Warship Wednesday October 3

Here at LSOZI, we are going to take out every Wednesday for a look at the old steampunk navies of the 1866-1938 time period and will profile a different ship each week.

- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday,  October 3

Here we have the Russian naval auxillary Standart as she would have looked in her heyday, around 1906.

The Imperial Yacht Standart (Штандартъ) was built by order of Emperor Alexander III of Russia, and constructed at the Danish shipyard of Burmeister & Wain, beginning in 1893. She was launched on 21 March 1895 and came into service early September 1896. For twenty years she served Tsar Nicholas and his family as they motored around the Baltic for two or three weeks at a time during the summer. Remember, before 1917, what is now Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia was all Russian and belonged to the Tsar.

To protect the ship from attack it carried  8  hard chromed 47mm Hotchkiss guns, and a platoon of heavily armed Imperial Marines of the Guarde Equipage. Two marines attached to the ship served as the personal bodyguard/nannies of the young Tsarvitch Alexei and followed the boy ashore 365 days a year.

two sailors from the Standart, Nagorny and Derevenko, followed the young Alexei for 14 years everywhere he went. One even went into exile in Sibera with the boy who would never be king.

During WWI the ship served as a naval auxiliary cruiser protecting the approaches  to St Petersburg/Petrograd. In the revolution her marines were some of the last guardians of the imperial palace at Tsarskoe Selo.

The Marti was credited with shooting down several German Stukas during the 900-day siege of Leningrad.

Renamed Marti, after a revolutionary French sailor, she served as a minelayer, was damaged during the epic siege of Leningrad, and continued  to serve the Soviet navy after the war as a training ship, only retiring from service in 1963.

Specs:
Displacement:     5557 tons standard
Length:     128 m (420 feet)
Beam:     15.8 m (52 feet)
Draught:     6.00 m (19′ 8)
Propulsion:     2 Triple Expansion Steam Engines
Speed:     21.18 knots (by 1930, 14-knots)
Complement:     355-400

Armament (after 1920)
4 – 130mm guns (4×1)
7 – 76.2 mm guns (7×1)
3 – 45mm guns (3×1)
3 -12.7mm machine guns (3×1)
320 mines