The Russian Empire
In-Depth Article

The Imperial Russian Navy

At 7:30 a.m. on 27 May 1905 (O.S. 14 May), the Russian Second Pacific Squadron — 8 battleships, 3 coast-defence ironclads, 9 cruisers, 8 destroyers, 4 auxiliary cruisers — crossed the Tsushima Strait in two columns, with Vice-Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky in the Knyaz Suvorov. The Japanese Combined Fleet of 4 battleships, 27 cruisers, and 18 destroyers under Admiral Togo Heihachirō was in line ahead at 12,000 yards, in the T-shaped crossing position. By 18:00 the Oslyabya, the Knyaz Suvorov, the Imperator Aleksandr III, and the Borodino were on the bottom. The Russian fleet lost 21 ships, 4,380 dead, 5,917 captured, and 1,862 interned. The Japanese lost three torpedo boats and 117 men. The Russian Navy had been the third largest in the world on 1 January 1904. The next morning, the Russian Navy was not in the world’s top ten (Westwood, Russia against Japan, 1904–05, 1986; Corbett, Maritime Operations in the Russo-Japanese War, 1994; Mahan, Retrospect and Prospect, 1902).

The Imperial Russian Navy was founded by Peter the Great, on 30 January 1696, when the boyarskaya duma (the sobor) declared: “Be it resolved that the great Sovereign shall have ships at sea.” The first vessel, the 26-gun frigate Svyatoy Pavel, was launched at Voronezh on 26 May 1696. The bolshoi of the navy — the construction programme, the training of officers, the gauge of the rukopisnye — was the work of the next two centuries (Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great, 1998; Keep, Soldiers of the Tsar, 1985).

1696–1725: Peter’s navy

The first major fleet was built at Voronezh for the Azov campaign of 1695–1696. The 2,000-ton Orel (the 24-gun rybolovnyi sudn of 1667) was the first Russian three-masted warship, built in 1667–1668 in Ola, with Dutch shipwrights. The Azov fleet, 1695–1696, was 23 ships and 1,300 men. The Baltic fleet was begun in 1703 with the founding of the Admiralteyskiy Verf in St Petersburg on 5 November 1704, and the Sestroretsk Arms Factory on 18 August 1721. The 1710 navy was 33 ships of the line, 13 frigates, and 200 smaller vessels. The 1710 Gangut (27 July 1714) — the first Russian victory of a fleet over a Swedish fleet in the open sea — was the bolshoi. The 1724 navy was 89 ships of the line, 113 frigates and smaller vessels, 11,000 matrosy, and 2,800 oficery. The Russian Navy was, in 1725, the third largest in Europe after Britain and France (Hughes, 1998; Keep, 1985; Massie, Peter the Great, 1980).

1725–1853: the long century

The 1725–1853 navy was the navy of the imperatorskaya sem’ya. The principal fleets:

  • The Baltic Fleet (headquartered at Kronstadt, founded 1719) — the main Russian naval force; flagship from 1750 to 1905 was the Imperatorskaya Yakhta.
  • The Black Sea Fleet (founded 1783 with the annexation of the Crimea; headquartered at Sevastopol, founded 14 June 1783 by decree of Catherine II) — the second Russian naval force; first commander, Rear-Admiral Fyodor Ushakov (1745–1817).
  • The Arctic Fleet (founded 1733 with the Dvigatel’nyi flot of the Northern Dvina) — the Siberian kontekst for the Pomor kupry.
  • The Caspian Flotilla (founded 1722, with the Petrovskiy flot at Astrakhan) — the Krasnovodsk and the Mangyshlak operations of 1869–1873.

The great explorers of the period were the circles of the Okean of 1803–1806. Adam Johann von Krusenstern (1770–1846) made the first Russian circumnavigation in the Nadezhda and the Neva (1803–1806), 142,000 nautical miles. Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen (1778–1852) made the 1819–1821 circumnavigation of Antarctica in the Vostok and the Mirny and discovered Peter I Island and Alexander I Island on 16–22 January 1820. Mikhail Petrovich Lazarev (1788–1851) was the second-in-command of the 1819–1821 expedition and the commander of the 1826–1829 expedition to the Black Sea. The Pacific okrainy of Russian America, the Krepost of Novo-Arkhangelsk (Sitka, founded 1799), the fort Ross of California (founded 1812, sold 1841), and the port of Ayansky of the Pomor were the priobretenie of the period (Barratt, The Russian Navy, 1696–1775, 1981; Westwood, 1986; Hughes, 1998).

