Russian battleship Rostislav

Rostislav was 345 feet 6 inches (105.3 m) long at the waterline and 351 feet 10 inches (107.2 m) long overall. She had a beam of 68 feet (20.7 m) and a draft of 25 feet 2 inches (7.7 m). She displaced 10,520 long tons (10,690 t), over 1,500 long tons (1,500 t) more than her designed displacement of 8,880 long tons (9,020 t).[8] This weight gain increased her draft by about 3 feet (0.9 m), submerging most, if not all, of her waterline armored belt.[9]

Rostislav had two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, identical to those of Sissoi Veliky, that had a total designed output of 8,500 indicated horsepower (6,300 kW). Eight cylindrical fire-tube boilers provided steam to the engines, each of which drove one propeller. Half of the boilers were coal-fired and the other half were oil-fired,[10] making Rostislav the first capital ship in the world to use fuel oil.[11] This was done in order to substitute cheap oil from Baku for expensive imported coal.[12] On sea trials, the power plant produced a total of 8,816 ihp (6,574 kW) and a top speed of 15.8 knots (29.3 km/h; 18.2 mph). She carried a maximum of 820 long tons (830 t) of fuel oil and coal at full load that provided a range of 3,100 nautical miles (5,700 km; 3,600 mi) at a speed of 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph).[10]

The main armament consisted of two pairs of 10-inch (254 mm) 45-caliber Model 1891 guns mounted in French-style, center-pivot twin gun turrets fore and aft. Each turret had an arc of fire of 240°.[12] These guns had a maximum elevation of +15° and could depress to −5°. They fired a 496.5-pound (225.2 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,273 ft/s (693 m/s). At an elevation of +6° the guns had a range 7,320 metres (8,010 yd).[13] All eight of the 45-caliber, 6-inch (152 mm) Canet Pattern 1891 guns were mounted in twin-gun turrets on the main deck. Each turret was positioned at a corner of the superstructure and had an arc of fire of 110°.[12] They fired shells that weighed 91.4 lb (41.46 kg) with a muzzle velocity of 2,600 ft/s (792 m/s). They had a maximum range of 12,602 yards (11,523 m) when fired at an elevation of +20°.[14]

The anti-torpedo boat armament consisted of twelve 47-millimetre (1.9 in) Hotchkiss guns. Eight of these were mounted in the superstructure and the locations of the remaining four are unclear.[12] They fired a 2.2-pound (1.00 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 1,400 ft/s (430 m/s).[15] The ship also mounted sixteen 37-millimetre (1.5 in) Hotchkiss guns, eight of which were carried in the fighting top. The locations of the other eight are unknown.[12] They fired a 1.1-pound (0.50 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,150 ft/s (660 m/s).[16]

Rostislav carried six 15-inch (381 mm) torpedo tubes. The bow and stern tubes and the aft pair of broadside tubes were above water. The forward broadside tubes were underwater. The ship carried 50 mines to be used to protect her anchorage.[17]

The maximum thickness of the Rostislav's waterline belt was 14.5 inches (368 mm), tapering to 10 inches (254 mm) abreast the magazines. It covered 227 feet (69.2 m) of the ship's length and was 7 feet (2.1 m) high. While the exact height of the belt above the designed waterline is unknown, much of it, if not all, would have been below the waterline as the ship's draft was over 3 feet (0.9 m) deeper than designed. The belt terminated forward in a 9-inch (229 mm) transverse bulkhead and aft in a 5-inch (127 mm) bulkhead. The upper belt was 5 inches thick, 7 feet 6 inches (2.3 m) high and covered 160 feet (48.8 m) of the ship's side. The sides of the main gun turrets were 10 inches thick and they had 2.5-inch (64 mm) roofs. The sides of the 6-inch turrets were 6 inches thick as were the sides of the conning tower. The armor deck was flat and located at the upper edge of the main belt. It was 2 inches (51 mm) thick. Below the waterline, forward and aft of the armored citadel, were 3-inch (76 mm) decks.[18]

