Sea Fleet , passed on 12/13. December the Suez Canal and ran via Djibouti to Madagascar. In the meantime the Japanese had captured Port Arthur and the new target of the Second Russian Pacific Squadron was Vladivostok. The unit exercises off Madagascar showed that the old ships of the 2nd Division were not inferior to the new units of the Borodino class in terms of artillery .
At the beginning of March the squadron then crossed the Indian Ocean until April 14, 1905 to French Indochina , where the arrival of the 3rd Division under Rear Admiral Nikolai Ivanovich Nebogatow with other older ships (including the coastal armored ships of the Admiral Ushakov class ) waited. On May 9, the Russian squadron under Admiral Zinovich Petrovich Roschestvensky left its final meeting place, Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam , and planned to march through the Korean Strait to Vladivostok.
On the morning of May 27, the Russians spotted the Japanese cruiser Izumi in the thick fog , watching the approaching squadron continuing its march into the Tsushima Strait . After midday, the Japanese fleet under Admiral Tōgō , which had already been alerted by an auxiliary ship, attacked, which concentrated its fire on the leading ships of the line of the Borodino class. However, the flagship of the 2nd Division, the Osljabja , was the first Russian liner to sink . During the battle, the Nawarin received at least one severe hit, especially since the old ships of the line were advancing due to the failure of other units in the battle line. In an attempt to support the badly damaged Knjaz Suvorov , she received more hits and her commander Vietinghoff was seriously wounded.
At around 10:00 p.m. the Nawarin received a torpedo hit by Japanese destroyers. The crew fought the penetrating water for four hours before the old ship of the line capsized and sank after another torpedo hit. Of the 681 men on board, only three sailors were rescued two days later by a Japanese destroyer and a British steamer.
literature
- Roger Chesneau, NJM Campbell: Conway's all the world's fighting ships, 1860-1905 . Ed .: Eugène M. Koleśnik. Mayflower Books, New York 1979, ISBN 0-8317-0302-4 .
- Mikhail Bogdanov, Aleksandr Garmashev: Эскадренный броненосец "Гангут" and "Наварин" . LeKo, Saint Petersburg 2007, ISBN 978-5-902236-35-1 .
- Peter Hore: Battleships . Lorenz Books, 2005, ISBN 0-7548-1407-6 .
- Hansgeorg Jentschura, Dieter Jung, Peter Mickel: Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945 . Naval Institute Press, Annapolis 1977, ISBN 0-87021-893-X (German: Die Japanischen Kriegsschiffe 1869–1945 .).
- Konstantin Pleshakov: The Tsar's Last Armada: The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima . Basic Books, New York 2002, ISBN 0-465-05791-8 .
- Anthony John Watts: The Imperial Russian Navy . Arms and Armor, London 1990, ISBN 0-85368-912-1 .
Web links
- Russian navy encyclopaedia
- Rift of the Navarin
- 23 pictures of the Navarin
- Russian page to the Navarin
Individual evidence
- ↑ after engl. wikipedia only 622 men on board, Nawarin stopped after being hit by a mine, hit by four torpedoes;