Russian battleship Sissoi Veliky

Russian pre dreadnought battleship

Sissoi Veliky (Сисой Великий) was a pre dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1890s. The ship's construction was marred by organizational, logistical and engineering problems and dragged on for more than five years. She was commissioned in October 1896 with an appalling number of design and construction faults, and only a few of them were fixed during her lifetime. Immediately after sea trials, Sissoi Veliky sailed to the Mediterranean to enforce the naval blockade of Crete during the Greco Turkish War. On , 1897 she suffered a devastating explosion of the aft gun turret that killed 21 men. After nine months in the docks of Toulon for repairs, the ship sailed to the Far East to reinforce the Russian presence there. In the summer of 1900, Sissoi Veliky supported the international campaign against the Boxer Rebellion in China. Sailors from Sissoi Veliky and the battleship Russian battleship Navarin participated in the defence of the International Legations in Beijing for more than two months. In 1902 the ship returned to Kronstadt for repairs, but very little was achieved until the early losses of the Russo Japanese War of 1904–1905 caused the formation of the Second Pacific Squadron to relieve the Russian forces blockaded in Port Arthur. Sissoi Veliky sailed for the Far East with the rest of the Baltic battleships and participated in the Battle of Tsushima on 1905. She survived the daytime artillery duel with Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō's ships, but was badly damaged and taking on water. During the night Japanese destroyers scored a torpedo hit on the ship that damaged her steering. The next morning the ship was unable to maintain speed because of flooding, and her crew surrendered to Japanese armed merchant cruisers. The ship capsized later that morning with the loss of 47 crewmen.

The ship was 332 feet (101 m) long at the waterline and 345 feet (105 m) long overall. She had a beam of 68 feet (21 m) and a draught of 25 feet (8 m). She displaced , over more than her designed displacement of The ship had a partial double bottom and a centreline bulkhead separated the engine and boiler rooms. Sissoi Velikys crew initially consisted of 27 officers and 555 enlisted men, but grew to a total of 686 by 1905. Sissoi Veliky had two vertical triple expansion steam engines, each driving one four bladed propeller. They had a total designed output of using steam provided by 12 cylindrical fire tube boilers. The ship's designed speed was , but she reached a top speed of during her sea trials on 1896, despite from her engines. She carried a maximum of of coal at full load that gave her a range of at a speed of .

Like many Russian ships before and after it, Sissoi Veliky was plagued by regular "improvements" of the original design that delayed construction for years. In the beginning of 1893, over a year after construction began, the MTK again redesigned Sissoi Velikys artillery. The two pairs of 12 inch 40 calibre guns were changed from barbette mountings to French style twin turrets. These guns had a maximum elevation of +15° and the ship carried 80 rounds per gun for them. Their rate of fire was intended to be one round per 1.5 minutes, but it was one shot per 2.5–3 minutes in reality. They fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of to a range of at an elevation of +10°. The secondary armament was replaced by a half dozen 45 calibre quick firing (QF) six inch (152 mm) Canet guns that were mounted in casemates on the main deck. Each gun was provided with 200 rounds of ammunition. The ship's anti torpedo boat armament was changed more than once and, in the end, consisted of a dozen QF Hotchkiss guns and 10 Maxim QF guns. The 37 mm guns were mounted in the fighting top. They fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of Sissoi Veliky carried six above water torpedo tubes, one each in the bow and stern and two on each broadside. The ship also could carry 50 mines. The ship was formally laid down on , 1892. Nevertheless, in April 1894 the completed hull passed static pressure tests. It was launched , 1894 during a fleet review attended by Tsar Nicholas II. The commissioning of Sissoi Veliky was scheduled for September 1896, but an examination in August revealed that the steering gear, water pumps, ventilation system and one of the turrets were still missing or defective. The builders hastily equipped the ship with rudder controls built for Poltava and delivered the ship for her sea trials on , 1896. The Navy desperately needed Sissoi Veliky in the Mediterranean and she was commissioned regardless of her known faults.

