Russian battleship Potemkin
Panteleimon at sea, 1906
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Class overview | |
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Operators | Imperial Russian Navy |
Preceded by | Peresvet class |
Succeeded by | Retvizan |
In commission | 1903–1918 |
Completed | 1 |
Scrapped | 1 |
History | |
Russian Empire | |
Name |
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Namesake | |
Builder | Nikolaev Admiralty Shipyard |
Laid down | 10 October 1898[Note 1] |
Launched | 9 October 1900 |
Decommissioned | March 1918 |
In service | Early 1905 |
Out of service | 19 April 1919 |
Stricken | 21 November 1925 |
Fate | Scrapped, 1923 |
General characteristics | |
Type | Pre-dreadnought battleship |
Displacement | 12,900 long tons (13,107 t) (actual) |
Length | 378 ft 6 in (115.4 m) |
Beam | 73 ft (22.3 m) |
Draught | 27 ft (8.2 m) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion | 2 shafts, 2 triple-expansion steam engines |
Speed | 16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph) |
Range | 3,200 nautical miles (5,900 km; 3,700 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
Complement | 26 officers, 705 enlisted men |
Armament |
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Armour |
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The Russian battleship Potemkin (Russian: Князь Потёмкин Таврический, romanized: Kniaz Potyomkin Tavricheskiy, "Prince Potemkin of
After the mutineers sought asylum in
Panteleimon was captured when the
Background and description
Planning began in 1895 for a new battleship that would utilise a
Potemkin was 371 feet 5 inches (113.2 m)
Potemkin had a pair of three-cylinder
Armament
The battleship's main battery consisted of four 40-calibre 12-inch (305 mm) 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 Petropavlovsk-class battleships. 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.[4] They fired a 745-pound (337.7 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,792 ft/s (851 m/s). At an elevation of +10° the guns had a range of 13,000 yards (12,000 m).[5] Potemkin carried 60 rounds for each gun.[4]
The sixteen 45-calibre,
Smaller guns were carried for close-range defence against
Potemkin had five underwater 15-inch (381 mm) torpedo tubes: one in the bow and two on each broadside. She carried three torpedoes for each tube.[4] 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 150 pounds (70 kg) and a speed of 33 knots (61 km/h; 38 mph) with a maximum range of 870 yards (800 m).[9]
In 1907,
Two 57-millimetre (2.2 in)
Protection
The maximum thickness of the Krupp cemented armour waterline belt was nine inches (229 mm) which reduced to eight inches (203 mm) abreast the magazines. It covered 237 feet (72.2 m) of the ship's length and two-inch (51 mm) plates protected the waterline to the ends of the ship. The belt was 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m) high, of which 5 feet (2 m) was below the waterline, and tapered down to a thickness of five inches (127 mm) at its bottom edge. The main part of the belt terminated in seven-inch (178 mm) transverse bulkheads.[4]
Above the belt was the upper
Construction and career
Construction of Potemkin began on 27 December 1897 and she was
Mutiny
During the
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.[16]
The uprising was triggered when
The committee decided to head for
Vice Admiral Grigoriy Chukhnin, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, issued an order to send two squadrons to Odessa either to force Potemkin's crew to give up or sink the battleship. Potemkin sortied on the morning of 30 June to meet the three battleships Tri Sviatitelia, Dvenadsat Apostolov, and Georgii Pobedonosets of the first squadron, but the loyal ships turned away. The second squadron arrived with the battleships Rostislav and Sinop 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.[19]
The following morning, loyalist members of Georgii Pobedonosets retook control of the ship and ran her aground in Odessa harbour.
