Russian monitor Rusalka
Rusalka in drydock, 1868
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| History | |
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 Russian Empire
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| Name: | Rusalka |
| Namesake: | Rusalka |
| Ordered: | 26 January 1865 |
| Builder: | Admiralty Shipyard, St. Petersburg |
| Cost: | 762,000 rubles |
| Laid down: | 6 June 1866 |
| Launched: | 12 September 1867 |
| In service: | 1869 |
| Reclassified: | As coast-defense ironclad, 13 February 1892 |
| Struck: | 26 October 1893 |
| Fate: | Sank in the Gulf of Finland, 7 September 1893 |
| Status: | Wreck discovered, 22 July 2003 |
| General characteristics (as completed) | |
| Class and type: | Charodeika-class monitor |
| Displacement: | 2,100 long tons (2,134 t) |
| Length: | 206 ft (62.8 m) (waterline) |
| Beam: | 42 ft (12.8 m) |
| Draft: | 12 ft 7 in (3.8 m) |
| Installed power: | |
| Propulsion: | 2 shafts, 2 Horizontal direct-action steam engines |
| Speed: | 8 knots (15 km/h; 9.2 mph) |
| Complement: | 172 officers and crewmen |
| Armament: |
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| Armor: |
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Rusalka (Russian: Русалка, Mermaid), was one of two Charodeika-class monitors built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1860s. She served for her entire career with the Baltic Fleet. Aside from hitting an uncharted rock not long after she was completed in 1869, she had an uneventful career. Rusalka sank in a storm in 1893 with the loss of all hands in the Gulf of Finland. A memorial was built in Reval (modern Tallinn) to commemorate her loss almost a decade later. Her wreck was rediscovered in 2003, bow-down in the mud, which has prompted a new theory regarding her loss.
Rusalka was 206 feet (62.8 m) long at the waterline. She had a beam of 42 feet (12.8 m) and a maximum draft of 12 feet 7 inches (3.8 m). The ship was designed to displace 1,882 long tons (1,912 t), but turned out to be overweight and actually displaced 2,100 long tons (2,100 t). Her crew numbered 13 officers and 171 crewmen in 1877.
The ship had two simple horizontal direct-acting steam engines, each driving a single propeller. The engines were designed to produce a total of 900 indicated horsepower (670 kW) using steam provided by two coal-fired rectangular fire-tube boilers, but only achieved 705 ihp (526 kW) and a speed of approximately 9 knots (17 km/h; 10 mph) during her sea trials. She carried a maximum of 250 long tons (254 t) of coal for her boilers.
Rusalka was initially armed with a pair of nine-inch (229 mm) rifled Model 1867 guns in the forward gun turret and a pair of fifteen-inch (381 mm) smoothbore Rodman guns in the aft turret. The Rodman guns were replaced by a pair of Obukhov 9-inch (229 mm) rifled guns in 1871 and all of the nine-inch guns were replaced in their turn by longer, more powerful nine-inch Obukhov guns in 1878–79. No light guns for use against torpedo boats are known to have been fitted aboard the ship before the 1870s when she received 3 four-pounder 3.4-inch (86 mm) guns mounted on the turret tops as well as a variety of smaller guns that included 45-millimeter (1.8 in) Engström quick-firing (QF) guns, 1-inch (25 mm) Nordenfelt guns, single-barreled QF 47-millimeter (1.9 in) Hotchkiss guns and QF 37-millimeter (1.5 in) Hotchkiss revolving cannon.
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