Immediately after the trials Sissoi Veliky was ordered to join the Mediterranean Squadron which was engaged in the naval blockade of Crete in the wake of the 1896 Cretan riots and the Hamidian massacres. Her maiden voyage revealed more problems; the lack of ventilation in the steering compartment was so appalling that during the first port call the captain purchased electric fans with his own money The copper rings for sealing the portholes were left in Kronstadt and were not found until February 1897. On , 1896 the leaking Sissoi Veliky reached Algiers. The captain planned to stay there for at least 20 days to complete the most urgent repairs, but five days later a telegram from Saint Petersburg forced him to leave for Piraeus. There the crew managed to seal the seams between the armour plates and repair the electrical systems. In February 1897 Sissoi Veliky steamed to Crete to join the International Squadron, a multinational naval force which intervened in a Greek uprising against the Ottoman Empire′s rule there. She had her first gunnery exercise ten miles off Souda Bay, Crete, at the end of February. The badly damaged Sissoi Veliky headed to Toulon for repairs. Investigation revealed both mechanical and organizational causes of the accident. The chain of events, as it was reconstructed in Toulon, started with a failure of the hydraulic breech locking mechanism of the left hand gun. The turret crew then disabled the hydraulics and resorted to manual operation. The gunner responsible for closing and locking the breech failed to do so and the concussion of the right hand gun firing unlocked it. The turret commander, ultimately responsible for checking the breech before firing, was too busy with calculating the firing solution and training the gun to be concerned with this matter. He delegated the checkup routine to an enlisted man, but this gunner had to attend his own station and was physically unable to look after the breech lock and attend to his own duties. The panel eventually dropped the charges against the captain and recommended introduction of mechanical fail safe interlocks to prevent firing until the breech was properly locked. Sissoi Veliky was repaired by Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée.

After nine months in the dock at Toulon, the repaired Sissoi Veliky was assigned to Admiral Fyodor Dubasov's Far Eastern Squadron (Navarin, Sissoi Veliky, and the armoured cruisers Russian cruiser Rossia and Russian armoured cruiser Vladimir Monomakh) and sailed for the Far East. The British, alerted by the sudden movement of Russian battleships, dispatched the battleship to shadow the Russian ship. Sissoi Veliky, assisted by a flotilla of tugs, barely passed the shallow entrance to the Suez Canal, but Victorious ran aground near Port Said and abandoned pursuit. Aside from this incident, the east bound voyage was uneventful, and the ship safely reached Port Arthur on , 1898. In the summer of 1898 Sissoi Veliky sailed to Nagasaki for repairs and returned to her new base in Vladivostok where she stayed for the rest of 1898 and 1899. In April 1900 the fleet sailed to Port Arthur for a massive landing exercise intended to intimidate the Boxers. The warning was not heeded, and the Boxer Rebellion intensified, compelling the Russian government to intervene. On , 1900 the Viceroy of the Russian Far East, Admiral Yevgeni Alekseyev, dispatched the Far Eastern Squadron from Port Arthur to the Taku Forts. Sissoi Veliky, the battleship Russian battleship Petropavlovsk, the armoured cruiser Russian armoured cruiser Dmitrii Donskoi and a host of other European ships blockaded the mouth of the Hai River and the smaller gunboats moved up the river to protect amphibious landings which began on The incursion provoked the Siege of the Beijing legations; the Russians responded by sending a company of sailors from Sissoi Veliky and Navarin to defend the embassy in Beijing. The company reached the city without meeting any opposition and at first it seemed that the European troops in Beijing could easily defend the Embassy Row from the disorganized mob. Sissoi Veliky remained in the Far East for another year; in December 1901 an accumulation of mechanical troubles that could not be fixed in Far Eastern docks compelled the fleet commander to send her back to the Baltic.