Potemkin reached its destination at 23:00 on 7 July and the Romanians agreed to give
Later service
When
Panteleimon received an experimental underwater communications set[26] in February 1909. Later that year, she accidentally rammed and sank the submarine Kambala (ru) at night on 11 June [according to Russian sources, Kambala sank in a collision with Rostislav, not with Panteleimon,[24] killing the 16 crewmen aboard the submarine].[27]
While returning from a port visit to Constanța in 1911, Panteleimon ran aground on 2 October. It took several days to refloat her and make temporary repairs, and the full extent of the damage to its bottom was not fully realised for several more months. The ship participated in training and gunnery exercises for the rest of the year; a special watch was kept to ensure that no damaged seams were opened during firing. Permanent repairs, which involved replacing its boiler foundations, plating, and a large number of its hull frames, lasted from 10 January to 25 April 1912. The navy took advantage of these repairs to overhaul Panteleimon's engines and boilers.[28]
World War I
Panteleimon, flagship of the 1st Battleship Brigade, accompanied by the pre-dreadnoughts Evstafi, Ioann Zlatoust, and Tri Sviatitelia, covered the pre-dreadnought Rostislav while she bombarded Trebizond on the morning of 17 November 1914. They were intercepted the following day by the Ottoman battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim (the ex-German SMS Goeben) and the light cruiser Midilli (the ex-German SMS Breslau) on their return voyage to Sevastopol in what came to be known as the Battle of Cape Sarych. Despite the noon hour the conditions were foggy; the capital ships initially did not spot each other. Although several other ships opened fire, hitting the Yavuz Sultan Selim once, Panteleimon held her fire because her turrets could not see the Ottoman ships before they disengaged.[29]
Tri Sviatitelia and Rostislav bombarded Ottoman fortifications at the mouth of the
On 9 May 1915, Tri Sviatitelia and Panteleimon returned to bombard the Bosphorus forts, covered by the remaining pre-dreadnoughts. Yavuz Sultan Selim intercepted the three ships of the covering force, although no damage was inflicted by either side. Tri Sviatitelia and Pantelimon rejoined their consorts and the latter scored two hits on Yavuz Sultan Selim before it broke off the action. The Russian ships pursued it for six hours before giving up the chase. On 1 August, all of the Black Sea pre-dreadnoughts were transferred to the 2nd Battleship Brigade, after the more powerful dreadnought Imperatritsa Mariya entered service. On 1 October the new dreadnought provided cover while Ioann Zlatoust and Pantelimon bombarded Zonguldak and Evstafi shelled the nearby town of Kozlu.[11] The ship bombarded Varna twice in October 1915; during the second bombardment on 27 October, she entered Varna Bay and was unsuccessfully attacked by two German submarines stationed there.[33]
Panteleimon supported Russian troops in early 1916 as they captured Trebizond[24] and participated in an anti-shipping sweep off the north-western Anatolian coast in January 1917 that destroyed 39 Ottoman sailing ships.[34] On 13 April 1917, after the February Revolution, the ship was renamed Potemkin-Tavricheskiy (Потёмкин-Таврический), and then on 11 May was renamed Borets za svobodu (Борец за свободу – Freedom Fighter).[24]
Reserve and decommissioning
Borets za Svobodu was placed in reserve in March 1918 and was captured by the Germans at Sevastopol in May. They handed the ship over to the Allies in December 1918 after the Armistice. The British wrecked her engines on 19 April 1919 when they left the Crimea to prevent the advancing Bolsheviks from using her against the White Russians. Thoroughly obsolete by this time, the battleship was captured by both sides during the
Legacy
The immediate effects of the mutiny are difficult to assess. It may have influenced
The mutiny was memorialised most famously by Sergei Eisenstein in his 1925 silent film Battleship Potemkin, although the French silent film La Révolution en Russie (Revolution in Russia or Revolution in Odessa, 1905), directed by Lucien Nonguet was the first film to depict the mutiny,[37] preceding Eisenstein's far more famous film by 20 years. Filmed shortly after the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922,[36] with the derelict Dvenadsat Apostolov standing in for the broken-up Potemkin,[38] Eisenstein recast the mutiny into a predecessor of the October Revolution of 1917 that swept the Bolsheviks to power. He emphasised their role, and implied that the mutiny failed because Matushenko and the other leaders were not better Bolsheviks. [further explanation needed] Eisenstein made other changes to dramatise the story, ignoring the major fire that swept through Odessa's dock area while Potemkin was anchored there, combining the many different incidents of rioters and soldiers fighting into a famous sequence on the steps (today known as the Potemkin Stairs), and showing a tarpaulin thrown over the sailors to be executed.[36]
