The Twelve Apostles at Batum. Enlarge
The Dvienadtsat Apostlov (12 Apostles) was that peculiarly Russian invention, a Black Sea battleship. These were deliberately small (less than 9,000 tons versus 10-12,000 for Russia's oceangoing battleships) and medium-performance ships. They were developed for economy of operation, for intimidating the Turks and potentially rebellious indigenous people of the Black Sea basin. Built at Nikolayev, Ukraine from 1888-1892, 12 Apostles was a barbette ship, as seen in the shot above, but also retained features of the central battery ship: the armored redoubt with trimmed-off corners and the recesses in the sides of the hull to permit axial fire. In the later 1890s armored shields were installed over the main guns. These were the of dome-shaped variety also seen on the Nikolai I and other contemporary Russian ships. The secondary armament was installed in casemates in a central box battery with 5" armor.
The ship had a tumble-home shape with fat hips, scooped out with a straight cutout along the berth deck (see plan). The midships redoubt was supported by an oblique-cornered gunhouse in the middle of the cutout. The Twelve Apostles had uniquely Russian details like the midships cranes, burly cylindrical gunhouse on the foremast (lowest platform just behind the bridge), and the regulation Romanov two-headed eagle in gilt bronze at prow and stern. The 12" guns were trained by steam power, never a satisfactory arrangement, and had to be retrained fore-and-aft to load. This made firing the main guns a very slow process. Indeed, this was a rather slow ship, achieving her design speed of 16.5 kts only on trials. She was known as a ravenous consumer of fuel even at slower speeds; but in this she had plenty of company in Nicholas II's Black Sea fleet.
Specifications for the 12 Apostles:
Dimensions: 342' x 60' x 27'6" Displacement: 8,709 tons standard. Armament (as built): (4) 12"/35 cal, (4) 6"/35, and (12) 47mm 3-pdr guns; (6) 15" torpedo tubes above water. Compound armor: Belt: 14"/10"; upper belt 10"/6"; barbettes: 10"; main gun shields: 3". Midships redoubt: 5". Conning tower: 12". Propulsion: 8 coal-fired Scotch boilers, (4) single-ended and (4) double-ended; (2) vertical triple-expansion steam engines developing 11,600 hp, shafted to twin screw. Designed speed: 16.5 kts. Maximum actual speed: 15.75 kts. Endurance: 1,540 nm @ 12 kts. Crew: 599. Initial cost: Around £750,000 at 1890 valuation. Schematic
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 104.24m x 18.29m x 8.38m. Displacement: 8,709 tons standard. Armament (as built): (4) 305 mm/35 cal; (4) 152 mm/35; and (12) 47 mm guns; (6) 381 mm torpedo tubes, all above-water type. Armor: Compound type. Belt: 356/254 mm; upper belt 254/127 mm; barbettes: 254 mm; main gun shields: 76 mm; midships redoubt: 127 mm; conning tower: 305 mm. Propulsion: 8 coal-fired Scotch boilers; (2) vertical triple-expansion steam engines developing 11,600 hp; twin screw. Maximum actual speed: 29.2 km/hr. Endurance: 2,850 km @ 22.25 km/hr. Crew: 599. Initial cost: Around £750,000 at 1890 valuation. Schematic
A quarter view of the ship from the 1890s, showing the original barbette mounting of the 12" guns. This angle suggests her derivation from earlier central battery ships, with scooped-out sides and square battery on the beam. Note also the peculiar flying bridge and open-air circular compass platform under the mainmast.
A later photo from nearly the same angle, taken from Jane's Fighting Ships 1906-07, distinctly shows the dome-shaped 3" (76 mm) shields added over the 12" guns.