In May 1902 Sissoi Veliky attended a fleet review honouring the state visit of President of France, Émile Loubet. In June she was moved into a drydock in Kronstadt. All available financing was diverted to the completion of the and the new cruisers, so the repairs of Sissoi Veliky proceeded at a slow pace. She had her artillery, boilers and ventilation system completely replaced, but once again it turned out that the repairs were not up to scratch and needed a thorough rework. Despite the urgency, calls to speed up repairs of Sissoi Veliky and completion of the new ships were stonewalled by the Ministry of the Navy until the shocking loss of Petropavlovsk on Admiral Aleksei Birilev, the new Governor of Kronstadt, hastened the repairs by striking out "unnecessary" jobs. Sissoi Veliky went into action with new rangefinders, searchlights and small calibre guns, but her damaged internal decks were never mended. Manuil Ozerov, the captain of Sissoi Veliky, expressed concern about her stability, but on at least three occasions Birilev suppressed his reports, arguing that past experience is sufficient proof of the ship's seaworthiness. On the Second Pacific Squadron sailed from Saint Peterburg to Reval, where it wasted nearly a whole month in preparation for a fleet review. Tsar Nicholas II personally visited each battleship and harangued the crews in anticipation of a victory over Japan. On the squadron departed Libau, and sailed to Tangier. Here, Rozhestvensky split his forces. Rozhestvensky initially planned to keep Sissoi Veliky and Navarin with his main force, but assigned them to Fölkersam instead. The ship rejoined Rozhestvesky's fleet at Nosy Be, Madagascar on where they stayed for two months, training while Rozhestvensky finalized coaling arrangements for the next leg of the journey. Despite regular exercise, the gunners of the new Borodino class ships could not match the level of Sissoi Veliky and other old ships. The squadron sailed for Camranh Bay, French Indochina, on and reached it almost a month later to await the obsolete ships of the 3rd Pacific Squadron, commanded by Rear Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov. The latter ships reached Camranh Bay on and the combined force sailed for Vladivostok five days later. The steering gear alone failed no less than four times.

, 1905 the squadron began the last leg of its journey to Tsushima. Sissoi Veliky was sailing in the left column of the Russian order of battle, second in line after Russian battleship Oslyabya. At 13:15 the Russians sighted the Japanese fleet. Twenty four minutes later Sissoi Veliky opened fire simultaneously with the flagship Russian battleship Knyaz Suvorov. Sissoi Veliky started firing at the armoured cruisers Japanese cruiser Kasuga and Japanese cruiser Nisshin and later engaged the armoured cruiser Japanese cruiser Iwate, hitting her with a single 12 inch shell. At 14:40 a heavy shell exploded next to Sissoi Velikys bow, damaging the bow torpedo tube. Shortly afterward a 12 inch and a 6 inch shell hit the belt armour near the water line, causing flooding in the forward compartments. In the following hour the ship was hit by one 12 inch, three 8 inch and three 6 inch shells, which disabled her forward turret hydraulics, set the casemates afire and simultaneously severed the firefighting water supply. At 15:40 Ozerov steered the burning Sissoi Veliky away from the line of fire and joined the unengaged Russian cruiser formation. By 17:00 the crew had extinguished the fires and the ship returned to action with a heavy list to port. She took her place in line behind Navarin at the moment when the Japanese battleships ceased fire and the Russians hoped to leave the battlefield without further casualties. One hour later Admiral Kamimura Hikonojō re established contact and engaged the fleeing Russians. Sissoi Veliky survived this phase of the battle unharmed. After sunset she joined the group of survivors assembled by Nebogatov, but was unable to keep pace with Nebogatov's flagship Imperator Nikolai I. Sissoi Veliky and Navarin fell back, supporting Russian coast defense ship Admiral Ushakov with gunfire. At 19:30 the ship sighted Japanese destroyers fanning out for an attack. scored a torpedo hit 45 minutes later that damaged her rudder and propellers. The ship could still be steered by using her engines at varying speeds, but the flooding intensified and by 03:15 the next morning the bow was submerged to the point where forward movement was no longer possible. Ozerov realized that Sissoi Veliky could not make it to Vladivostok; he ordered "all astern", reversed the engines and headed crabwise to Tsushima Island, hoping to beach his crippled ship with the intent of using her as a fixed gun emplacement. By 06:00 flooding forced Ozerov to telegraph "all stop", shutting down the vessel's engines. The crippled Vladimir Monomakh passed by Sissoi Veliky, unable to offer any assistance. When they came within of Sissoi Veliky, Ozerov signalled: "I am sinking, request assistance." The Japanese responded with a straightforward question, "Do you surrender?" Ozerov hoisted the white flag in response. At 08:15 the Japanese boarding party of one officer and 31 enlisted men boarded the battleship and raised the Japanese flag, but failed to pull down the Russian flag. The Japanese attempted to tow their prize to safety, but soon realized the effort was futile. They moved the Russian prisoners onto their ships and retrieved their flag. At 10:05 Sissoi Veliky capsized and sank, still flying the Russian flag.