Russian Battleship Peresvet - Japanese Career

Japanese Career

After the end of the war, she was refloated by Japanese engineers on 29 June 1905, reconstructed and was taken into service as the Sagami, taking her name from the ancient Japanese province of Sagami, now a part of Kanagawa prefecture. The ship was thoroughly rebuilt at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal in 1905–08 with Miyabara water-tube boilers, new guns and torpedo tubes, and had her fighting tops removed. These changes reduced her displacement to 12,900 long tons (13,100 t) and her draft to 26.02 feet (7.9 m). Four 18-inch torpedo tubes replaced her original torpedo armament and her gun armament was drastically revised. The ship now carried four Elswick Ordnance Company 40-caliber Type 41 twelve-inch guns, ten 45-caliber six-inch QF guns, sixteen QF 12-pounder 12 cwt guns and 26 smaller guns.

Sagami was re-designated as a first-class coastal defense ship in April 1908. After the beginning of World War I, Japan and Russia became allies, and the ship was sold to Russia in March 1916. She arrived in Vladivostok on 3 April 1916, where she resumed her former name of Peresvet and was classified as an armored cruiser. The ship ran aground on 23 May 1916 and refloated in July, two months later. She was intended to serve with the Russian Arctic flotilla and paused en route in Port Said, Egypt, for machinery repairs at the beginning of 1917. About 10 nautical miles (19 km; 12 mi) north of the harbor, the ship struck two mines, one forward and the other abreast a boiler room, on 4 January 1917 that had been laid by the submarine SM U-73 and sank after catching fire with the loss of 167 lives.