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Warship Wednesday 14 October 2026: The Hard Luck Empress of the Black Sea

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life and a tale all their own, sometimes taking them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger 

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday 14 October 2026: The Hard Luck Empress of the Black Sea

Above we see the Tsar Nicholas II touring the pride of his fleet, the newly commissioned dreadnought Imperatritsa Mariya (Empress Maria), her massive Obukhovskii 12″/52 Pattern 1907 guns framing the photo.

Just 15 months after she joined the fleet, she was lost, some 110 years ago this month, in an incident that is still seen by some as controversial.

Tsarist Dreadnought efforts

The Russians lost an incredible 17 pre-dreadnoughts and coastal battleships in two squadrons against the Japanese in the inferno in and around the Tsushima Straits and Port Arthur in 1904-05. Keep in mind this is more than twice the blow that the U.S. suffered to its battle line at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Broken hell Russian Battleship Orel leading 2nd Pacific Squadron last daylight hours during battle of Tsushima Alexander Zyakin 1905

These included eight sunk for good:

  • Navarin
  • Sisoy Velikiy
  • Borodino
  • Alexander III
  • Suvorov
  • Petropavlovsk
  • Sevastopol
  • Osliabia

And nine captured after Tsushima or raised from the mud at Port Arthur, then used as trophy ships:

  • Nikolai I
  • Oshakov
  • Senyavin
  • Apraksin
  • Pobeda
  • Poltava
  • Orel
  • Peresvet
  • Retvizan

Sure, as some were grossly obsolete (the three Admiral Ushakov class vessels, for example) or ancient (Nikolai I had been ordered in the 1880s and could never make more than 15 knots even when new), starting with a clean slate in 1906 had a benefit to the Russian Admiralty entering the post-Dreadnought era.

Plus, they had earned reams of tactical knowledge about battleship design defects the worst way, at the cost of 6,000 sailors’ lives.

Left were the damaged French-built Tsesarevich (hit by 13 large shells and would need significant reconstruction), which was interned in China, 10 that were locked into the Black Sea by the pre-Montreux Convention Bosporus (Ekaterina II, Chesma, Sinop, Georgiy Pobedonosets, Dvenadtsat’ Apostolov, Tri Sviatitelia, Rostislav, Yevstafiy, Ioann Zlatoust, and the mutinous Potemkin), while the Baltic had three ships left that only survived because they had been incomplete when the war started (Andrei Pervozvanny, Imperator Pavel I, and Slava) and the old Alexandr II.

As the Baltic was the most battlewagon poor (the idea of a great Pacfic Fleet had been abandoned, replaced by a miserly Siberian Flotilla), the new 24,000-ton Gangut class (Sevastopol and Petropavlovsk from Baltic Works; Gangut and Poltava from the New Admiralty Yard) which carried a dozen new 12″/52 Obukhov guns in four triple turrets, could steam at 23-knots and were swathed in an 8-inch belt (earning them a battlecruiser brand in Jane’s) were ordered first in 1909 followed by the four massive 32,500-ton Borodino class battlecruisers (12 14″/45 guns, 12-inch belt, 26.5 knots) ordered in 1912.

The Imperial Russian Navy battleship Gangut on the Neva River, in June 1914, before the acceptance trials

The Ganguts were roughly equivalent to the German Helgolands, British Colossus, and American Florida-class 12-inch battleships of the era, and faster than any of the aforementioned, albeit with lighter armor.

All were to be built in yards around St. Petersburg with significant French (loans), German (Krupp armor, Siemens-Schuckert generators, and a shelved Blohm & Voss design), Italian (Vittorio Cuniberti design input) and most importantly, British assistance (machinery designed by John Brown & Company to include Parsons steam turbines and Yarrow small-tube boilers along with Barr & Stroud rangefinders and Pollen Argo range clocks, with Vickers supplying design help with main gun production) assistance with Holy Russian twists such as icebreaking bows, linear (lineinoe raspolozhenie) rather that superfiring main battery turrets, and elaborate Eastern Orthodox chapels.

As for the hate of superfiring turrets and their tall barbettes, the Russians believed that spacing the main-gun turrets and their magazines as far apart as the hull allowed would reduce the risk of a catastrophic ammunition explosion, lower the ship’s silhouette, and improve stability. Read that last sentence twice.

Via Jane’s, circa 1921 edition, you have the Ganguts followed by the Borodinos:

Meanwhile, for service in the Black Sea, the 1911 Naval Program authorized three new battlewagons constructed along its ancient shores, Imperatritsa Mariya and Imperator Alexandr III from Russud in Mykolaiv, and Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya from the Naval Yard (ONZiV) at Nikolayev. The cost was between 27.7 million gold rubles for the Russud-built ships and 29.8 million for Ekaterina. Compare this to the 37 million ruble average cost per hull of the slightly larger Ganguts.

The Imperatritsa Mariyas were slightly smaller (23,000 tons and 551 feet oal vs 24,800 tons and 594 feet) than the Ganguts, but better protected (10-inch belt rather than eight-inch), and could be seen as a modification of the general concept.

Imperatritsa Mariya. An artist’s impression of the ship, copied from the book “Rossiiski IMP. Flot” of 1913 by Jitkov, courtesy of Mr. Boris. V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., NH 95283

Like the Ganguts and Borodinos, the Mariyas used Yarrow boilers and Parsons/Brown-Curtis turbines, though with fewer boilers, giving 26,000shp rather than the 42,000 seen in the Ganguts, and a more pokey 21 knots rather than the Ganguts‘ 24.

Of note, their Yarrow boilers were built under license in Kharkiv. Like the Ganguts, they could spray oil over the coal to superheat it, with oil supplied by nearby Maikop and Baku fields in the Caucasus.

American-style lattice masts were planned, but to speed things up, simple pole masts were used instead.

Wanting something bigger than the 12″/52 Obukhovs as ordered for the Gangut class, the 14-inch guns meant for the Borodinos were still under development, so it was decided just to settle for the dozen 12s with magazine space for 100 shells per gun. They were arranged in much the same linear, spread-out fashion as with the Ganguts, using the same Pulitov-made MK-3-12 triple turrets protected by 10 inches of armor.

Making 12-inch gun mechanisms, Nikolaevski plant, for Russian battleships to include the Imperatritsa Mariya class

Imperatritsa Mariya’s ship’s chaplain seated on deck during this ship’s brief operational career near one of her 12″/52 turrets. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drashpil of Margate, Florida NH 100054

After post-war tests on captured shells, the British admitted they could fire a 1,038-pound M1911 APC shell to 22,600 yards and that it outperformed their own 12-inch Mark VIIa Greenboys. They were thought capable of defeating 13.85 inches of armor at 10,000 yards– and nothing in the Black Sea had that much armor!

The secondary battery consisted of 20 casemated 5.1″/55 M1913 B-7 Obukhov/Vickers guns on a protected gun deck, rather than the older 6″/45 Pattern 1892 Obukhov/Canet guns seen in the rest of the fleet.

Counter-boat defense was provided by four 3″/48 Canet guns and four 47mm Hotchkiss guns, while a torpedo battery of four small 17.7-inch fixed tubes existed for a dozen Model 45-12 steam torpedoes which had a 2,200-yard range at 43 knots.

To keep the four separate magazines cool, the ship installed a refrigeration plant with two large 10,500 sq. ft. Westinghouse-LeBlanc condensers designed by the G. A. Lessner firm, aiming to keep them at a crisp 59 degrees F if needed, a must in the humid subtropical Black Sea region.

With the Ottomans ordering two modern dreadnoughts (Fatih Sultan Mehmed and Reşadiye) from Vickers in 1911 and, the next year, assuming the contract for a third from Armstrong (the Brazilian Rio de Janeiro, renamed Sultan Osman I), the Russians ordered a fourth, improved Mariya from Russud in 1913. The planned Imperator Nikolay I would have exceeded 27,000 tons and carried a better armor scheme, plus the additional horsepower to manage it, but she was never completed.

As it was, the Turks never saw any of their British dreadnoughts, anyway.

