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BB Imperatritsa Maria battleships

Dreadnoughts were all the rage. With agile maneuvering abilities, and equipped with heavy and long-range artillery (each carried twelve 305-mm naval guns and twenty 130-mm guns), they completely outclassed the German-made cruisers that the Ottoman empire used. By the start of the Great War, Russia had three dreadnoughts in service on the Black Sea, which let it establish naval dominance in the region. The Black Sea battleships were somewhat different from the Baltic, they were shorter and wider than the Baltic battleships, in almost the same displacement, 22,600 tons. The draft should lead to an increase in stability, but in fact it did not happen due to overloading of the ships. At the same time, Black battleships decreased ratio of length to width of the housing, resulting in the deterioration of propulsion. Originally, this class of ship was designed in Britain, and Russia started building them after its humiliating defeat in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. The designers found it possible to go for the requirements, because the speed requirement has been reduced by the Marine Department from 23 to 21 knots. But it was in vain, as was shown later events. Speed reduction allowed some to reduce the power of the main engines and boilers. The gain in body length reduced the length of the armor belt. All of this has helped to enhance the amount of the main armor belt up to 262 mm. The design became much more powerful with the main fire turrets, based on the experience of construction of the Baltic battleships.

The building of the three battleships for the Black Sea began in Spring 1912. The construction proceeded much faster than ships of the Baltic. The "Mary" and "Empress Catherine" went into operation in autumn 1915. The third-battleship "Emperor Alexander III», finished all the tests came into operation in October 1917.

The normal displacement of the battleships was 22,600 tons, with a power turbine installation of 26,500 hp with a speed of 21 knots. The dimensions were 168 meters length, 27.4 meters beam, and 8.4 meter draft. The armament was 4 x 3 305-mm and 20 130-mm guns. The Black Sea battleships inherited a number of disadvantages inherent in the Baltic ships. In particular, the trim on the bow, "burying his nose", was one of a number of shortcomings.

On October 2, 1916, most people living in Sevastopol woke when a loud explosion came from the harbor. A tremendous fire started as black smoke rose from the Imperatritsa Mariya, the flagship battleship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which was anchored in the harbor. “I testify that the crew did everything possible to save the ship,” Admiral Alexander Kolchak, who led the Black Sea Fleet, would later write in a report. True: hundreds of sailors rushed to put out the fire, but in vain. A series of 25 more explosions followed as the fire reached powder magazines, and 320 of the ship’s 1220-people crew were killed. Imperatritsa Mariya, damaged beyond repair, sank.

There were three major hypotheses as to why the Mariya exploded: 1) spontaneous combustion of gunpowder; 2) combustion caused by human error; or 3) someone’s malicious intent. The commission came to a conclusion that can only be described as vague: “There is no possibility of coming to a precise and evidential conclusion, we have to evaluate the chance of those (three above-mentioned) assumptions based on the circumstances revealed throughout investigation.” To make a long story short, malicious intent was more or less ruled out as a credible reason for the explosion. Kolchak later reported: “I believed there was no malice. During the war such accidents occurred more than once in other countries: Italy, Germany and England…”

A controversial version appeared rather suddenly, almost twenty years later, years after Admiral Kolchak had been shot by the Bolsheviks and Joseph Stalin ruled the country. In 1933, Viktor Wehrmann, a citizen of German origin was arrested and tried in Mykolaiv (now Ukraine), testifying that he spied for the German empire during World War I, and that he had taken an exceptional interest in the Mariya and other major battleships. At least that’s what Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye (NVO) wrote in 1999, with reference to research conducted in the archives of the FSB (Federal Security Service).

In the chaos of war and revolution that hit Russia a year later, the sinking of the Mariya was quickly overshadowed by larger events.

Soviet Period Reconstruction Proposals

In the Black Sea the battleship "Empress Maria" was raised back in 1918, but never put on an even keel, and in 1926 went to the breaker. Haste in 1930 anong specialists led to an explosion of ammunition in the flooded "Free Russia", the building of which was destroyed and became unusable. In Nikolaev the of the largest Black Sea battleships "Democracy" (former "Emperor Nikolai I") remained intact but unfinished. The leadership of the Navy and the Soviet Government made a clear mistake, having missed an opportunity for completion of this ship. Building of "Democracy" in 1927 also went for scrapping.

How the battleship 'Democracy' would have looked in the case of its completion, is not difficult to imagine, given the architectural trends of the time and technical requirements for armament. Armament could have been 356 mm main artillery fire, as it initially was designed under such instruments, and there could be a turret with the 305-mm guns. Add anti-aircraft artillery and catapult with by sea plane, would be quite acceptable for Black Sea battle ship. Before 1943, ships participating in battles were only the "Paris Commune" and 2 destroyers off the coast of Crimea, while Joseph Stalin after the sinking of them practically in one day forbade all large ships to go out to sea.