Navarin () was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The ship was assigned to the Baltic Fleet and spent the early part of her career deployed in the Mediterranean and in the Far East. She participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 before returning to the Baltic Fleet in 1901. Several months after the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War in February 1904, she was assigned to the 2nd Pacific Squadron to relieve the Russian forces blockaded in Port Arthur. During the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905, she was sunk by Japanese destroyers which spread twenty-four linked mines across her path during the night. Navarin struck two of these mines and capsized with the loss of most of her crew.
Design and description
Navarin was a low-freeboard turret ship modeled on the British s. The original requirement had been for a much smaller ship, but the Navy changed its mind and required a larger ship capable of operating "in all European seas and [even be] able by its coal capacity to reach the Far East." Changes were made to the design after the ship was ordered that included the replacement of the main armament by more powerful guns of the same caliber and the increase in the secondary armament from six guns to eight.
The ship was long at the waterline and long overall. She had a beam of and a draught of . She displaced , almost more than her designed displacement of . Navarins crew consisted of 24 officers and 417 enlisted men.
She had a pair of three-cylinder vertical triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft. They had a total designed output of using steam provided by 12 cylindrical fire-tube boilers at a pressure of . The four boiler rooms were arranged in two pairs abreast, each of which had its own funnel. This unusual arrangement gave the ship her odd nickname of Factory (Zavod). Trials of the first batch of boilers in May 1891 showed that they could not maintain the designed steam pressure due to flaws in their construction. The Navy demanded that the Franco-Russian Works replace them with new boilers at its own expense, but tests of the new boilers in August 1893 showed that their production of steam was inadequate. The factory asked for a year's time to rectify the problems which the Navy granted since the construction of the ship was already behind schedule. On her final set of sea trials in November 1895, Navarin reached a top speed of . She carried a maximum of of coal that provided a range of at a speed of .
Armament
The ship's main battery consisted of four 35-caliber Obukhov Model 1886 guns mounted in hydraulically powered twin-gun turrets fore and aft of the superstructure. The guns required 2 minutes, 22 seconds between shots. They fired a "light" shell at a muzzle velocity of . Each gun was provided with 80 rounds. Her secondary armament of eight 35-caliber Pattern 1877 guns were mounted in casemates in the superstructure. The ship carried a total of 1,600 rounds for them.
Navarin was protected against torpedo boats by a suite of smaller guns that included fourteen quick-firing (QF) Hotchkiss guns mounted in the superstructure. They fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of . A total of eight Maxim QF guns were mounted in the fighting top and the other four guns may have been used to arm the ship's boats. They fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of . Navarin was also armed with six above-water torpedo tubes, one each in the bow and stern and one pair on each broadside. The ship carried two torpedoes for each tube.
Protection
The ship used compound armor for all armored vertical surfaces except for the gun turrets which were made from nickel steel. The maximum thickness of the waterline armor belt was which reduced to abreast the magazines. It covered of the ship's length and was high, and tapered down to a thickness of at the bottom edge. The upper of the belt was intended to be above the waterline, but the ship was significantly overweight and much of the belt was submerged. The belt terminated in transverse bulkheads.
The lower casemate was above the belt, long and high, and was intended to protect the bases of the turrets and everything between them. It had 16-inch sides and was closed off by 16-inch transverse bulkheads fore and aft. The upper casemate protected the six-inch guns and was thick on all sides. The armor plates of the turret sides were 16 inches thick and the conning tower had sides that were thick. The armor deck was thick over the lower casemate, but thick forward and aft of the main armor belt to the bow and stern.