Russian battleship Potemkin

The Russian battleship Potemkin (Князь Потёмкин Таврический, Kniaz Potemkin Tavritchesky, "Prince Potemkin of Tauris") was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy's Black Sea Fleet. The ship was made famous by the rebellion of the crew against their oppressive officers in June 1905 (during the Russian Revolution of 1905). It later came to be viewed as an initial step towards the Russian Revolution of 1917, and was the basis of Sergei Eisenstein's silent film The Battleship Potemkin (1925).

Following the mutiny in 1905, the ship's name was changed to Panteleimon. She accidentally sank a Russian submarine in 1909 and was badly damaged when she ran aground in 1911. Panteleimon participated in the Battle of Cape Sarych shortly after Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in late 1914 during World War I. She covered several bombardments of the Bosphorus fortifications in early 1915, including one where she was attacked by the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben; Panteleimon and the other Russian pre-dreadnoughts, managed to drive her off. The ship was relegated to secondary roles after the first dreadnought entered service in late 1915 and reduced to reserve in 1918 in Sevastopol.

Panteleimon was captured when the Germans took Sevastopol in May 1918 and was handed over to the Allies after the Armistice in November 1918. Her engines were destroyed in 1919 by the British when they withdrew from Sevastopol to prevent the advancing Bolsheviks from using them against the White Russians. She was abandoned when the Whites evacuated the Crimea in 1920 and was finally scrapped by the Soviets in 1923.

Planning
A slipway would become available at the Nikolayev Admiralty Shipyard in 1896, and planning began in 1895 for a new battleship to utilize it. The Naval Staff and the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral K. P. Pilkin, decided on a copy of the design, but they were overruled by General Admiral Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich who decided that the long range and 10 in guns of the Peresvet class were inappropriate for the narrow confines of the Black Sea. He ordered that an improved version of RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Tri Sviatitelia be designed; he wanted a higher forecastle to improve the ship's seakeeping qualities and Krupp cemented armour as well as Belleville boilers. The design process was complicated by numerous changes demanded by various departments of the Naval Technical Committee, but the design was finally approved on 12 June 1897, although design changes continued to be made and slowed the ship's construction.

Construction and sea trials
Construction of Potemkin began on 27 December 1897 and she was laid down at the Nikolayev Admiralty Shipyard on 10 October 1898. She was named in honour of Prince Grigory Potemkin, a Russian soldier and statesman.

The ship was launched on 9 October 1900 and transferred to Sevastopol for fitting out on 4 July 1902. She began sea trials in September 1903 and these continued, off and on, until early 1905 when her gun turrets were completed.

Properties
Potemkin was 371 ft long at the waterline and 378 ft long overall. She had a beam of 73 ft and a maximum draft of 27 ft. She displaced 12900 LT, over 400 LT more than her designed displacement of 12480 LT. Potemkin's crew consisted of 26 officers and 705 enlisted men.

Power
The ship had a pair of three-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines that had a total designed output of 10600 ihp. Twenty-two Belleville boilers provided steam to the engines, each of which drove one propeller. The eight boilers in the forward boiler room were oil-fired and the remaining 14 were coal-fired. On 31 October 1903, she reached a top speed of 16.5 kn with her boilers at a pressure of 15 atm during her sea trials. Leaking oil caused a serious fire on 2 January 1904 that caused the navy to convert her boilers to coal firing at a cost of 20,000 rubles. She carried a maximum of 1100 LT of coal at full load that provided a range of 3200 nmi at a speed of 10 kn.

Armament
The main armament consisted of four 40-calibre 12 in guns mounted in twin gun turrets fore and aft. The electrically operated turrets were derived from the design of those used by the s. 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. They fired a 337.7 kg shell at a muzzle velocity of 2792 ft/s. At an elevation of +10° the guns had a range of 12000 m. Potemkin carried 60 rounds for each gun.

The sixteen 45-calibre, Canet Pattern 1891 quick-firing (QF) guns were mounted in casemates. Twelve of these were placed on the sides of the hull and the other four were positioned at a corner of the superstructure. They fired shells that weighed 41.46 kg with a muzzle velocity of 792 m/s. They had a maximum range of 11523 m when fired at an elevation of +20°. The ship stowed 160 rounds per gun.

Smaller guns were carried for defence against torpedo boats. These included fourteen 50-calibre Canet QF 75 mm guns: four in hull embrasures and the remaining 10 mounted on the superstructure. The ship carried 300 shells for each gun. They fired an 4.9 kg shell at a muzzle velocity of 2700 ft/s to a maximum range of 6405 m at an elevation of 13°. She also mounted six 47 mm Hotchkiss guns. Four of these were mounted in the fighting top and two on the superstructure. They fired a 2.2 lb shell at a muzzle velocity of 1400 ft/s.

Potemkin carried five underwater 15 in torpedo tubes: one in the bow and two on each broadside. She carried three torpedoes for each tube. While 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 70 kg and a speed of 33 kn with a maximum range of 800 m.