Decommissioned in 1911, the obsolete battleship was converted into a stationary training ship. She was brought out of reserve on the outbreak of WWI and served as a depot ship. She was captured by the Germans in 1918 and subsequently rendered to the Allies in December 1918. The Allies showed their bias when they handed her over to the White Russians at the height of the Civil War. At the conclusion of the Russian civil war, the victorious Reds claimed what was left of her. Perhaps the ship is most famous for her part in the classic silent film Battleship Potemkin, in which she is seen pursuing Potemkin in the closing sequences of encounter between the rebel battleship and the loyal Tsarist fleet. She rolls and takes green water over the foredeck in a bow shot, and appears suitably antique with her stovepipe funnels and many ventilators. Her similarity to the actual historical flagship Rostislav (below) adds verisimilitude to a scene largely filmed with ships that did not even exist in 1905, the time-frame in which the movie is set. It seems likely this clip represents prewar footage of the ships on exercises, spliced in by the director where convenient to advance his story line; many of these vessels were stationary hulks by the time the film was being made in 1924-5; others were Baltic fleet units that never saw service in the Black Sea fleet. Her nanosecond of worldwide screen glamor behind her, the Apostles remained inactive for more than a decade, serving as an accommodation hulk until she was sold to the shipbreakers in 1931.
The Rostislav, completed 1898, was named for Prince Rostislav I of Kiev, one of the medieval forerunners of the Russian state. The ship was a second-class battleship, armed with 10" guns, and had a wall-sided hull with plumb stem and only a hint of a ram underwater, in a trait shared with some later Russian small battleships. Rostislav was Adm. Krieger's flagship when she faced the mutinous Potemkin in 1905. No match for the Potemkin (at least, had Potemkin had a fully trained crew), she disdainfully faced down the rebellious battleship on two occasions, sending orders by flag hoist which the mutineers ignored -- daring discontented elements in the admiral's remaining fleet to follow the firebrands on the Potemkin. On both occasions Rostislav held fire, because of the fires of rebellion simmering in the flagship's own fo'c'sle. Rather than actively pursuing the Potemkin, Krieger anchored at Odessa and permitted enlisted men ashore to assist in recovery efforts following the disastrous waterfront fire set by drunken rebels a few days before his arrival. Full security precautions were taken to ensure the remaining Black Sea fleet units could not fall into the hands of the rebels: reliable officers policed the small-arms lockers, and the propeller shafts were decoupled so the ships could not be got underway.
Rostislav's design was an amalgam of half-baked conceptions advanced by different factions in the naval establishment. Originally she was to have been a ship of no more than 5,000 tons, mounting 12-in guns. The hull adopted was copied from the Sissoi Veliky scaled down by 15% but, at the insistence of Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich, the Navy Minister, the guns were limited to 10-inch, even though 12-inch were standard in Russian navy battleships. The ship was built at Nikolayev, with steam plant and engines fabricated at Baltic Works, St. Petersburg and shipped to Ukraine by rail. Rostislav's construction was bedeviled by technical failures and she completed 1,600 tons over the designed displacement; this made her float 3 feet deeper than expected, almost entirely submerging the armor belt.
At right, Rostislav in her glory days as Black Sea Fleet flagship, leading her squadron in exercises on the stormy sea for which she was designed. This photo shows the square-fronted navigating bridge, foremast gunhouse and searchlight position, and bow crest to advantage. You can practically hear the spindrift breaking across the foredeck and exult in the heady sea air. For a razor-sharp enlargement of this exciting photo from the Anatoly Odaynik Archive, click here.
The ship's gunnery layout was unique among Russian battleships; four twin turrets of 6" guns were deployed in recesses cut into the corners of the superstructure, which was fronted by a large rectangular pilothouse. The mother of all swept-back bridge wings extended over the forward 6" turrets. The deck beneath the bridge was recessed behind ranks of stanchions, like an ocean liner's promenade deck, to avoid blast problems from the forward 6" turrets. To deter torpedo attack Rostislav carried a small arsenal of 47mm and 37mm weapons, mostly placed amidships on the main deck. Though still a Black Sea battleship, this one paralleled the contemporaneous Petropavlovsk class in secondary armament and speed if not in size. Her turrets were electrically trained and supplied by electric ammo lifts. Turrets featured all-round loading for faster firing. Rostislav's Harvey process armor plate was manufactured in the U.S.: 1,200 tons from Bethlehem Steel. This armor was sold to the Tsar's government at a special low, low introductory rate of $250 a ton (vs. $600-660 charged the USN). For this dumping practice, the company was investigated and charged with price fixing by the Senate. Rostislav was also the first battleship to use oil as its main fuel, commissioning shortly after the great Nobel-owned Baku oilfields went into production. Limited oil burning capability became a standard feature of the Tsar's capital ships after 1900, although coal remained the primary fuel until the 1930s.
