Russian Ironclad Petr Veliky - Service

Service

Petr Veliky was built by the state-owned Galernii Island Shipyard in Saint Petersburg. Construction began on 1 June 1869, although her keel was not laid down until 23 July 1870. The ship was launched on 27 August 1872, and entered service with the Baltic Fleet on 14 October 1876. She cost a then-staggering sum of over five and a half million rubles. Two 9-inch mortars were fitted on her quarterdeck during the war scare with Britain during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, but they were removed in 1880 without ever having been used in combat. Two frames for launching Whitehead torpedoes were added to the ship's sides in that same year, but they proved ineffective.

Her original machinery proved unsatisfactory and the Baird Works forfeited a payment of 254,000 rubles as penalty. The navy began to investigate replacing the ship's machinery in 1878, and a contract was finally signed with John Elder & Co., in Glasgow, Scotland, in October 1880, based on the Navy's favorable experience with the company's construction of the Imperial yacht Livadia. The ship did not reach the Scottish shipyard until 14 July 1881, and was refitting until February 1882. New vertical compound steam engines and twelve cylindrical boilers with a working pressure of 70 psi (483 kPa; 5 kgf/cm2) replaced the original defective machinery. The spar torpedoes in the bow were replaced by underwater torpedo tubes for Whitehead torpedoes and the ship's propellers and rudder were also replaced. Her funnel was also reduced back to its original height. On 4 February 1882 Petr Veliky ran her sea trials with her new machinery and reached a speed of 14.36 knots (26.59 km/h; 16.53 mph) with an engine output of 8,296 indicated horsepower (6,186 kW). The new engine and boilers were slightly lighter than their predecessors and the ship now displaced 10,105 long tons (10,267 t).

Immediately after her sea trials the ship departed Scotland for a Mediterranean cruise. Petr Veliky made port visits at Algiers, Athens, Corfu, Naples, La Spezia and Toulon on her before being recalled. She visited Cadiz, Lisbon, Brest, and Cherbourg before reaching Kronstadt on 12 September. The ship remained in the Baltic Sea for the rest of her career and had her light armament modified several times. During the 1880s her rear 4-pounder guns were replaced by two 44-millimeter (1.7 in) Engstrem guns and two other on her bridge were moved to the roof of the forward turret. Petr Veliky's boilers replaced in 1892 and by the mid-1890s the ship mounted two 4-pounder guns on each turret, six 47-millimeter (1.9 in) 5-barrel revolving Hotchkiss guns on the bridge and four 37-millimeter (1.5 in) Hotchkiss guns.

Petr Veliky was considered obsolete by the late 1890s and a number of proposals were made to reconstruct her. The most elaborate scheme to raise the turrets 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m) and build a new armored casemate between the turrets and deck with six 6-inch (152 mm) guns. The existing 14 and 12-inch wrought iron armor plates would be replaced by Krupp steel plates 8 inches (203 mm) and 7 inches (178 mm) thick respectively. Despite saving 1,000 long tons (1,000 t) by substituting the lighter steel armor for the wrought iron, the ship would have gained 674 long tons (685 t) in displacement and her draft would have increased by about 12 inches. This plan was approved, albeit with a very low priority, and her turrets were removed in October 1898, but nothing more was done. On 11 June 1903 Admiral F. K. Avelan, director of the Naval Ministry, ordered that she be converted into a gunnery training ship.

A new design was approved on 2 February 1904, although the Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg had already begun cutting the ship down to the berth deck. The side armor was removed and an entirely new superstructure was built. The boilers were replaced by twelve fire-tube boilers, ten refurbished ones from the Imperial yacht Poliarnaia Zvezda and two new ones. The new boilers only supplied enough steam to give the engines 5,500 indicated horsepower (4,100 kW), although a second funnel had to be added to accommodate their exhaust. Two masts were added with fighting tops. Only the ship's conning tower was now protected, with convert|4|in|0 of armor plate. The armament was almost entirely replaced with four 50-caliber 8-inch guns mounted in barbettes on the upper deck, sponsoned out over the sides of the ship, and six 45-caliber 6-inch guns were fitted in unarmored casemates on each side of the ship. The ship's anti-torpedo boat armament now consisted of twelve 75-millimeter (3.0 in), four 57-millimeter (2.2 in), eight 47-millimeter and two 37-millimeter guns.

The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, almost as soon as her design was approved, meant that work on her slowed to a crawl, and did not resume until early 1907. The ship was completed the following year. As a result of the reconstruction Petr Veliky was now 321 feet 10 inches (98.09 m) long overall, with a beam of 62 feet 4 inches (19.0 m) and a maximum draft of 26 feet 7 inches (8.1 m). Her displacement was now 9,790 long tons (9,950 t), almost 400 long tons (406 t) lighter than her modified displacement of 10,105 long tons. Her maximum speed was now 12.9 knots (23.9 km/h; 14.8 mph), and she carried 714 long tons (725 t) of coal. This gave a range of 1,500 nautical miles (2,800 km; 1,700 mi).

After her completion Petr Veliky was assigned to the Gunnery Training Detachment through 1917. A number of sources report that she was renamed by the Soviets as Respublikanets (Republican) or Barrikada (Barricade), but this is not confirmed by the post-Cold War sources used by McLaughlin. That year she was assigned as a depot ship for submarines at Kronstadt and later Helsinki. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk required the Soviets to evacuate their naval base at Helsinki in March 1918 or have their ships interned by newly independent Finland even though the Gulf of Finland was still frozen over. Petr Veliky reached Kronstadt in April in what became known as the 'Ice Voyage'. The ship was hulked on 21 May 1921 and used to store mines. She was renamed Blokshiv Nr. 1 on 4 December 1923 and forced aground in shallow water by autumn floods in September 1923. She was not refloated and repaired until 5 October 1927. On 1 January 1932 she was renamed to Blokshiv Nr. 4, and to BSh-3 on 16 May 1949, by which time she was being used as a barracks ship at Kronstadt. The ship was stricken on 18 April 1959 and subsequently scrapped.