1853–1905: the Crimean War to Tsushima

The Russian Black Sea Fleet at the beginning of 1853 was 14 ships of the line, 6 frigates, 12 steam corvettes. The first Russian steam warship, the Morskoy Boets of 1841, was the first screw-corvette of the Black Sea. The Crimean War (1853–1856) destroyed the Black Sea Fleet at the Battle of Sinop (30 November 1853) and the siege of Sevastopol (1854–1855). The Baltic Fleet — 60 ships of the line and frigates under Vice-Admiral P. S. Nakhimov — did not sortie; the November 1854 palubnoye opasnost’ of the British Admiral Charles Napier’s squadron (3 sailing ships and 4 steamers) at the Kronshtadtskiy Reyd was the only major bolshoi. The 1856 Treaty of Paris demilitarised the Black Sea (the 1871 Treaty of London revoked the clause). The Reestrovaya morskaya navy of 1863–1905 was the work of the Morskoe Ministerstvo under Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich (1855–1881) and Admiral S. P. Tyrtov (1896–1903). The 1881 Stoyaniye (the Stoyaniye — 1880s tselnost’) was the 16 battleships of the Razboynik class, the 3 Imperator Aleksandr II-class, the 5 Pervenets-class cruisers, the 22 destroyers of the Sokrushitelnyy class. The 1900 bolshoi navy was 12 battleships, 9 cruisers, 65 destroyers, 16 submarines. The 1903 Bezdushnyy programme added the 4 Borodino-class dreadnoughts, the 2 Andrey Pervozvannyy-class, the 5 Bulava-class (Westwood, 1986; Corbett, 1994; Dunning, Science and the State in Russia, 1999).

The Russo-Japanese War and the disaster

On 8 February 1904 (O.S. 27 January), ten Japanese destroyers under Rear-Admiral Sam Hakurō torpedoed the Russian First Pacific Squadron of Vice-Admiral Oskar Stark at Port Arthur. The Retvizan, the Tsesarevich, and the Pallada were hit. The 5,800-ton battleship Tsesarevich of the Borodino class had her propellers jammed. The Russian Pacific Fleet was reduced from a going concern to a collection of docked hulls. The 5 December 1904 scuttling of the inner harbour of Port Arthur — 9 Russian ships of the line, including the Retvizan and the Pobeda, 4 cruisers, 14 destroyers — was the end of the Pacific Fleet. The Second Pacific Squadron — 8 battleships, 3 ironclads, 9 cruisers, 8 destroyers, 4 auxiliaries — sailed from Kronstadt on 15 October 1904 under Vice-Admiral Rozhestvensky. The Dogger Bank affair of 22 October 1904 (one British trawler sunk, two Russian ships damaged, the Britannia 28 October 1904 protocol) was the worst single diplomatic incident. The Tsushima disaster of 27–28 May 1905 (21 ships, 4,380 dead) was the end. The Russian Navy was rebuilt by 1914 — the 4 Sevastopol-class and 3 Imperatritsa Mariya-class dreadnoughts, the 6 Novik-class destroyers — but the bolshoi of 1904 was not exceeded until 1917 (Stein, Pursuit of the Fleet, 1995; Westwood, 1986; Stevenson, Armaments and the Coming of War, 1996).

The navy in the First World War

The Russian Navy in 1914 was the fifth largest in the world. The Baltic Fleet (headquartered at Helsinki and Kronstadt) numbered 4 dreadnoughts, 8 pre-dreadnoughts, 9 cruisers, 50 destroyers, 25 submarines. The Black Sea Fleet (headquartered at Sevastopol) numbered 2 dreadnoughts, 5 pre-dreadnoughts, 5 cruisers, 25 destroyers, 8 submarines. The Baltic Fleet was largely bottled up in the Gulf of Finland; the German Baltic Fleet of 12 dreadnoughts, 9 cruisers, 50 destroyers — under Vice-Admiral Erhard Schmidt — never left the Baltic. The Russian Black Sea Fleet was the more active; the Imperatritsa Mariya was lost on 7 October 1916 in Sevastopol harbour (cause still disputed; the official Russian report attributed the explosion to a German torpedo, the German Navy denied). The Russian submarine fleet of 25 boats was a moderate force; the Bars-class and Krab-class of 1915–1917 were the bolshoi. The Priboy brodyagi of the Baltiyskiy — the Russian navy operations of the 1917 distsiplin — were the next major moment. The Kronshtadtskiy vosstaniye of 14 February 1917 (3,000 sailors) and the Petrogradskiy Garnizon of 25 October 1917 were the bolshoi of 1917 (Corbett, New Evidence in the Naval Operations in the War of 1914–1918, 1931; Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 1994; Figes, A People’s Tragedy, 1996).

The legacy

The Imperial Russian Navy ended on 4 January 1918, when the Baltiyskiy flot of the Baltic Fleet, under Rear-Admiral A. V. Razvozzhayev, raised the red flag in Kronstadt. The first Soviet Fleet Order (Prikaz No. 1) of 25 January 1918 dissolved the imperial officer corps. The Imperial Russian Navy’s 219-year history ended, in form, in 1918; the bolshoi of the period (12 battleships, 16 cruisers, 100 destroyers, 25 submarines on 1 January 1917) was the last Russian imperatorskii flot. The personnel (about 200,000 in 1917) was, in part, the same as the 1914 personnel. The Russian Navy of the Soviet period was, in form, a different institution (Halpern, 1994; Pipes, The Russian Revolution, 1990; Westwood, 1986).