Rostislav commissioned as a compact vessel of comely appearance and symmetrical proportions, undergoing sea trials in 1898. She was far from being an operational unit at this time, however. The long wait for her main guns delayed full activation for another four years, however; there were quality problems with the 10" batch originally cast at the Obukhov Foundry; according to the NavWeaps website, the 10" Model 1891 naval guns "were too lightly constructed and hence suffered from weak barrels and poor ballistic qualities." After installation of the repaired and re-cast guns, their mounts failed during firing trials. Only after different cradles were substituted -- based on those of the 1885 cruiser Admiral Nakhimov -- did the Rostislav pass her gunnery trials in June 1902. The electrical turret training engines were of unprecedented complexity and were a poor match for the low-tech Russian personnel. Even more worrisome, the ship's oil-burning propulsion plant, completed significantly over weight, was problematic and caused serial boiler failures. After years of ineffectual repairs, the firerooms were torn out entirely and replaced with coal-fired units in 1904-05. The ship's reliability improved, but the additional weight completely submerged her armor belt.
Rostislav is perhaps most famous for her rôle in the Potemkin mutiny; but the mutiny was not limited to Potemkin. In 1905 the entire country was aflame with revolt following the disastrous handling of the Russo-Japanese War, which had revealed the endemic corruption and incompetence of the Tsarist régime. Embers of mutiny reignited again and again in the fleet, while even in the units that remained loyal, officers kept the lid on only with difficulty.
As Adm. Krieger's flagship, Rostislav coordinated the quelling of the revolt over the whole summer and autumn of 1905. Renamed but still rebellious, the Pantaleimon joined the October revolt of the Black Sea fleet, centered on the cruiser Ochakov and including roughly 45% of the fleet's personnel and ten other warships. Rostislav took the lead in suppressing this mutiny, firing two 10-inch and fourteen 6-inch shells on Ochakov before boarding to arrest mutineers after a heated 90-min engagement on Nov. 28, 1905. The following day she fired again on rebel-held barracks and wards of the naval prison at Sevastopol, ending the autumn insurrection with brutal finality under the menacing presence of her big guns. Ringleader Lt. Cmdr. Pyotr Schmidt and his 16-year-old son were summarily executed; other mutineers caught in the Tsarist dragnet fared little better. Discipline was rapid and punishment harsh -- the firing squad for leaders, decades of hard labor in Siberia for those on the fringes -- in compliance with a decree from Nicholas II himself. During the Soviet period these mariners became much-vaunted revolutionary heroes, with warships, streets, and bridges named after them from Omsk to Okhotsk; under the Putin/Russian mafia régime many of these places have reverted to their pre-revolutionary names, much as the antique warships of 1905 - 1920 changed their flags and names every few years to suit the purposes of their changing political masters.
Specifications for the Rostislav:
Built at Nikolayev, Ukraine, 1894-1898. Dimensions: 352' x 67'10½" x 25'3" Displacement: 9,029 tons standard; 9,370 tons deep laden. Armament: (4) 10"/45 M1891 (2x2); (8) 6"/45 Canet Pattern 1892 (4x2); (12) 1.9"; and (16) 37 mm guns; (6) 15" torpedo tubes. (4) 3" AA guns added 1915. Armor: Harvey type throughout. Belt: 14"/10"; turrets: 10"/5"/2½"; upper belt: 5". Secondary turrets: 6"/5". Conning tower: 6". Deck: 2" flat deck at top of armor belt. 3" partial decks fore and aft of citadel, below waterline. Bulkheads: 9" fwd, 5" aft. Propulsion: 8 cylindrical (Scotch) boilers; (2) vertical inverted triple-expansion engines developing 8,700 hp; twin screw. Maximum speed: 16 kts. Fuel capacity (1905): 800 tons of coal; unknown qty bunker oil. Endurance: 3,050 nm @ 10 kts. Crew: 650 (1900), 852 (WWI).