In 1907 telescopic sights were fitted for the 12-inch and six-inch guns. Either later that year, or in 1908, 2.5 m rangefinders were installed. The bow torpedo tube was removed in 1910–11 as was the fighting top. The following year, the main gun turret machinery was upgraded and the guns were modified to improve their rate of fire to one round every 40 seconds.

Two 57 mm anti-aircraft (AA) guns were mounted on the ship's superstructure on 3–6 June 1915 and they were supplemented by two 75 mm AA guns, one on top of each turret, probably during 1916. In February of that year, the ship's four remaining torpedo tubes were removed. At some point during the war, her 75 mm anti-torpedo boat guns were also removed.

Protection
The maximum thickness of the Krupp cemented armour waterline belt was which reduced to  abreast the magazines. It covered 237 ft of the ship's length and plates protected the waterline to the ends of the ship. The belt was high, of which  was below the waterline, and tapered down to a thickness of  at its bottom edge. The main part of the belt terminated in 7 in transverse bulkheads.

Above the belt was the upper strake of six-inch armour that was 156 ft long and closed off by six-inch transverse bulkheads fore and aft. The upper casemate protected the six-inch guns and was five inches thick on all sides. The sides of the turrets were 10 in thick and they had a two-inch roof. The conning tower's sides were nine inches thick. The nickel-steel armour deck was two inches thick on the flat amidships, but 2.5 in thick on the slope connecting to the armour belt. Fore and aft of the armoured citadel, the deck was to the bow and stern. In 1910–11, additional armour plates were added fore and aft; their exact location is unknown, but they were probably used to extend the height of the two-inch armour strake at the ends of the ship.

The mutiny
During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, many of the Black Sea Fleet's most experienced officers and enlisted men were transferred to the ships in the Pacific to replace losses. This left the fleet with primarily raw recruits and less capable officers. With the news of the disastrous Battle of Tsushima in May 1905 morale dropped to an all time low and only needed a spark to set off a major catastrophe. The Central Committee of the Social Democratic Organization of the Black Sea Fleet, called "Tsentralka", had started preparations for a simultaneous mutiny on all of the ships of the fleet, although the timing had not been decided.

On 27 June 1905, Potemkin was at gunnery practice near Tendra Island off the Ukrainian coast when many enlisted men refused to eat the borscht made from rotten meat partially infested with maggots when it was delivered to the warship by the Potemkin's escort, the torpedo boat RUSSIAN TORPEDO BOAT Ismail (No. 627). The uprising was triggered when Ippolit Giliarovsky, the ship's second in command, allegedly threatened to shoot crew members for their refusal. He summoned the ship's marine guards as well as a tarpaulin to protect the ship's deck from any blood in an attempt to intimidate the crew. Giliarovsky was killed after he mortally wounded Grigory Vakulinchuk, one of the mutiny's leaders. The mutineers killed seven of the Potemkin's eighteen officers, including Captain Evgeny Golikov and Giliarovsky, and captured Ismail. They organized a ship's committee of 25 sailors, led by Afanasi Matushenko, to run the battleship.

The committee decided to head for Odessa flying a red flag and arrived there later that day at 22:00. A general strike had been called in the city and there was some rioting as the police tried to quell the strikers. The following day the mutineers refused to land armed sailors, and assist the revolutionaries behind the strikes take over the city, as they preferred to await the arrival of the other battleships of the Black Sea Fleet. Later that day they captured a military transport, the Vekha, that arrived in the city. The riots continued as much of the port area was destroyed by fire. On the afternoon of 29 June, Vakulinchuk’s funeral turned into a political demonstration and the army attempted to ambush the sailors that participated in the funeral. In retaliation, the ship fired two six-inch shells at the theatre where a high-level military meeting was scheduled to take place, but missed.

The government issued an order to send two squadrons to Odessa either to force the Potemkin crew to give up or sink the battleship. Potemkin sortied on the morning of 30 June to meet the three battleships Tri Sviatitelia, RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Dvenadsat Apostolov, and RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Georgii Pobedonosets of the first squadron, but the loyal ships turned away. The second squadron arrived with the battleships RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Rostislav and RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Sinop later that morning and Vice Admiral Aleksander Krieger, acting commander of the Black Sea Fleet, ordered the ships back 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.

The following morning, loyalist members of Georgii Pobedonosets retook control of the ship and ran it aground in Odessa harbour. The crew of Potemkin, together with Ismail, decided to sail for Constanta later that day where they could restock food, water and coal. The Romanians refused to provide the supplies so the ship's committee decided to sail for the small, barely defended, port of Theodosia in the Crimea where they hoped to resupply. The ship arrived there on the morning of 5 July, but the city's governor refused to give them anything other than food. The mutineers attempted to seize several barges of coal the following morning, but they were ambushed by the port's garrison, killing or capturing 22 of the 30 sailors involved. They decided to return to Constanta that afternoon.