This all brings us to…

Meet Imperatritsa Mariya

Our subject was at least the third warship in the Russian Imperial Navy to carry the name of Empress Mariya Feodorovna Romanov, nee Duchess Sophie Dorothee of Württemberg, who was the strong hand behind the very young Alexander I, leader of the vast Russian Empire after the death of her husband (his father), the detested Tsar Paul I, in 1801.

The first was a two-decked, 84-gun third-rate ship of the line launched in 1827 and served in the Black Sea Fleet until 1843. The second, also an 84-gun man-o-war, was key to the Russian battle line at the Battle of Sinop against the Ottomans in 1853, serving as Admiral Pavel Nakhimov’s flagship.

Nakhimov’s Imperatritsa Mariya under sail, as painted by Alexei Hanzen in 1916 on the occasion of the battleship with the same name joining the fleet. The Khrabryi-class ship of the line was the last all-sail-powered ship of the line built for the Russian Navy. At Sinop, she fired an amazing 2,128 rounds and shrugged off 60 Turkish hits. She was later scuttled during the Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, her guns and sailors used to strengthen the city’s defenses.

Laid down at the Russud yard at Nikolayev on 30 October 1911 alongside sister ship Alexandr III, our Mariya took to the water two years later on 1 November 1913.

Her obvious patron was the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (Dagmar), wife of the late Tsar Alexander III and mother of Nicky.

Imperatritsa Mariya in dry dock NH 84833

Changing the Marine guard detail aboard the Russian battleship Imperatritsa Mariya during World War I. Note the men apparently out of uniform in the left background; these may be civilian dockyard workers on or about the ship’s commissioning. The rifles appear to be Type 30 Arisakas, of which the Japanese sold 600,000 to the Tsar during the Great War. Courtesy of Mr. Boris V. Drapshil of Margate, Florida NH 100131

Alexandr III would follow her down the ways in April 1914.

War!

Delivered to Sevastopol on 30 June 1915, with the Turks very much in the war and the German battlecruiser Goeben running amok in the Black Sea, Mariya was rushed to sea trials, which proved the low-lying dreadnought was a bit of a hog underway, her bow more of a plow.

The battleship Empress Maria passes the Chersonesos Lighthouse 20 August 1915. Note how low to the water she is!

Also, her air-conditioned magazines would have been a welcome relief when the average summer temperature in the Crimea was in the upper 80s and humid, but they didn’t work.

To mitigate the problem, she was lightly loaded forward, trimming anchor chain and reducing No. 1 magazine stowage from 300 12-inch and 980 5.1-inch to 210 and 400, respectively, while keeping her coal and oil bunkers well under their 3,000- and 720-ton full loads.

Even with a half-bunker load, she could still make 1,500nm at 12 knots, more than enough for a short 700-mile roundtrip sortie across the Black Sea to bombard Trabzon, Samsun, or the approaches to the Bosporus.

Mariya’s first skipper was Capt. Casimir Porembski, a 43-year-old Polish-born regular who entered the Naval Academy in 1889 and served as a senior officer on the cruiser Novik during the war with Japan. He reported aboard in November 1913 while she was still under construction and remained her commander through March 1916, in charge of the Black Sea’s most powerful battleship.

By September 1915, she was operational as the flagship of the 2nd Battleship Squadron, alongside the pre-dreadnoughts Panteleimon (ex-Potempkin), Yevstafiy, and Ioann Zlatoust.

She saw her first combat in a raid with her squadron along the Turkish coast at Zonguldak (13-15 October), bombarding Varna (2-4 November) and Euxinograd (6-8 November) Bulgaria, and then provided her 12-inch guns as muscle for the Trebizond operation which saw 15,000 Russians landed at Rizem on 5 March 1916 to envelope the left flank of the 3rd Turkish Army, which at the time was fighting the invasion Russian Caucasian Army, and eventually capture Trebizond by 18 April.

Afterward, the Tsar and Tsarevitch, Empress, and three Grand Duchesses reviewed her in May 1916, leaving a large collection of images from the event.

Czar Nicholas II visiting Black Sea Fleet Dreadnought battleship Императрица Мария Imperatritsa Mariya May 1916 Maria Russian

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Russian battleship Empress Maria Imperatritsa Mariya Sevastopol 14 May 1916

Imperatritsa Mariya during the Imperial review, May 12- 14, 1916.

Imperatritsa Mariya during the Imperial review, May 12- 14, 1916. Note the minesweeping bowsprit

Emperor Nicholas II’s visit to the battleship Empress Maria, Sevastopol, 1916. Note her torpedo nets are stowed.

On 8 July 1916, VADM Alexander Vasilyevich Kolchak, who had made a name for himself in mine operations against the Germans in the Baltic and would later lead the Siberian theatre of the Russian Civil War, arrived at Sevastopol and assumed command of the Black Sea Fleet, making Mariya his flagship.

Russian Imperatritsa Maryia class battleship

Just days later, he was aboard Mariya off the Turkish coast when they came within 90 cables (about nine miles) of the German light cruiser Breslau (Turkish Midilli), which immediately used her better speed to avoid the Russians’ incoming 12-inch shells and make her getaway in a smoke screen. Still, it was the last Black Sea sortie by Breslau and/or Goeben in 1916, which Russian scholars generally attribute to a lack of appetite for tangling with a proper battlewagon.

It was a precursor to the reason Kolchak was sent south in the first place– the Bosforskuyu operatsiyu, or Bosporus Operation, the planned November 1916 landings to capture the Eastern straits by the newly formed Separate Black Sea Naval Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Alexander Svechin, backed by two Russian army corps, the 29th and 40th.

In the lead-up to the operation, Kolchak ordered 17 minefields laid near the Bosphorus with 4,000 mines deployed, effectively sealing the Turks and Germans in the straits.

Kolchak’s plan hinged on two dreadnoughts, Mariya and her sister Yekaterina Velikaya (Catherine the Great), which would enter service at the end of October, with their combined 24 12-inch guns, leading his pre-dreadnoughts and four seaplane tenders (hydro-aviation transports).

However, Kolchak’s plan soon hit two major roadblocks.

First, when Romania entered the war in late August and collapsed by early December, the two army corps that were to land after his marines were rushed instead into the Danube Delta to join Sakharov’s forces propping up that weak ally.

Then Mariya exploded a half-mile from shore at the Sevastopol roadstead at 0615 on 20 October 1916. The explosion dislodged the forward turret. The conning tower, foremast, and funnel were blown into the air, and the upper deck, up to the second turret, was exposed, killing 320 of her 1,100 crew and sending a 1,000-foot column of black smoke from her bow.

Kolchak, who was ashore, rushed to the scene and was reportedly aboard her 15 minutes after, supervising the flooding of her remaining magazines and evacuation of the 85 injured. He also ordered her newly commissioned sister, Yekaterina Velikaya, and the old Yevstafiy towed to a safer location if the rest of the ship went up in flame.

Suffering from 25 subsequent explosions as the fires spread down her hull, igniting coal, fuel oil, and ammunition, she capsized keel-up at a depth of 8.5 fathoms at 0717.

Cruiser Kagul next to the capsized Russian battleship Imperatritsa Maryia Maria Mariya in Sevastopol

Her skipper at the time, Capt. Ivan Semenovich Kuznetsov, was relieved and put on trial pending an investigation into the loss of his proud ship.

Some believe the “Kontrol-K” spy ring, led by German intelligence officer Viktor Eduardovich Verman, sabotaged the Russian battlewagon. FSB archives (the successor to the KGB) state that Verman was supposedly awarded Germany’s Iron Cross 2nd Class for the deed. He was rolled up in 1932 by the OGPU and executed.

However, Mariya was most likely lost in a magazine explosion, a sadly common hazard for battleships of the era.

Similarly, the French battleships Iéna (1907) and Liberté (1911), the Japanese Kawachi (1918), British HMS Vanguard (1917), and the Italian Leonardo da Vinci (1916) all perished in magazine explosions while in friendly ports. Bagged nitrocellulose cordite, chemically sensitive to temperature, and combustible coal dust inside steel hulls proved notoriously volatile.