Metric specifications:
Dimensions: 107.2m x 20.7m x 7.7m. Displacement: 9,029 tons standard; 9,370 tons deep laden. Armament: (4) 254 mm/45 M1891 (2x2), (8) 152 mm/45 Canet Pattern 1892 (4x2), (12) 47mm, and (16) 37mm guns; (6) 38 cm torpedo tubes. (4) 75 mm AA guns added 1915. Armor: Harvey type throughout. Belt: 356/254 mm; turrets: 254/127/64 mm; upper belt: 127 mm; secondary turrets: 152/127 mm; conning tower: 152 mm; deck: 50 mm flat deck at top of armor belt; 76 mm partial decks fore and aft of citadel, below waterline. Bulkheads: 229 mm fwd, 127 mm aft. Propulsion: 8 cylindrical (Scotch) boilers; (2) vertical inverted triple-expansion engines developing 6,488 kW; twin screw. Maximum speed: 29.6 km/hr. Fuel capacity (1905): 800 tons of coal; unknown qty bunker oil. Endurance: 5,649 km @ 18.52 km/hr. Crew: 650 (1900), 852 (WWI).
Newly fitted with rangefinders and gun sights, Rostislav fought in World War I with the Black Sea Fleet. After Turkish warships provoked hostilities with an unprovoked bombardment of Sevastopol, Odessa, and Novorossisk on October 29 - 30, 1914, the Russians formed a bombardment unit to harass Turkish installations. Their first task was to disrupt coal supply for the Turkish railroads by disabling their chief transshipment port at Zonguldak. In the Battle of Cape Sarych (Nov. 18, 1914), Rostislav engaged the Breslau while the four other battleships in the bombardment unit (Pantaleimon, Tri Svyatitelya, and the two Evstafi class ships) concentrated their 12" fire on the Goeben. The ex-Germans got the worst of it in that action, as lucky hits by Evstafi started a worrisome fire in one of Goeben's magazines, forcing a prompt retirement. During these actions one of the units in the bombardment fleet was Rostislav's old adversary, the Potemkin (renamed Panteleimon so the Tsar would never have to say the hateful name "Potemkin" again.) By the end of 1916 Russian efforts, combined with Turkish corruption and backwardness, had shut down the Ottoman coal industry entirely, stalling supply lines to their Caucasus army and consigning their navy to port. But by this winter, the Tsarist régime too was wobbling, with only four months left to live.
Rostislav's last assignment as an Imperial warship was to support Romanian troops holding the port of Constanta; while there she was hit by an aerial bomb from a German seaplane. The bomb glanced off the aft 10" turret and although 16 sailors were injured, the turret itself remained fully functional. At the end of October 1916 the Romanian front collapsed. Rostislav covered the retreat as the Germans overran Constanta, then went into the yard for most of 1917 for a much-needed refit. She was one of the few Tsarist warships to be maintained at full combat efficiency through 1917, but with the waves of revolution washing over Ukraine this proved impossible and she was tied up at Sevastopol with a skeleton crew. There she was captured by the Germans in April 1918, and then in November by the British; they disabled her engines before withdrawing in April 1919. Like all the warships in British hands during the Russian Civil War, she reverted to the Whites, who towed her to the Straits of Kerch, using her as a floating battery to block Red incursion into the Black Sea from the Sea of Azov. As Baron Wrangel's White effort collapsed, she was scuttled at Kerch on November 16, 1920 to block the channel and prevent her falling into Bolshevik hands. The ship's guns eventually were salvaged and the vessel was broken up beginning in 1930. Remnants of her double bottom are said to persist to this day where she was abandoned 90-odd years ago: one of the last survivors from the old Tsarist Black Sea fleet.
Rostislav at anchor shows her modest proportions and symmetric layout. Note swept-back bridge wings and gallery of stanchions beneath bridge. She operated out of the fleet's home base, Sevastopol, and it is likely there that we see her in this shot.
Here an exalted Personage is rowed slowly past the Black Sea battle fleet, drawn up for review, the column headed by the flagship Rostislav.
As flagship, Rostislav led three Potemkin type battleships and an earlier pre-dreadnought, the Tri Svyatitelya. The four Yekaterina class ironclads formed a separate squadron. Three Black Sea dreadnoughts were slated for 1915 delivery from Nikolayev. Meanwhile, Turkey was waiting on 1914 delivery of its own two super-dreadnoughts from Britain.
