The 4,690-ton Russian cruiser General Admiral, commissioned 1875, was was considered the first true armored cruiser, with all-iron construction, a 6" wrought-iron belt secured to a sturdy armored deck overhead, and guns mounted in an overhung midships battery as well as on broadside. An identical sister ship, the Gerzog Edinburgski ("Duke of Edinburgh"), was launched 2 years later from the same slip at the Nyevsky Shipbuilders, St. Petersburg. Although impressively protected by the standards of the day, this class was underpowered: their vertical compound engines developed only 4,470-IHP, with their single screws giving a maximum speed of 12.3 kts -- barely a knot better than a fast sailing ship with a fair wind. Named for General-Admiral Apraksin, founder of the tsarist Black Sea fleet, the lead ship mounted six 8" guns and two 6". Both ships were protected against marine growths by having their iron hulls entirely sheathed with wood and then coppered, as in the halcyon days of sail. With her posh Imperial Suite set aside for visits from the royals, General Admiral was the queen of the Baltic from 1875 until her career change in 1909. In that year the ship and her sister were converted to minelayers. Both served in that capacity during WWI. General Admiral endured as a floating workshop until 1944. Click here for a killer photo of the ship cruising under steam power alone, or here to see her under sail.

The Imperial Russian Navy had a rich collection of cruisers and makes an interesting study as a consequence. Part of the reason it is so varied is the large number of one-offs and experiments. Unlike Britain or France, Russia never hit upon a successful formula and repeated it with large classes of compatible vessels. In fact, it was like a steam railroad. The railroad owned large numbers of locomotives, each one adapted to a particular task, no two alike. Since no two shared common parts, the railway became an ungainly and inefficient operation. Of course, efficiency may not be the handmaiden of corruption, and the Russian navy was nothing if not corrupt -- and profitable to court cronies and military contractors. The amount of money spent had only an indirect bearing on the navy's efficiency as a fighting outfit.

Cruisers, the scouts and intelligence nostrils of the fleet, grew as the Empire grew. The Russian navy got in on the ground floor of steam and armor in the 1860s and stayed close to the forefront of innovation in naval architecture through the experimental period and into the pre-dreadnought age. As Russia forced her way into new territories across Asia, she followed up with impressive industrial muscle to secure her control: mines, railroads, and ports. At right, machine shops in the naval base at Port Arthur dwarf the large protected cruiser Varyag as she sits in drydock, c. 1903. Russia's military presence in China was a prelude to exploiting the region's mineral wealth, with no return to Chinese sovereignty in sight. In effect, Russian access to Manchuria's mineral wealth was being extorted at the barrel of a gun (though in mitigation the Russians could plead, "But they're all doing it.")

As seen in this collection, Russia's cruiser fleet evolved in the period from armored frigates like General Admiral and Vladimir Monomakh to modern armored cruisers like the all-steel Gromoboi, a 24-knot ship of impressive dimensions mounting four 8" guns. During this time there were two main types of cruiser: the protected cruiser, usually armed with 6" and smaller guns and protected mainly with an internal armored deck; and the armored cruiser, usually a larger ship with vertical belt armor on the sides as well as protection for turrets, ammunition hoists, conning tower, and armored bulkheads as well as the internal armored deck. Russia had plenty of both varieties, mostly in one-ship commissions and 2-ship classes. Then there were innumerable avisos, patrol vessels, converted yachts, and gunboats -- in the Russian parlance, "cruisers of the third class." Yet when some of these ill-suited vessels were sent off to war, they sometimes proved unexpectedly tough fighters. One has only to call to mind the tales of the Donskoi, the Izumrud, or the armed yacht Svietlana at Tsushima to judge just how loyal and determined a well-led Russian crew could be.

Week in, week out, fair or stormy, war or peace, the shipboard routine went on. At left, a Russian cruiser's crewmen put their backs into coaling ship while an officer supervises. Coaling was a filthy ritual repeated almost weekly -- every four or five days when at sea -- in all navies in the period. Russia's cruiser squadrons never evolved the sort of group tactical finesse that marked the British or French navies. However, the individual ships and crews were not found lacking in courage when the crunch came. Read the tale of the Dmitri Donskoi for a fine tale of Slavic courage in action. Believing in the racial stereotypes then current (and vigorously promoted by the Kaiser), the Russians badly underestimated the Japanese, stirred and inflamed their enmity -- and reaped in reward a stinging defeat in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. The largest conflict prior to WWI, on land and sea, it was arrogantly provoked by the Tsar and his advisors, who thought war with Japan would provide an easy and politically popular win. Little did they suspect it would provide an unbroken litany of defeat that nearly cost the dynasty its throne -- would rock the very foundations of western imperialism. The Russian defeat of 1905 by a nonwhite race reverberated far beyond Russia, and resonated far into the future as well.

The powerful armored cruiser Rurik in port at Dalny in the short-lived Russian colony in southern Manchuria. The 11,960-ton giant cruiser and her near-sister Rossiya each mounted four 8" and sixteen 6" guns; Rurik was protected by a 10" thick belt of nickel-steel armor. While building, they caused a conniption fit at the British Admiralty, resulting in the building of a "reply" -- a pair of ships that would outclass the Russian challengers in every way. That reply took the form of HMS Terrible and Powerful. Units of the Vladivostok squadron, the Russian sister-ships both fought in the Russo-Japanese War. Rurik was scuttled after sustaining major damage at the Battle of Ulsan on August 14, 1904. Rossiya was an improved version of Rurik built a year later. Because of her four funnels, she had quite a different silhouette from the Rurik at first glance, and served as the model for the later Gromoboi. Rossiya had an 8" Harvey armor belt and was powered by 32 Belleville boilers, giving an additional knot of speed (19 kts versus 18). Serving as R. Adm. Karl Jessen's flagship at the Ulsan action, Rossiya was damaged but managed to escape along with the Bogatyr while the Rurik fought on, successfully diverting the Japanese forces from pursuit. During a subsequent sortie, Rossiya grounded in a fog, but was later refloated and evacuated to Vladivostok. After the war she returned to Europe. Converted to lay mines, she survived to fight in the Baltic in WWI. She was eventually scrapped in 1922. Click here for an enlarged view of our classic harbor photo.