Epilogue

While Kolchak’s Bosphoros Operation was kicked down the road to May 1917, when it was thought Mariya’s sister, Imperator Alexandr III, would be complete, the Revolution intervened, and the admiral was instead sent on a naval mission to America on behalf of the Provisional Government to soft shoe for military aid.

By the time the Reds took over the government in the October Revolution, the effects on the fleet were quick, and Mariya’s last skipper, Kuznetsov, was led out and shot along the seawall in Sevastopol along with a group of senior officers.

Her first commander, the Pole Porembsky, was cashiered and escaped the hellfire of the Russian Civil War, given a general’s rank in the newly formed Polish Army, and later transitioned to the Polish Navy, which he led by 1925 as a vice admiral.

Porembsky died in Warsaw in 1933 and is considered a father of the modern Polish Navy.

As for the hulk of Mariya, they raised and refloated her upside down, slowly, from November 1917 to May 1918, by which time Russia had left the Great War, and the Germans were in Sevastopol on occupation duties.

Battlecruiser Yavuz in Sevastopol Bay, 1918, with the salvage operations of Russian Battleship Empress Maria to the left

April 1919 Russian battleship Black Sea Fleet Dreadnought Императрица Мария Imperatritsa Mariya upside down Sevastopol from French Danton Cl Vergniaud

The battleship Empress Maria after docking and pumping out water, 1919.

Mariya was towed to the large drydock at Sevastopol in August 1918, where she was stripped of useful material, including most of her 5.1″/55s, which were quickly used to arm river gunboats and barges during the Russian Civil War. She was eventually scrapped by 1927.

While some sources claim her 12-inch guns ended up in coastal artillery emplacements, that does not seem to hold water. All four turrets and a full dozen guns fell to the seabed after she turned turtle in 1916 and remained there until at least the mid-1930s, when the ERPRON salvage group pulled them up and likely scrapped many of them in poor condition.

Soviet myth had it that:

Shortly before the Great Patriotic War, Epronov’s crews raised these turrets, and in 1939 the battleship’s 305mm guns were mounted near Sevastopol on the renowned 30th Battery, part of the 1st Coastal Defense Artillery Division. The battery heroically defended Sevastopol; on June 17, 1942, during the final assault on the city, it fired at the Nazi hordes that had broken through into the Belbek Valley. Having expended all its shells, the battery fired blanks, holding back the enemy advance until June 25. Thus, more than a quarter of a century after firing at the Kaiser’s cruisers Goeben and Breslau, the battleship Empress Maria’s guns spoke again, raining down 305-mm shells, this time on Hitler’s troops.

However, although the four 12″/52s were of the same type as those salvaged from Mariya, they were purpose-built for the coast artillery task and shipped down to the Crimea in 1928 for the Maxim Gorky Battery 30.

They still exist, served until 1968, and are preserved in a museum.

The Soviets managed to recondition three of Mariya’s salvaged guns and returned them to service as railway guns. One even survived a stint in Finnish service.

In 1938, the Red Army built three railway guns using the 305mm (12-inch) guns from the sunken battleship “Imperatritsa Mariya”. They were used in the 1939-1940 Soviet-Finnish war, and in late 1941 they took part in the defense of the Soviet naval base on Finland’s Hanko peninsula. The Soviets disabled them when they evacuated the base, but Finnish specialists later restored them using guns from the withdrawn Russian battleship “Imperator Aleksandr III”. After the war, the Soviets took them over and kept them operational until 1991. On display in ‘Victory Park’, Museum of the Great Patriotic War, Poklonnaya Hill, Moscow. Via WikiCommons

As for her sisters, Yekaterina Velikaya became Svobodnaya Rossiya (Free Russia) after the Tsar fell, and the Reds towed her from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk in April 1918 to keep the functional battleship out of German hands. She was later scuttled in June, sunk by torpedoes from the Red destroyer Kerch, and later salvaged.

The battleship Empress Catherine the Great guarding transports, 1917

Imperator Alexandr III was never fully completed and was renamed Volia after the Revolution. Captured by the Germans in 1918, she was put in limited service to the Kaiserliche Marine as SMS Volya before passing to Allied control after the Armistice. Transferred to the White Russian fleet, she served as General Alekseyev, its flagship, then sailed into exile with Wrangel in November 1920 to Bizerte, Tunisia, where the French interned her until she was scrapped in 1936, her 12-inch guns going on to circle the globe.

General Alekseyev, photographed at Bizerte, French North Africa, where the ship was interned in 1920 as a unit of the “White Russian” Squadron that departed the Black Sea after the civil war. The ship was built as the Imperator Alexandr III, renamed Volia in 1917, and SMS Volya in 1918. Courtesy of Mr. Boris. V. Drashpil of Margate, Fla., 1983. NH 95288

Imperator Nikolai I was launched in October 1916, and the work on her was suspended the following October. Never brought into service, the Reds renamed her Demokratiya (Democracy). She fell into German hands in 1918, then the Allies destroyed her in 1919 to prevent her from falling back into the Reds’ hands, and the Soviets finally broke her up in 1927.

This left the Russians without a functional Black Sea dreadnought for over a decade until the Gangut-class Parizhskaya Kommuna (“Paris Commune,” formerly Sevastopol) was transferred from the Baltic in 1930.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) 30 October 2025: End of the Line

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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

If you enjoy my always ad-free Warship Wednesday content, you can support it by buying me a cup of joe at https://buymeacoffee.com/lsozi As Henk says: “Warship Coffee – no sugar, just a pinch of salt!”

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) 30 October 2025: End of the Line

IWM (Q 48273)

Above we see the Italian Conte di Cavour-class dreadnought Giulio Cesare, in a very clean state while at Taranto during the Great War, on 3 June 1917. Note her interesting original five-turret (A-B-Q-X-Y), 13-barrel (3-2-3-2-3) main battery of 12″/46 Model 1909 Elswick pattern guns. She also wears a bow eagle with the Caesarian motto, “Veni. Vis. Vita.”

Following her second world war, she would go on to be the final battleship lost while in active service, under very controversial circumstances, some 70 years ago this week.

The Cavour class

The three-pack of Conte di Cavour–class battleships was designed in 1908 by RADM Engineer Edoardo Masdea, Chief Constructor of the Regia Marina, in the immediate spell after HMS Dreadnought and the French Courbet-class battlewagons. They followed in the wake of Italy’s first dreadnought, Dante Alighieri (19,500t, 551 ft. oal, 22 knots, 12×12″ guns, 10 inch armor plate), but were much heavier, at 24,500 tons.

As built, they carried the previously mentioned 13 12″/46s as well as 18 casemated 4.7″/50s, three torpedo tubes, and assorted tertiary light guns. Their Parsons turbines on 20 Yarrow boilers allowed Cavour to hit 22 knots on trials, but Cesare, even with 21 Babcock boilers installed (later 24), was only able to hit 21.7 knots. Even this came by whittling down the armor belt to where it was only 9.8 inches at its thickest, tapering to as thin as 3 inches near the bow, while the front forward tower and front turret faces were only 11 inches. Still, they were triple bottomed and had 23 watertight sections. While Terni made the armor for Cavour, Cesare’s and Da Vinci’s was imported from Bethlehem in Pennsylvania.

Plan, via the 1914 Jane’s

The three sisters, Cavour, Cesare, and Leonardo da Vinci, were laid down within weeks of each other in the summer of 1910 at three different yards (La Spezia, Gio. Ansaldo, and Odero) to be finished in 1913, one that would slip slightly due to Italy’s war with the Ottoman Empire and a diversion of resources during that period.

Hail, Cesare!

Our subject was named after the legendary Roman general and statesman of Et Tu Brute fame. Laid down at Ansaldo in Genoa on 24 June 1910, she launched on 15 October 1911 to much fanfare, one day after Da Vinci slid down the ways at Odero.

15 October 1911, Sestri-Ponente & Launch of Giulio Cesare, Bain News Service, LC DIG ggbain-09800-09879u

Fitting out would take nearly three full years, but she entered service on 14 May 1914, just 10 weeks before the “lights went out across Europe.”