Potemkin reached its destination at 23:00 on 7 July and the Romanians agreed to give asylum to the crew if they would disarm themselves and surrender the battleship. Ismail's crew decided the following morning to return to Sevastopol and hand themselves in. Before the crew disembarked, Matushenko ordered that the ship's Kingston valves be opened so Potemkin would sink to the bottom of the harbour.

Later service
The battleship was easily refloated, but the salt water had damaged her engines and boilers. She had to be towed back to Sevastopol, where she arrived on 14 July. The ship was renamed Panteleimon (Пантелеймон), after Saint Pantaleon, on 12 October 1905. Some members of Panteleimon's crew joined a mutiny that began aboard the cruiser RUSSIAN CRUISER Ochakov in November, but it was easily suppressed as both ships had been earlier disarmed.

Panteleimon received an experimental underwater communications set in February 1909. Later that year, she accidentally rammed and sank the submarine RUSSIAN SUBMARINE Kambala at night on 11 June, killing the 16 crewmen aboard the submarine.

While returning from a port visit to Constanta in 1911, Panteleimon ran aground on 2 October and it took several days to refloat her. She received temporary repairs although the full extent of the damage to her bottom was not fully realized 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 seams were opened while firing. Permanent repairs, which involved replacing a large number of her hull frames and plating as well as the replacement of her boiler foundations, lasted from 10 January to 25 April 1912. The navy took advantage of these repairs to overhaul her engines and boilers.

Panteleimon, flagship of the 1st Battleship Brigade, accompanied by the pre-dreadnoughts RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Evstafi, RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP Ioann Zlatoust, and Tri Sviatitelia, covered the pre-dreadnought Rostislav while she bombarded Trebizond on the morning of 17 November 1914 after Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire. They were intercepted by the German battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser SMS Breslau the following day 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 and the capital ships initially did not spot each other. Although several of the other ships opened fire and hit Goeben once, Panteleimon held her fire as her turrets could not see the German ships before they disengaged.

Tri Sviatitelia and Rostislav bombarded Ottoman fortifications at the mouth of the Bosphorus on 18 March 1915, the first of several bombardments intended to divert troops and attention from the on-going Gallipoli Campaign, but only fired 105 rounds before sailing north to rejoin Panteleimon, Ioann Zlatoust and Evstafi. Tri Sviatitelia and Rostislav were to have repeated the bombardment the following day, but heavy fog prevented the operation. On 3 April, Goeben and several ships of the Turkish navy raided the Russian port at Odessa; the Russian battleship squadron sortied to intercept them. The battleships chased Goeben the entire day, but were unable to reach effective gunnery range and were forced to break off the chase. On 25 April Tri Sviatitelia and Rostislav repeated their bombardment of the Bosporus forts. Sviatitelia, Rostislav and Panteleimon bombarded the forts again on 2 and 3 May. This time a total of 337 main gun rounds were fired in addition to 528 six-inch shells between the three battleships.

On 9 May 1915, Tri Sviatitelia and Panteleimon returned to bombard the Bosphorus forts, covered by the remaining pre-dreadnoughts. Goeben 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 Goeben before she broke off the action. The Russian ships pursued her 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 dreadnought RUSSIAN BATTLESHIP 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. 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 at Varna.

Panteleimon supported Russian troops in early 1916 as they captured Trebizond and participated in an anti-shipping sweep off the northwestern Anatolian coast in January 1917 that destroyed 39 Turkish sailing ships.

On 13 April 1917 the ship was renamed Potemkin-Tavricheski (Потёмкин-Таврический) and then to Borets za svobodu (Борец за свободу – Freedom Fighter) on 11 May 1917.

Reserve and decommissioning
She 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. The ship was captured by both sides during the Russian Civil War, but was abandoned by the White Russians when they evacuated the Crimea in November 1920.

Borets za svobodu was scrapped beginning in 1923, although she was not stricken from the Navy List until 21 November 1925.

Legacy
The immediate effects of the mutiny are difficult to assess. It may have influenced Tsar Nicholas II's decisions to end the Russo-Japanese War and accept the October Manifesto, as the mutiny demonstrated that his régime no longer had the unquestioning loyalty of the military. The mutiny's failure did not stop other revolutionaries from inciting mutinies later that year (Sevastopol Uprising). Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik Party, called it a "dress rehearsal" for his successful revolution in 1917.

The Soviets seized upon the mutiny as a propaganda symbol for their party and unduly emphasized their role in the mutiny. In fact, Matushenko explicitly rejected the Bolsheviks because he and the other leaders of the mutiny were Socialists of one type or another and cared nothing for Communism. This appropriation is nowhere clearer than in Eisenstein's 1925 film Battleship Potemkin, filmed aboard the derelict battleship Dvenadsat Apostolov. He emphasised the role of the Bolsheviks, and implied that the mutiny failed because Matushenko and the other leaders were not better Bolsheviks. Eisenstein made other changes to dramatize 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 the famous sequence on the steps, and showing a tarpaulin thrown over the sailors to be executed.