After the Battle of Tsushima the Imperial Navy concentrated on improving their gunnery skills and fire-control practices.[31] In 1908 Alexei Krylov and Yevgeny Berkalov led Rostislav on an unprecedented long-range gunnery shoot: Rostislav fired 330 ten-inch shells at a distance of 8 to 10 miles (13 to 16 km) in a few days.[31] The experiment proved that the older ballistic tables used by the Navy were inaccurate. Berkalov compiled the data from the 1908 exercise into the new tables adopted by the Navy.[31] Another of Krylov's initiatives, rapid counter-flooding, was standardized in 1909.[25]

Cleaning the guns of Rostislav.

Two plans for modernizing the ship were put forward before World War I. In 1907 the Naval General Staff proposed a major reconstruction aimed at reducing her draft and raising her armor belt higher out of the water. Her above-water torpedo tubes, torpedo nets, auxiliary boilers and 47-millimeter guns would have been removed, her superstructure cut down and her rigging reduced to a single pole mast. These changes would have reduced her displacement by 250 long tons (250 t), but the plan was rejected due to a shortage of money.[32] Her above-water torpedo tubes, however, were removed about this time.[33] In 1912 the staff of the Black Sea Fleet proposed to replace all of her 47 mm guns with four 75-millimetre (3 in) guns and to remove the auxiliary boilers and the submerged torpedo tubes to offset the additional weight. The Naval General Staff did not think that this was worth the cost and rejected the plan.[32] Even though these plans did not come to fruition, other alterations were made to Rostislav before the war. A dozen of her 37 mm guns were removed in 1906, and she was fitted with 15-foot (4.6 m) rangefinders, probably made by Barr and Stroud, in 1907 and 1908.[33]

In 1909 and 1910, Rostislav and the rest of the Black Sea Fleet prepared for joint operations with submarines. She was scheduled for an installation of the first Russian underwater acoustic communication system, but the installation was interrupted and her hardware was installed on the battleship Panteleimon (the former Potemkin) instead.[34] During an anti-submarine exercise on the night of June 11, 1909, Rostislav accidentally rammed and sank the submarine Kambala. Twenty men of Kambala and two rescue divers died.[35][36] The accident was blamed on reckless maneuvering by the submarine, and Rostislav's captain was cleared of any negligence or wrongdoing.[37]

Before the outbreak of World War I Rostislav was involved in two minor international incidents. On August 11, 1911, Evstafi and Panteleimon, two of the Black Sea Fleet battleships paying a state visit to Romania, ran aground on a shoal just off the port of Constanța. Rostislav's officers had detected the hazard and steered her to safety, but did not alert the other ships. The international embarrassment that followed led to the resignation of fleet commander Admiral Ivan Bostrem.[25] During the First Balkan War Rostislav sailed into the Sea of Marmara to protect the Russian Embassy in Istanbul from a mob.[Note 5] Rostislav accidentally fired a live shell into the Turkish defenses. No one was injured during the incident, and the captain defused the situation with a personal apology to the Ottoman government.[38]

Rostislav spent the winter of 1913–14 refitting, and in April 1914 she returned to the active fleet with newly overhauled machinery, new rangefinders and new gun sights.[39] The ship made 15.37 knots (28.47 km/h; 17.69 mph) on her post-refit trials.[33]

On November 4, 1914, the Black Sea Fleet sailed out on its first combat operation of the war: the bombardment of Zonguldak. The operation was conceived as a retaliation against the Turkish-German attack on Sevastopol. Rostislav, captained by Kazimierz Porębski, was the "designated gunboat" while other Russian battleships formed a defensive screen around her. On November 6 she fired 251 shells at the port of Zonguldak, reducing it to rubble.[40] On November 18 the ship faced Goeben during the Battle of Cape Sarych, but the German ship broke contact before Rostislav, trailing behind the Russian formation, even spotted her.[41] Rostislav had other encounters with Goeben in 1915 and 1916, but did not engage her directly.[Note 6] In 1915 the ship received four 75 mm anti-aircraft guns.[42]