Placing a 305 mm/12″ gun within Turret 2 of the Italian battleship Giulio Cesare, Genoa, 1912

Battleship Giulio Cesare during sea trials, 9 January 1913.

She was the first of her class commissioned, three days before Da Vinci and a full 11 months ahead of Cavour, which had been delayed due to Terni developing their cemented armor, while Ceasare and Da Vinci benefited from American imports.

Cesare compared to her contemporaries. Imagerie d Epinal Les Flotte de Guerre 

Great War

While the potential of a clash with the British and French loomed at the beginning of WWI, as Italy was officially an ally of Germany and Austria, the country’s quick declaration of neutrality, migrating to a polar shift to join the fight against Berlin and Vienna by May 1915, changed the orientation of the Italian battle fleet.

The Cavours were assigned to RADM Corsi’s 1st Battleship Division and left on seemingly eternal alert, ready to weigh anchor and sortie out within three hours.

Italian battleships of the Cesare Class, showing triple gun turrets, Great War. NH 111474 and IWM Q 19095

With the German Mediterranean Squadron chased to the Black Sea and the Austrian fleet effectively bottled up in the Adriatic, the naval war in the region devolved into four years of small craft and submarine operations as the respective battleships lay in wait for a decisive Tsushima/Battle of Yalu River/Manila Bay/Santiago style sea clash.

This led to a boring war for the Italian battleships as the Austrians decided to ride out the war safely at anchor rather than tempt a Jutland.

Sadly, Da Vinci would be lost to an unexplained magazine explosion while moored at Taranto in August 1916, taking a full quarter of her crew with her.

Da Vinci turned turtle at Taranto, August 1916.

In all, Cesare only spent 418 hours at sea during Italy’s war, 31 hours on combat missions (supporting operations in the islands of the Ionian archipelago in May 1917), and 387 hours in training/exercises, without ever encountering an enemy during the conflict in which her country suffered over 650,000 dead.

Interwar

The remaining sisters saw more sea time in the months just after Versailles than during the entire war, with Cavour heading to the Americas for a flag-waving cruise while Cesare toured the Eastern Med and stood by the Greek-Turkish conflict.

Cesare photographed at Constantinople, Turkey, in August 1919. Note that the ship is flying a Greek National Flag at the mainmast top. NH 47786

Jane’s 1921, with Da Vinci missing.

Following this, she had her first modernization, landing some small guns and her bow crest, picking up some AAA pieces, and changing her mast arrangements.

She also engaged in a bit of battleship diplomacy, being used in the seizure of Corfu in August 1923.

Italian battleship Giulio Cesare in La Spezia, 1925

A 1925 upgrade saw her pick up a Macchi M.18 seaplane over the stern along with a catapult and crane to retrieve it, and, after two years in ordinary, by 1928, she was relegated to use as a gunnery training ship, with the country soon after moving to build four new 40,000-ton Littorio-class battleships.

Jane’s 1929.

Great Rebuild

It was decided by the Italian admiralty in the early 1930s to not only keep on with the construction of a planned quartet of new Littorio-class 30-knot fast battleships, with their impressive 15-inch guns, but also to extensively modernize the two Cavours and the two similar yet slightly younger Andrea Doria-class battleships, giving Mussolini eight battleships in a decade. At least that was the plan, anyway.

Following the design by Gen. Francesco Rotundi, the Cavours and Dorias were rearming with more capable 12.6″/44 Model 1934 guns on upgraded mounts, with the middle Q mount deleted, giving them 10 new guns in place of 13 older ones, with a modern fire control house atop the conning tower.

Naples during the great 5 May 1938 naval review, showing the modernized Cavour followed by the similarly modernized Cesare and a heavy cruiser. NH 86147

The modernization also added armor, replaced the boilers and machinery, and deleted the casemate guns for more modern  3.9″/47 M1928 twin AA guns in high-angle turrets.

Cesare carried 12 of these 100 mm/47 (3.9″) Model 1928 AA guns in six twin turrets. These art deco-looking mounts were also used on the Trento, Zara, and Condotteri class cruisers.

They also picked up an assortment of twin Breda 37mm and Breda M31 13.2mm guns, landed the circa 1914 torpedo tubes, and lengthened the hull for added stability. Powered by eight more efficient Yarrow boilers and with 75,000shp on tap compared to the old 30,000shp, the class could make 27 knots, making them, at age 20, the fastest they had ever been.

Cesare underwent modernization at the Cantieri del Tirreno shipyard in Genoa from 25 October 1933 to 1 October 1937. Tellingly, the rebuild was one month longer than her original construction.

The U.S. Navy’s ONI, with war on the horizon, made sure to get several nice images of her in the late 1930s, essentially a new ship built around the upcycled bones of a circa 1914 dreadnought.

Cesare photographed during the late 1930s after her 1933-37 reconstruction. NH 86124

Cesare was photographed in 1938 following her 1933-37 reconstruction. NH 86127

Cesare photographed before World War II. The photograph has been retouched. NH 86590

Cesare at sea, 1938, photographed before World War II. NH 86588

Many shots endure from the epic May 1938 Naples Naval Review.

Italian battleship, either Cavour or Cesare, probably photographed during the 5 May 1938 naval review off Naples. Cant Z.501 flying boats be seen overhead. NH 86141

Cesare, 5 May 1938, at the Naval review off Naples. The torpedo boats Spica and Aldebaran appear in the background, NH 86142

Italian battleships Cavour and Cesare seen in column at the May 1938 Naval review off Naples. NH 86153

Italian battleships Cavour and Cesare seen in column at the May 1938 Naval review off Naples, followed by two Zara class cruisers. NH 86154

Cavour and Cesare seen in column at the May 1938 Naval review off Naples. NH 86151

5 May 1938, battleships Cavour and Cesare as seen from the fantail of a destroyer-type ship. Two cruisers appear in the right background, and a paravane for minesweeping can be seen on the ship’s stern in the foreground. NH 86148

Late 1930s, two Italian battleships and about nine or ten torpedo boats, the Cavour and Cesare, appear in the foreground, and the torpedo boat Altair can be identified in the background by her hull letters “AT.” NH 86140

A Second War

Cavour-class battleships as rebuilt, circa 1939. Luce archives via NHHC NH 111400

Giulio Cesare – San Giorgio, NH 111420

ONI 202 sheet on Cavour and Cesare.

Soon after Italy joined Germany in World War II, Cavour and Cesare, as the 5th Battleship Division, were part of a 14-cruiser/16 destroyer covering force running a convoy from Taranto across the Med to the country’s Libyan colony under the overall command of ADM Ingio Pola.

On the return trip, they crashed into a trio of Royal Navy task groups, Force A (five cruisers), Force B (battleship HMS Warspite and six destroyers), and Force C (battleships HMS Malaya and Royal Sovereign, carrier Eagle, 10 destroyers) on 9 July 1940, and the Battle of Calabria/Battle of Punta Stilo ensued.

During that clash, in which no ships were ultimately sunk on either side, Cesare opened fire on Warspite at an impressive 29,000 yards and, while her shells fell long, damaged two of the British battlewagon’s escorting destroyers. In return, the closing Warspite fired at and eventually hit Cesare with a 15-inch shell from 26,000 yards, exploding one of the Italian ship’s funnels and damaging four boilers, causing her to fall out of the battle line and reduce speed as Cavour took over. Cesare made it to Messina safely and took a month to repair.

Italian battleships at the Battle of Punta Stilo, July 9, 1940. Cavour opens fire with her 12.6-inch main battery during the battle. Photograph taken from aboard her sister ship Cesare. NH 86586

Italian battleship Giulio Cesare, seen from her sister Conte di Cavour, firing at HMS Warspite with her 320 mm guns, waters off Punta Stilo (Calabria), around 1555 h, 9 July 1940

Warspite hit on Cesare

Warspite hit on Cesare

Warspite hit on Cesare

Italian battleship Giulio Cesare after a hit from the HMS Warspite during the Battle of Calabria, 9 July 1940. The 15-inch shell hit the Italian ship from around 13nm. IWM HU 52333.

