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Image: Public domain (PD-Russia) · commons.wikimedia.org
Russian ironclad Petr Veliky
Scrapped (stricken 1959 after decades as a hulk/depot/training ship; not preserved)
Petr Veliky (Peter the Great) was an ironclad turret ship built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1870s, often called the first true Russian seagoing turret battleship. She had her genesis in the visit of the American twin-turret monitor USS Miantonomoh to Kronstadt in August 1866, which inspired Rear Admiral A. A. Popov to submit a preliminary design for a low-freeboard, breastwork monitor intended as a hybrid monitor-cruiser able to attack enemy shipping and threaten enemy ports. Construction began under the name Kreiser before the design was even approved, and the ship was renamed Petr Veliky in 1872 in honor of the bicentennial of Peter the Great's birth.
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Resources
+ Submit a resourceHistory & specifications
- Wikipedia: Russian ironclad Petr VelikyWebsite
Comprehensive overview of design, construction, armament, armor, and full service history including her major 1904-1908 reconstruction, useful as the primary reference for a modeler.
Photos
- Wikimedia Commons: Ironclad warship Pyotr Velikiy photographPhoto
Public domain period photograph of the ship (captioned as taken at Naples), useful as a visual reference for her original configuration.
History
Specifications
Petr Veliky was 329 feet 8 inches (100.5 m) long at the waterline and 333 feet 8 inches (101.7 m) long overall, with a beam of 63 feet 1 inch (19.2 m) and a designed draft of 24 feet 9 inches (7.5 m). She displaced 10,406 long tons (10,573 t) and had a complement of 24 officers and 417 crewmen. As built she carried two twin 12-inch (305mm) gun turrets plus light anti-torpedo-boat guns and spar torpedoes; her Coles-type turrets each weighed 360 long tons. Her armor consisted of a complete wrought-iron waterline belt 14 inches thick amidships (reducing to 8–9 inches at the ends), a 14-inch breastwork using Hughes compound armor at its curved ends, and a deck protected by three 1-inch mild steel plates.
Service history
Launched on 27 August 1872, she entered service with the Baltic Fleet on 14 October 1876. Her engines and boilers were defective and not replaced until 1881, after which she made a cruise to the Mediterranean before returning to the Baltic Fleet, where she remained for the rest of her career. Deemed obsolete by the late 1890s, she underwent a major reconstruction as a gunnery training ship that was delayed by the Russo-Japanese War and not completed until 1908. She was in Helsinki in March 1918 when the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk forced the Soviets to evacuate the base, reached Kronstadt in April 1918 in the famous "Ice Voyage," was hulked on 21 May 1921, and remained in service in various secondary roles until stricken in 1959 and subsequently scrapped.
Notable facts
Her masts and rigging were deleted from the design, presumably shortly after the loss of the British masted turret ship HMS Captain in a storm on 7 September 1870. A visit by British naval architect Edward Reed in June 1871 prompted the breastwork armor to be thickened from 12 to 14 inches and extended to the ship's sides on his suggestion. By the early 20th century she was radically rebuilt with a new superstructure, two funnels, and masts with fighting tops, losing most of her original armor in the process - a dramatic before/after transformation of great interest to modelers choosing which era to depict.