The Peresvet class was a group of three pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy around the end of the 19th century. and were transferred to the Pacific Squadron upon completion and based at Port Arthur from 1901 and 1903, respectively. All three ships were lost by the Russians in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05; Peresvet and Pobeda participated in the Battles of Port Arthur and the Yellow Sea and were sunk during the siege of Port Arthur. Oslyabya, the third ship, sailed to the Far East with the Second Pacific Squadron to relieve the Russian forces blockaded in Port Arthur and was sunk at the Battle of Tsushima with the loss of over half her crew.
Peresvet and Pobeda were salvaged after the Japanese captured Port Arthur and incorporated into the Imperial Japanese Navy. Peresvet was sold back to the Russians during World War I, as the two countries were by now allies, and sank after hitting German mines in the Mediterranean in early 1917 while Pobeda, renamed Suwo, remained instead in Japanese service and participated in the Battle of Tsingtao in late 1914. She became a gunnery training ship in 1917. The ship was disarmed in 1922 to comply with the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty and probably scrapped around that time.
Design and description
After the humiliating Russian defeat during the Crimean War of 1854–55, General Admiral Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich understood that Russia would never be able to outbuild Britain or France, but still needed a maritime strategy that could defend Russia, give the fleet a useful role in peacetime and act as a deterrent. He decided that a guerre de course (commerce-raiding) strategy was Russia's only effective means of attacking the British Empire or France if war broke out and built a series of fast, long-range, armored cruisers like and to implement his strategy. The British responded by building the second-class battleships of the to defeat the cruisers and the Russians countered with the three ships of the Peresvet class that were designed to support their armored cruisers. This role placed a premium on high speed and long range at the expense of heavy armament and armor.
As was common with Russian ships of the time, changes were made while the ships were under construction. The most important was the revision of the secondary armament from eight and five guns to eleven 6-inch guns and additional light guns. Only two ships were originally planned, but a third was ordered to keep the Baltic Works shipyard busy until a new design could be prepared. Ironically, it was completed before the second ship, despite having been laid down over three years later.
The Peresvet-class ships were long overall, with a beam of and a draft of . Designed to displace , they were overweight and actually displaced . To reduce biofouling, the hulls of the first two ships were sheathed with wood and copper, but this was eliminated in Pobeda to reduce weight. The vessels had a partial double bottom and the hull was divided by 10 watertight transverse bulkheads; a centerline bulkhead divided the forward engine rooms. Each crew consisted of 27 officers and 744 enlisted men.
The ships were powered by three vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam generated by 30 Belleville boilers. The engines were rated at , using forced draft, and designed to reach a top speed of . All three ships slightly exceeded their specifications and reached top speeds of from during their sea trials. They carried a maximum of of coal which allowed them to steam for at a speed of . Their electrical equipment consisted of four steam-driven dynamos with a total capacity of .