Then came the dramatic pre-Pearl Harbor night attack by a handful of British Fleet Air Arm Swordfish torpedo bombers from the carrier HMS Illustrious on the Italian battleship anchorage of Taranto on 11 November 1940.

Cobb, Charles David; Taranto Harbour, Swordfish from ‘Illustrious’ Cripple the Italian Fleet, 11 November 1940; National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/taranto-harbour-swordfish-from-illustrious-cripple-the-italian-fleet-11-november-1940-116445

While Cesare was spared damage, one torpedo sank sister Conte di Cavour in shallow water and effectively took her out of the war.

Cesare would strike out against the British again at the Battle of Cape Spartivento/Cape Teulada in November, without giving or receiving much damage, and in convoy work, including what is remembered by the Brits as the First Battle of Sirte off Malta in December 1941.

With the Med becoming less and less friendly to Italian capital ships due to British submarines and land-based bombers, Cesare was largely port-bound by 1942 and was eventually withdrawn up the Adriatic to a safer anchorage at Pola (Pula) and reduced to training status. It would seem her war was effectively over.

During the 1940–1943 campaign, Cesare made 38 combat sorties, covering 16,947 miles in 912 sailing hours, and consumed 12,697 tons of oil in the process.

Russia-bound

Spared the indignity suffered by most other post-1942 Axis capital ships, which were sunk at their moorings by Allied bombers, when Italy switched sides on 8 September 1943, Cesare overcame a small mutiny by Mussolini-inclined crew and made it safely to Malta by the interned under British guns. She fought off German air attacks along the way and managed not to be sunk by her former allies, such as the Littorio-class battlewagon Roma, which was sunk by German Fritz X radio-controlled bombs launched by Do 217s on 9 September, taking over 1,300 of her crew to the bottom.

Cesare was the last Italian capital ship to arrive at Malta.

As the invasion of Italy pushed the Germans and the rump of the Italian socialist republic further and further up the country’s “boot,” Cesare and the two Dorias were released to return to Taranto in June 1944, where they languished in ordinary.

Post VE-Day, Cesare was one of a list of ex-Italian vessels held by an Allied commission to be handed out as trophies.

Cesare in the 1946 Jane’s.

This process dragged on for years as Stalin’s iron curtain descended across Eastern Europe and the Western Allies were in no hurry to keep giving his war machine new toys. It was only in December 1948 that she was moved to Sicily and finally removed from the Italian naval list, ending her 34 years of service to Rome.

Ex-Cesare was turned over to the very happy Soviets under ADM Gordey Ivanovich Levchenko on 6 February 1949.

While Stalin wanted the newer Littoros, Cesare was arguably the nicest battleship the Russians had at the time, despite her age and the fact that she had basically been in reserve for six years and had not been dry-docked in eight.

Soviet battleship Novorossiysk, formerly Italian Giulio Cesare, from Vlorë (Albania) to the Black Sea in late February 1949.

After Cesare departed for a Soviet port, the loaned Arkhangelsk (HMS Royal Sovereign) was returned to England for scrapping.

Dubbed originally Z11 and moved to Communist allied Albania for a quick two-week refit with an Italian adviser crew aboard, then departed for Sevastopol. By order of the Black Sea Fleet dated 5 March 1949, the Italian battleship was renamed Novorossiysk.

Reportedly in extremely poor condition, with inoperable diesel generators, leaking pipes, broken fittings, and suffering signs of purposeful Italian neglect and sabotage, the Russians spent the next several years trying to reshoe their gift horse.

Although the Italians had delivered a library of technical manuals and books on the ship’s systems, a handful of Russian Italian translators on hand lacked experience in the specialized terminology used in the tomes, particularly when it came to handwritten notes and abbreviations, and the books ultimately proved an alien language.

Soviet battleship Novorossiysk (the former Royal Italian Navy Giulio Cesare

After six weeks in dry dock at Sevastopol, Cesare/Novorossiysk sailed (briefly) as Black Sea Fleet flagship on maneuvers in July 1949. Over the next five years, she had five shipyard overhauls (July 1950, April-June 1951, June 1952, November 1954, and February-March 1955) in an attempt to bring old systems back online and add new ones.

Battleship Novorossiysk (Giulio Cesare) April 13, 1955

The Soviets added several new AAA batteries (24 twin 37mm V-11 guns, six 37mm 70-K automatic cannons) and a Zalp-M radar.

It was planned to put the elderly battlewagon into her second rebuild (first Russian), which would include new Soviet-made turbine engines and Russian Obukhovskii 12″/52 Pattern 1907 guns left over from the Tsarist Gangut, Imperatritsa Maria, and Imperator Nikolai I battleship classes.

She never made that grand overhaul.

Tragedy in Sevastopol

On the night of 28 October 1955, the 41-year-old Cesare/Novorossiysk returned from a cruise marking the 100th anniversary of the defense of Sevastopol and tied up at Buoy No. 3 near the Naval Hospital.

At 0131 on 29 October 29, a massive explosion under the ship’s starboard bow pierced the battleship’s hull, blew out part of the forecastle deck, and created a cavernous 1,600 sq. ft underwater hole.

Within a minute, a second explosion on the port side created what was later found to be a 2,000 sq. ft. hole in her hull.

The warship didn’t stand a chance and was settling on the harbor floor in minutes, and began to list, eventually turning turtle by the following evening.

At least 557 of the battleship’s crew were lost, along with some 60 men from the rest of the fleet who were lost in the attempt to save the ship and rescue trapped sailors.

We won’t get into the myriad of theories as to what killed Cesare/Novorossiysk, but suggestions have ranged from the far-fetched, such as Italian frogmen of the long-disbanded Xª MAS and long-dormant scuttling charges left aboard in 1948, to German bottom mines left over in the harbor’s silty bottom from their occupation of the port in WWII and assorted internal magazine explosions. Lingering mines seem the most likely cause, as extensive sweeps later found 32 mines on the bottom of Sevastopol’s harbor, some dating to the Great War.

In the end, with Stalin long gone and the Red Banner Fleet moving towards a more submarine and missile-borne strategy, the age of the Russian battleship came to an end as Cesare/Novorossiysk was raised over the course of the next 18 months and scrapped.

The final Soviet dreadnought, the circa 1911 Gangut/Oktyabrskaya Revolutsiya, was stricken on 17 February 1956 and slowly scrapped over the next two years.

After that, the handful of Turkish, French, British, and American battleships still on naval lists in NATO were soon taken out of service, with the Iowas staging a return in the 1980s-90s.

But gratefully, Cesare/Novorossiysk was the last one to go down with her flags flying.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

***

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Warship Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023: The Grounded Shrine

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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023: The Grounded Shrine

Colorized period photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/, original in Naval Historical Command archives, NH 58997

Above we see the lead ship of her class of Italian-made armored cruisers, HIJMS Kasuga, making a temporary stay in Tsukushi on its way from Yokosuka to Kure, circa 1904 (Meiji 37). Sourced from a cash-strapped Latin American navy while still under construction and named in honor of a famous Shinto shrine in Nara, this cruiser would endure until the final days of the Empire. 

Spaghetti cruisers

Built around the turn of the Century by Gio. Ansaldo & C shipbuilders, Genoa, Italy, as an updated version of the Giuseppe Garibaldi armored cruiser class, the ship that would become Kasuga was designed by Italian naval architect Edoardo Masdea as a vessel only smaller than a 1st-rate (pre-dreadnought) battleship of the era, yet larger and stronger than most cruisers that could oppose it.

The Garibaldi class was innovative (for 1894,) with a 344-foot long/7,200-ton hull capable of making 20 knots and sustaining a range of more than 7,000 nm at 12 when stuffed with enough coal. Although made in Italy, she was almost all-British from her Armstrong batteries to her Bellville boilers, Whitehead torpedoes, and Harvey armor.

Armored with a belt that ran up to 5.9-inches thick, Garibaldi could take hits from faster cruisers and gunboats while being able to dish out punishment from a pair of Elswick (Armstrong) 10-inch guns that no ship smaller than her could absorb. Capable of outrunning larger ships, she also had a quartet of casemate-mounted torpedo tubes and extensive rapid-fire secondary batteries to make life hard on the enemy’s small ships and merchantmen.

