Borodino-class battleship
Oblique view of Oryol at anchor
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| Class overview | |
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| Builders: |
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| Operators: | |
| Preceded by: | Tsesarevich |
| Succeeded by: | Evstafi class |
| Built: | 1899–1905 |
| In service: | 1904–1922 |
| In commission: | 1904–1922 |
| Completed: | 5 |
| Lost: | 4 |
| Scrapped: | 1 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Pre-dreadnought battleship |
| Displacement: | 14,091–14,415 long tons (14,317–14,646 t) |
| Length: | 397 ft (121.0 m) |
| Beam: | 76 ft 1 in (23.2 m) |
| Draft: | 29 ft (8.84 m) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: | 2 shafts, 2 Triple-expansion steam engines |
| Speed: | 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
| Range: | 2,590 nmi (4,800 km; 2,980 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Complement: | 28 officers, 826 enlisted men |
| Armament: |
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| Armor: |
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The Borodino-class battleship was a class of five pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy around the end of the 19th century. Their design was based on that of the French-built Tsesarevich modified to use Russian equipment. The first four ships were finished after the start of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 and were among the ships ordered to sail from the Baltic Sea to the Far East to relieve the Pacific Squadron besieged by the Japanese in Port Arthur. Three of these ships were sunk and one was captured by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima in 1905. The fifth and final ship, Slava, was not completed in time to participate in the war and served with the Baltic Fleet through World War I. She spent most of the war defending the Gulf of Riga and was badly damaged by German dreadnoughts during the Battle of Moon Sound in 1917. This damage forced the ship's crew to scuttle her because she had taken on too much water and could not pass through the shallow channel that connected the Gulf of Riga with the Baltic. The wreck was scrapped during the 1930s by the Estonians.
Tsar Nicholas II had desired a warm-water port on the Pacific since his accession to the throne in 1894. He achieved this ambition in March 1898 when Russia signed a 25-year lease for Port Arthur and the Liaotung Peninsula with China. Japan had previously forced China to sign over the port and its surrounding territory as part of the treaty that concluded the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, but the Triple Intervention of France, Russia, and Germany forced them to return the port in exchange for a sizeable increase in the indemnity paid by the Chinese. Japan invested much of the indemnity money in expanding its fleet, while Russia began a major building programme ("For the Needs of the Far East") to defend its newly acquired port that included the Borodino-class battleships.
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Wikipedia