After the commissioning of the Imperatritsa Mariya-class dreadnoughts, the old battleships were split into independent combat groups. Rostislav became the flagship of the Batumi Group tasked with supporting the ground operations of the Caucasus Army.[43] Their first joint action began February 5, 1916, near Arhavi.[44] On the first day alone the ship fired 400 shells against the Turks.[43] On March 4 Rostislav and the gunboats Kubanetz and Donetz supported the amphibious landing at Atina.[44] Three days later she supported the landing of marines that ended in the capture of Rize. At the end of March Rostislav and Panteleimon forced the Turks to evacuate Trabzon.[43]

In the summer of 1916 the Navy seriously considered an all-out amphibious assault on the Bosphorus.[45] Fleet commander Andrei Eberhardt anticipated a high risk of naval mine and torpedo hits in the coastal waters and suggested equipping all pre-dreadnought battleships with anti-torpedo bulges. Sinop had her bulges fitted in Nikolaev in July 1916, and Rostislav was next in line, but the work was cancelled in August,[46] and she was transferred to the Romanian coast as flagship of the Constanța Group. Constanța temporarily became an important logistical hub for the Russian troops heading to the Romanian Front, and the base for minelayers, submarines and destroyers harassing the enemy in the Bosphorus area. The Germans responded with air raids; their first aerial success against a Russian naval target was scored against Rostislav. The bomb hit the edge of the aft 10-inch turret and injured sixteen sailors. The turret itself remained fully operational. The collapse of the Romanian Front in October 1916 forced the Navy to evacuate Constanța. Rostislav returned to Sevastopol for a much-needed overhaul.[47]

The February Revolution of 1917 did not demoralize the Black Sea Fleet as quickly as the Baltic Fleet. Captain Fyodor Stark, a former destroyer commander, maintained Rostislav in combat-ready condition until the end of the year.[48] The battleship sailed out for her last voyage to Batumi in September and October. Stark managed to contain the radical politics, anti-German sentiment and Ukrainization of the crew, but nevertheless raised the flag of Ukraine on his return to Sevastopol on October 25.[49][Note 1] From this moment desertion and "volunteering" into the Red Guards intensified, and by December 21 the crew was reduced to 460 enlisted men and 28 officers.[50] In January 1918 the fleet disintegrated completely: the officers fled from the enraged enlisted men, then the enlisted men abandoned the ships and fled from the advancing German Army. On April 29, 1918, the Bolsheviks managed to extricate two battleships and sixteen destroyers from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk, but Rostislav and the rest of the fleet remained in Sevastopol.[51]

The German occupation of Crimea from May to November 1918 did not affect the abandoned ship. The Anglo-French forces that replaced the Germans stayed in Sevastopol until April 1919.[52] Before leaving, the British wrecked Rostislav's engines on April 25 to prevent the ship from being any use to the advancing Soviets. The White forces of Baron Wrangel used the disabled ship as a floating battery in the Sea of Azov.[53] The ship, manned by a ragtag volunteer crew, was stationed in the shallow waters of the Kerch Strait to harass the Reds in Taman and prevent a landing in the Crimea.[54] After the defeat of Wrangel's land forces, the crew scuttled Rostislav in the Kerch Strait to prevent the Red forces from breaking through to the Black Sea.[54]

When Rostislav sank in the shallows her superstructure remained above water. In 1930, the EPRON (a Soviet salvage unit) retrieved the ship's guns and partially dismantled the hull. According to diver Alexander Yolkin, the remains of the hull are still lying in the strait, around 1,200 metres (1,300 yd) from the Ukrainian coast, and gradually sinking into the silt.[55]

• Shirokorad, A. B. (1997, in Russian). Korabelnaya artilleriya Rossiyskogo flota 1867–1922. (Корабельная артиллерия Российского флота. 1867–1922). Morskaya Kollekciya, No. 2 (14), 1997, pp. 1–42.