These cruisers were designed for power projection on a budget and the Argentine Navy, facing a quiet arms race between Brazil and Chile on each side, needed modern ships. They, therefore, scooped up not only the Garibaldi (commissioned in 1895) but also the follow-on sister ships General Belgrano and General San Martín (built by Orlando of Livorno in 1896) and Genoa-made Pueyrredón (1898) to make a quartet of powerful cruisers. These ships, coupled with a pair of battleships ordered later in the U.S., helped make the Argentine navy for about two decades the eighth most powerful in the world (after the big five European powers, Japan, and the United States), and the largest in Latin America.

The design was well-liked, with Spain moving to buy two (but only taking delivery of one in the end, the ill-fated Cristóbal Colón, which was sunk at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish American War) and Italy electing to purchase five further examples of the type.

Why all the talk about Argentina and Italy?

Well, because Kasuga and her sistership Nisshin were originally ordered by the Italians in 1900 as Roca (#129) and Mitra (Yard #130), respectively, but then sold while still on the ways to Argentina to further flesh out the fleet of that South American country’s naval forces, who dutifully renamed them, respectively, Rivadavia and Mariano Moreno.

At some 8,500 tons (full), these final Garibaldis were 364 feet long overall and were roughly the same speed, and carried the same armor plan (with Terni plate) as their predecessors.

However, they differed in armament, with Mitra/Rivadavia/Kasuga carrying a single 10-inch EOC gun forward and twin 8″/45s aft, while Roca/Moreno/Nisshin carried the twin 8-inchers both forward and aft.

Stern 8"/45 (20.3 cm) turret on armored cruiser Nisshin on 24 October 1908. Ship's officers with USN officers from USS Missouri (B-11) during "Great White Fleet" around the world cruise. Note the landing guns on the upper platform. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 82511.
Stern 8″/45 (20.3 cm) turret on armored cruiser Nisshin on 24 October 1908. Ship’s officers with USN officers from USS Missouri (B-11) during “Great White Fleet” around the world cruise. Note the landing guns on the upper platform. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 82511.

Of note, the same 8-inch EOC guns were also used on other British-built Japanese armored cruisers (Adzuma, Asama, Iwate, Izumo, Tokiwa, and Yakumo) so they weren’t too out of place when Japan took delivery of these ships in 1904 instead of Argentina.

Armstrong 1904 model 20.3 cm 8 inch 45 as installed on Japanese cruisers, including Kasuga

Both Mitra/Rivadavia/Kasuga and Roca/Moreno/Nisshin were launched, fitted out, and ran builders’ trials in Italy under the Argentine flag.

Armada Argentina crucero acorazado ARA Moreno, at 1903 launch. Note Italian and Argentine flags. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/
Nisshin Running trials under the Argentine flag, probably in late 1903, just before her purchase by the Japanese NH 58664
Running trials under the Argentine flag, probably in late 1903, just before her purchase by the Japanese. The photo is credited to her builder Ansaldo. NH 58665

From the same publication as the photo of Nissen, above, NH 58998

Kasuga (Japanese Armored Cruiser, 1902-1945) Photographed at Genoa, Italy, early in 1904 soon after completion by Ansaldo’s yard there. The lighter alongside the ship carries a warning banner reading “Munizioni”– munitions. Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1987. NH 101929

With the Japanese and Imperial Russia circling each other tensely in late 1903, and Argentina not really wanting to take final delivery of these new cruisers, Buenos Aries shopped them to the Tsar’s kopeck-pinching Admiralty only to be rebuffed over the sticker shock, leaving Tokyo to pick them up for £760,000 each– considered a high price at the time but a bargain that the Russians would likely later regret. The Argentines would later reuse the briefly-issued Moreno and Rivadavia names for their matching pair of Massachusetts-built battleships in 1911. 

With a scratch British/Italian contract delivery crew, Kasuga and Nisshin set sail immediately for the Far East and were already outbound of Singapore by the time the balloon finally went up between the Russians and Japanese in February 1904.

Kasuga in Italian waters, Source l’Illustration dated 16 January 1904

Japanese Crews embarking at Genoa Italy on Kasuga, Source l’Illustration dated 16 January 1904

The sisters were soon in the gun line off Russian-held Port Arthur, lending their fine British-made batteries to reducing that fortress, and took part in both the ineffective Battle of the Yellow Sea in August 1904 (where Nisshin was lightly damaged) and the much more epic Battle of Tsushima in May 1905.

Carrying the flag of VADM Baron Misu Sotarō, Nisshin fired something on the order of 180 heavy shells during Tsushima, exchanging heavy damage with the 15,000-ton Russian battleship Oslyabya and others– taking several 12-inch hits to show for it. The Japanese cruiser had three of her four 8-inch guns sliced off and a number of her crew, including a young Ensign Isoroku Yamamoto, wounded. The future commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II had the index and middle fingers on his left hand shorn off by a splinter, earning him the wardrobe nickname “80 sen” as a manicure cost 10 sen per digit at the time.

The forward gun turret and superstructure of the Japanese armored cruiser Nisshin following the Battle of Tsushima, showing 8-inch guns severed by Russian 12-inch shells

Oslyabya, in turn, was ultimately lost in the course of the battle, taking the Russian Squadron’s second-in-command, Capt. Vladimir Ber, and half of her crew with her to the bottom of the Korea Strait.

Death of the battleship OSLYABYA in the Battle of Tsushima. (by Vasily Katrushenko)

As for Kasuga,, fifth in the line of battle, she would also engage Oslyabya, though not to the extent that her sister did, and would also land hits on the Russian battleships Imperator Nikolai I and Oryol. All told, Kasuga would fire 50 shells from her 10-inch forward mount and twice as many from her stern 8-inchers, in exchange for minor damage from three Russian shells. 

Armoured Cruiser Kasuga pictured post the Battle of Tsushima at Sasebo in May 1905

For both Kasuga and Nisshin, Tsushima was their brightest moment under the Rising Sun.

Kasuga dressed for peacetime flagwaving. NH 58671

Oct.10,1908 : Armored-cruiser Kasuga at Yokosuka.Colorised period photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Greatly modified in 1914 with Japanese-made Kampon boilers replacing their Italian ones, along with a host of other improvements, Kasuga went on to serve as a destroyer squadron flagship in World War I looking out for German surface raiders and escorting Allied shipping between Australia and Singapore.

On 11 January 1918, some 105 years ago today, Kasuga ran aground in the Bangka Strait off Java in the Dutch East Indies. After much effort, she was eventually refloated in June, repaired, and returned to service. The event mirrored that of one of the Emperor’s other warships, the armored cruiser Asama that embarrassingly ran aground off the Pacific coast of Mexico in 1915 and took two years to free. 

Kasuga later took part in the Allied Intervention in the Russian Civil War and would tour the U.S. on a world cruise in 1920, calling in Maine and New York.

Disarmed to comply with international naval treaties and largely relegated to training tasks, both Nisshin and Kasuga were put on the sidelines after the Great War, replaced by much better ships in the Japanese battle line.

Armoured Cruiser Kasuga in Japan in the early 1920s graduating cadets

Hulked, Nisshin was eventually disposed of as part of a sinkex in the Inland Sea in 1936, then raised by Shentian Maritime Industry Co., Ltd, patched up and sunk a second time in 1942 during WWII by the new super battleship Yamato, whose 18.1″/45cal Type 94 guns likely made quick work of her.

Kasuga, used as a floating barracks at Yokosuka, was sunk by U.S. carrier aircraft in July 1945 and then later raised and scrapped after the war.

Epilogue

Incidentally, the two Japanese Garibaldis outlasted their Italian sisters, all of which were disposed of by the 1930s. Their everlasting Argentine classmates, however, lingered on until as late as 1954 with the last of their kind, ARA Pueyrredon, ironically being towed to Japan for scrapping that year.

ARA Pueyrredon in Dublin in 1951. At this point this pre-SpanAm War vet was pushing her sixth decade at sea.