In accordance with the
The hero is the sailors' battleship, the Odessa crowd, but characteristic figures are snatched here and there from the crowd. For a moment, like a conjuring trick, they attract all the sympathies of the audience: like the sailor Vakulinchuk, like the young woman and child on the Odessa Steps, but they emerge only to dissolve once more into the mass. This signifies: no film stars but a film of real-life types.[40]
Similarly, theatre critic Alexei Gvozdev wrote in the journal Artistic Life (Zhizn ikusstva):[41] "In Potemkin there is no individual hero as there was in the old theatre. It is the mass that acts: the battleship and its sailors and the city and its population in revolutionary mood."[42]
The last survivor of the mutiny was Ivan Beshoff, who died on 25 October 1987 at the age of 102 in Dublin, Ireland.[43]
Notes
References
- ^ McLaughlin 2003, pp. 117–118
- ^ a b McLaughlin 2003, p. 116
- ^ McLaughlin 2003, pp. 116, 119–120
- ^ a b c d e f g h McLaughlin 2003, p. 119
- ^ Friedman, pp. 251–253
- ^ Friedman, pp. 260–261
- ^ Friedman, p. 264
- ^ Smigielski, p. 160
- ^ Friedman, p. 348
- ^ a b McLaughlin 2003, pp. 294–295
- ^ a b McLaughlin 2003, p. 304
- ^ Silverstone, p. 378
- ^ McLaughlin 2003, pp. 116, 121
- ^ Watts, p. 24
- ^ Bascomb, pp. 20–24
- ^ Bascomb, pp. 63–67
- ^ Bascomb, pp. 60–72, 88–94, 96–103
- ^ Bascomb, pp. 55–60, 112–127, 134–153, 164–167, 170–178
- ^ Bascomb, pp. 179–201
- ^ Zebroski, p. 21
- ^ Bascomb, pp. 224–227, 231–247, 252–254, 265–270, 276–281
- ^ Bascomb, pp. 286–299
- ^ Bascomb, p. 297
- ^ a b c d e f McLaughlin 2003, p. 121
- ^ Silverstone, p. 380
- ^ Godin & Palmer, p. 33
- ^ Polmar & Noot, p. 230
- ^ McLaughlin 2003, pp. 120–121, 172, 295
- ^ McLaughlin 2001, pp. 123, 127
- ^ a b Nekrasov, pp. 49, 54
- ^ Halpern, p. 230
- ^ Halpern, p. 231
- ^ Nekrasov, p. 67
- ^ Nekrasov, p. 116
- ^ Bascomb, p. 185
- ^ a b c Bascomb, pp. 183–184
- ^ Oscherwitz & Higgins, pp. 320–321
- ^ McLaughlin 2003, p. 52
- ^ Bordwell, pp. 43, 267
- ^ Quoted in Taylor, p. 76
- ^ Taylor, p. 76
- ^ Quoted in Taylor, p. 78
- ^ Beshoff, Ivan (28 October 1987). "Last Survivor of Mutiny on the Potemkin". The New York Times. Associated Press.
Sources
- Bascomb, Neal (2007). ISBN 978-0-618-59206-7.
- ISBN 0-674-13138-X.
- ISBN 978-1-84832-100-7.
- Godin, Oleg A. & Palmer, David R. (2008). History of Russian Underwater Acoustics. Singapore: World Scientific. ISBN 978-981-256-825-0.
- ISBN 1-55750-352-4.
- McLaughlin, Stephen (2001). "Predreadnoughts vs a Dreadnought: The Action off Cape Sarych, 18 November 1914". In ISBN 0-85177-901-8.
- McLaughlin, Stephen (2003). Russian & Soviet Battleships. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-481-4.
- Nekrasov, George (1992). North of Gallipoli: The Black Sea Fleet at War 1914–1917. East European Monographs. Vol. CCCXLIII. Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs. ISBN 0-88033-240-9.
- Oscherwitz, Dayna & Higgins, MaryEllen (2007). Historical Dictionary of French Cinema. Historical Dictionaries of Literature and the Arts. Vol. 15. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0-8108-7038-3.
- ISBN 0-87021-570-1.
- Silverstone, Paul H. (1984). Directory of the World's Capital Ships. New York: Hippocrene Books. ISBN 0-88254-979-0.
- Smigielski, Adam (1979). "Imperial Russian Navy Cruiser Varyag". In Roberts, John (ed.). Warship III. London: Conway Maritime Press. pp. 155–167. ISBN 0-85177-204-8.
- Taylor, Richard (2000). The Battleship Potemkin. KINOfiles Film Companion. Vol. 1. London & New York: I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1-86064-393-0.
- Zebroski, Robert (2003). "The Battleship Potemkin and Its Discontents, 1905". In Bell, Christopher M.; Elleman, Bruce A. (eds.). Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century: An International Perspective. London: Frank Cass. pp. 7–25. ISBN 0-203-58450-3.
External links
- Battleship Kniaz Potemkin Tavricheskiy on Black Sea Fleet
- A history of the ship, with photos of a model under construction Archived 6 August 2020 at the Wayback Machine
- A brief contemporary article by Lenin on the mutiny with the text of the sailors' manifesto
- Christian Rakovsky, The Origins of the Potemkin Mutiny (1907)
- Annotated version of Zecca's La Révolution en Russe