Of note, the British 8″/45s EOCs removed from Nisshin, Kasuga and the other Japanese 1900s armored cruisers in the 1920s and 30s were recycled and used as coastal artillery, including four at Tokyo Bay, four at Tarawa (Betio) and another four at Wake Island once it was captured in 1941.

Japanese Special Naval Landing Force troops mount a British-made, Vickers eight-inch naval cannon into its turret on Betio before the battle. This film was developed from a Japanese camera found in the ruins while the battle was still on. Via http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Tarawa/index.html
Destruction of one of the four Japanese eight-inch EOC guns on Betio caused by naval gunfire and airstrikes, 1943. Department of Defense photo (USMC) 63618

While the Japanese have not recycled the name of Kasuga, one of her 10-inch shells, an anchor, and other relics are preserved in and around Tokyo. 

Meanwhile, a builder’s plate that took shrapnel at the Battle of the Yellow Sea is preserved in the Argentine naval museum. 

For those interested, Combrig makes a 1/350 scale model of the class. 

Specs:

Jane’s 1914 entry, listing the class as first-class cruisers

Displacement: 7,700 t (7,578 long tons) std, 8,500 full
Length: 366 ft 7 in (o/a), 357 wl
Beam: 61 ft 5 in
Draft: 24 ft 1 in, 25.5 max
Machinery: (1904)
13,500 ihp, 2 vertical triple-expansion steam engines, 8 Ansaldo marine boilers, 2 shafts
Speed: 20 knots at 14,000 shp, although in practice were limited to 18 at full load.
Range: 5,500 nmi at 10 knots on 1316 tons of coal, typically just 650 carried
Complement: 600 as built, 568 in Japanese service.
Armor: (Terni)
Belt: 2.8–5.9 in
Deck: 0.79–1.57 in
Barbette: 3.9–5.9 in
Conning tower: 5.9 in
Armament:
(1904)
2 twin 8″/45 EOC (classified as Type 41 guns by the Japanese)
14 single QF 6″/45 Armstrong “Z” guns
10 single QF 3″/40 12-pdr Armstrong “N” guns
6 single QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns
2 Maxim machine guns
2 landing howitzers
4 × 457 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes in casemates
(1930)
4 single QF 6″/45 Armstrong “Z” guns
4 single QF 3″/40 12-pdr Armstrong “N” guns
1 single 76/40 AAA

 

Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know
That some ships have a
soul.

If you liked this column, please consider joining the International Naval Research Organization (INRO), Publishers of Warship International

They are possibly one of the best sources of naval study, images, and fellowship you can find. http://www.warship.org/membership.htm

The International Naval Research Organization is a non-profit corporation dedicated to the encouragement of the study of naval vessels and their histories, principally in the era of iron and steel warships (about 1860 to date). Its purpose is to provide information and a means of contact for those interested in warships.

With more than 50 years of scholarship, Warship International, the written tome of the INRO has published hundreds of articles, most of which are unique in their sweep and subject.

PRINT still has its place. If you LOVE warships you should belong.

I’m a member, so should you be!

Warship Wednesday, July 31, 2019: “80 Sen,” or a young Yamamoto’s Italian Stallion

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Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1946 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday, July 31, 2019: 80 Sen

NHHC Collection Photo # NH 83034

Here we see a crooked image from the files of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence, likely a quick snapshot taken from the deck of a rented junk, showing the coastal defense ship (formerly classified as an armored cruiser, or junjokan) Nisshin of the Imperial Japanese Navy as she sat at a Hong Kong mooring buoy, in October 1920. Note the Emperor’s chrysanthemum marking on the bow, and inquisitive members of her crew on the side– likely wondering just who was in the approaching small boat with the camera. You wouldn’t know it to look at her, but this ship had once gone toe-to-toe with a much larger opponent and come out on top, although with the scars to show it.

If you like that photo, how about another two taken the same day, with her crew’s laundry drying and a picturesque junk added for Hong Kong flavor:

NH 83032

NH 83033

Anywho, you didn’t come here for Hong Kong laundry stories.

Built around the turn of the Century by Gio. Ansaldo & C shipbuilders, Genoa, Italy, as an updated version of the Giuseppe Garibaldi armored cruiser class, Nisshin (or Nissin, a name that roughly translates to “Japan”) was designed by Italian naval architect Edoardo Masdea as a vessel only smaller than a 1st-rate (pre-dreadnought) battleship of the era, yet larger and stronger than most cruisers that could oppose it.

The Garibaldi class was innovative (for 1894,) with a 344-foot long/7,200-ton hull capable of making 20-knots and sustaining a range of more than 7,000 nm at 12 when stuffed with enough coal. Although made in Italy, she was almost all-British from her Armstrong batteries to her Bellville boilers, Whitehead torpedoes, and Harvey armor.

Armored with a belt that ran up-to 5.9-inches thick, Garibaldi could take hits from faster cruisers and gunboats while being able to dish out punishment from a pair of Elswick (Armstrong) 10-inch guns that no ship smaller than her could absorb. Capable of outrunning larger ships, she also had a quartet of casemate-mounted torpedo tubes and extensive rapid-fire secondary batteries to make life hard on the enemy’s small ships and merchantmen.

These cruisers were designed for power projection on a budget and the Argentine Navy, facing a quiet arms race between Brazil and Chile on each side, needed modern ships. They, therefore, scooped up not only the Garibaldi (commissioned in 1895) but also the follow-on sister-ships General Belgrano and General San Martín (built by Orlando of Livorno in 1896) and Genoa-made Pueyrredón (1898) to make a quartet of powerful cruisers. These ships, coupled with a pair of battleships ordered later in the U.S., helped make the Argentine navy for about two decades the eighth most powerful in the world (after the big five European powers, Japan, and the United States), and the largest in Latin America.

The design was well-liked, with Spain moving to buy two (but only taking delivery of one in the end, the ill-fated Cristóbal Colón, which was sunk at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish American War) and Italy electing to purchase five further examples of the type.

Why all the talk about Argentina and Italy?

Well, because Nisshin and her sistership Kasuga were originally ordered by the Italians in 1900 as Mitra (Yard #130) and Roca (#129), respectively, but then sold while still on the ways to Argentina to further flesh out the fleet of that South American country’s naval forces, who dutifully renamed them Mariano Moreno and Rivadavia.

At some 8,500-tons (full), these final Garibaldis were 364-feet long overall and were roughly the same speed and carried the same armor plan (with Terni plate) as their predecessors.

However, they differed in armament, with Mitra/Rivadavia/Kasuga carrying a single 10-inch EOC gun forward and twin 8″/45s aft, while Roca/Moreno/Nisshin carried the twin 8-inchers both forward and aft.

Stern 8"/45 (20.3 cm) turret on armored cruiser Nisshin on 24 October 1908. Ship's officers with USN officers from USS Missouri (B-11) during "Great White Fleet" around the world cruise. Note the landing guns on the upper platform. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 82511.

Stern 8″/45 (20.3 cm) turret on armored cruiser Nisshin on 24 October 1908. Ship’s officers with USN officers from USS Missouri (B-11) during “Great White Fleet” around the world cruise. Note the landing guns on the upper platform. U.S. Naval Historical Center Photograph # NH 82511.

[Of note, the same 8-inch EOC guns were also used on other British-built Japanese armored cruisers (Adzuma, Asama, Iwate, Izumo, Tokiwa, and Yakumo) so they weren’t too out of place when Japan took delivery of these ships in 1904 instead of Argentina.]

Both Mitra/Rivadavia/Kasuga and Roca/Moreno/Nisshin were launched, fitted out and ran builders’ trials in Italy under the Argentine flag.

Armada Argentina crucero acorazado ARA Moreno, at 1903 launch. Note Italian and Argentine flags. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

Nisshin Running trials under the Argentine flag, probably in late 1903, just before her purchase by the Japanese NH 58664

Running trials under the Argentine flag, probably in late 1903, just before her purchase by the Japanese. Photo credited to her builder Ansaldo. NH 58665

With the Japanese and Imperial Russia circling each other tensely in late 1903, and Argentina not really wanting to take final delivery of these new cruisers, Buenos Aries shopped them to the Tsar’s kopeck-pinching Admiralty only to be rebuffed over sticker shock, leaving the Tokyo to pick them up for £760,000 each– considered a high price at the time but a bargain that the Russians would likely later regret. The Argentines would later reuse the briefly-issued Moreno and Rivadavia names for their matching pair of Massachusetts-built battleships in 1911. 

Nisshin photographed at Genoa, Italy in January 1904. This ship was built in Italy by Ansaldo of Genoa and competed on January 17, 1904. Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1987. NH 101923

With a scratch British/Italian contract delivery crew, Kasuga and Nisshin (their names are taken from Meiji-period steam warships of the 1860s) set sail immediately for the Far East and were already outbound of Singapore by the time the balloon finally went up between the Russians and Japanese in February 1904. The sisters were soon in the gun line off Russian-held Port Arthur, lending their fine British-made batteries to reducing that fortress, and took part in both the ineffective Battle of the Yellow Sea in August 1904 (where Nisshin was lightly damaged) and the much more epic Battle of Tsushima in May 1905.

Carrying the flag of VADM Baron Misu Sotarō, Nisshin fired something on the order of 180 heavy shells during Tsushima, exchanging heavy damage with the 15,000-ton Russian battleship Oslyabya and others– taking several 12-inch hits to show for it. The Japanese cruiser had three of her four 8-inch guns sliced off and a number of her crew, to include a young Ensign Isoroku Yamamoto, wounded. The future commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II had the index and middle fingers on his left hand shorn off by a splinter, earning him the wardrobe nickname “80 sen” as a manicure cost 10 sen per digit at the time.

The forward gun turret and superstructure of the Japanese armored cruiser Nisshin following the Battle of Tsushima, showing 8-inch guns severed by Russian 12-inch shells

From a different angle

Another view

Aft turret of Armored Cruiser Nisshin damaged in the Battle of Tsushima

Starboard 12-pound gun of Armored Cruiser Nisshin damaged in the Battle of Tsushima

Oslyabya, in turn, was ultimately lost in the course of the battle, taking the Russian Squadron’s second-in-command, Capt. Vladimir Ber, and half of her crew with her to the bottom of the Korea Strait.

Armoured Cruiser Kasuga pictured post the Battle of Tsushima at Sasebo in May 1905

Japanese cruiser Nisshin, listed as June 24, 1905, at Kure, which is just a month after Tsushima and may be an incorrect date as she looks almost brand new. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

For both Kasuga and Nisshin, Tsushima was their brightest moment under the Rising Sun.

Greatly modified later with Japanese-made Kampon boilers replacing their Italian ones, along with a host of other improvements, Kasuga went on to serve as a destroyer squadron flagship in World War I looking out for German surface raiders and escorting Allied shipping between Australia and Singapore. She later took Imperial troops to Vladivostok in 1918 as part of the Allied Intervention into the Russian Civil War.

Nisshin during WWI. Colorized photo by Atsushi Yamashita/Monochrome Specter http://blog.livedoor.jp/irootoko_jr/

As for Nisshin, she also spent her time as a destroyer squadron leader on the lookout for the Kaiser’s wolves and was later dispatched to the Mediterranean as part of the Japanese 2nd Special Squadron (Suma-class cruiser Akashi, the cruiser Izumo, 8 Kaba-class destroyers and 4 Momo-class destroyers). Deployed in late 1917, the squadron was tasked with riding shotgun over Allied troopships steaming between Malta and Salonica and from Alexandria to Taranto and Marseille.

Photographed at Port Said, Egypt, on October 27, 1917. The early French mixed battery pre-dreadnought Jauréguiberry (1893-1934) can be seen at left background. Courtesy of Mr. Tom Stribling, 1987. NH 101922

In all, the force escorted nearly 800 ships and engaged German and Austrian subs something like 40 times (although without sinking any).
After the Armistice, selected crews from the Squadron marched in the 1919 victory parades in Paris and London.

To close out Japan’s involvement in the Great War, Nisshin returned home with seven captured German U-boats, (U-46, U-55, U-125, UC-90, UC-99, UB-125, and UB-143) after stops in Malta and other friendly ports along the way from England to Yokosuka, arriving there in June 1919. The former German boats went on to an uninteresting life of their own under the Kyokujitsu-ki, used for testing, salvage exercises and floating jetties. While most of these submarines were low-mileage vessels of little notoriety, U-46 (Hillebrand) and U-55 (Blue Max winner Willy Werner) were very successful during the war, accounting for 116 Allied vessels of some 273,000 tons between them.

IJN Nissin at Malta with captured German UC-90 U-boat, via IWM

Nisshin, photographed March 1919, with the ex-German submarines O-4 (ex-UC-90) and O-5 (ex-UC-99) alongside. NH 58666

Nisshin, photographed in March 1919, with the ex-German submarines O-4 (ex-UC-90) and O-5 (ex-UC-99) alongside. NH 58667

Japanese Cruiser Nisshin U-boats escorting surrendered German submarines allocated to Japan, March 1919, Malta, by Frank Henry Algernon Mason, via the IWM

Disarmed and largely relegated to training tasks, Nisshin and Kasuga were put on the sidelines after the Great War, replaced by much better ships in the Japanese battle line.

Hulked, Nisshin was eventually disposed of as part of a sinkex in the Inland Sea in 1936, then raised by Shentian Maritime Industry Co., Ltd, patched up and sunk a second time in 1942 during WWII by the new super battleship Yamato, whose 18.1″/45cal Type 94 guns likely made quick work of her.

Her immediate sister, Kasuga, used as a floating barracks at Yokosuka, was sunk by U.S. carrier aircraft in July 1945 then later raised and scrapped after the war. Incidentally, the two Japanese Garibaldis outlasted their Italian sisters, all of which were disposed of by the 1930s. Their everlasting Argentine classmates, however, lingered on until as late as 1954 with the last of their kind, ARA Pueyrredon, ironically being towed to Japan for scrapping that year.

Of note, the British 8″/45s EOCs removed from Nisshin, Kasuga and the other Japanese 1900s armored cruisers in the 1920s and 30s were recycled and used as coastal artillery, including four at Tokyo Bay, four at Tarawa (Betio) and another four at Wake Island once it was captured in 1941.

Japanese Special Naval Landing Force troops mount a British-made, Vickers eight-inch naval cannon into its turret on Betio before the battle. This film was developed from a Japanese camera found in the ruins while the battle was still on. Via http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USMC/USMC-C-Tarawa/index.html

Destruction of one of the four Japanese eight-inch EOC guns on Betio caused by naval gunfire and airstrikes, 1943. Department of Defense photo (USMC) 63618

Nisshin’s name was reused for use on a well-armed seaplane/midget submarine carrier that saw extensive action in WWII during the Guadalcanal campaign, where she was lost.  It has not been reused further.

Specs:

Jane 1914 entry, listing the class as first-class cruisers

Displacement: 7,700 t (7,578 long tons) std, 8,500 full
Length: 366 ft 7 in (o/a), 357 wl
Beam: 61 ft 5 in
Draft: 24 ft 1 in, 25.5 max
Machinery: (1904)
13,500 ihp, 2 vertical triple-expansion steam engines, 8 Ansaldo marine boilers, 2 shafts
Speed: 20 knots at 14,000 shp, although in practice were limited to 18 at full load.
Range: 5,500 nmi at 10 knots on 1316 tons of coal, typically just 650 carried
Complement: 600 as built, 568 in Japanese service.
Armor: (Terni)
Belt: 2.8–5.9 in
Deck: 0.79–1.57 in
Barbette: 3.9–5.9 in
Conning tower: 5.9 in
Armament:
(1904)
2 twin 8″/45 EOC (classified as Type 41 guns by the Japanese)
14 single QF 6″/45 Armstrong “Z” guns
10 single QF 3″/40 12-pdr Armstrong “N” guns
6 single QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns
2 Maxim machine guns
2 landing howitzers
4 × 457 mm (18 in) torpedo tubes in casemates
(1930)
4 single QF 6″/45 Armstrong “Z” guns
4 single QF 3″/40 12-pdr Armstrong “N” guns
1 single 76/40 AAA

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