Laid down: 17 December 1871

Launched: 21 May 1873

Commissioned: 1874

Decommissioned: 4 July 1903

Fate: Scrapped 1912

Struck: 1900

General Characteristics

Displacement: 2,491 tons (2,671 full load)

Length: 101 ft

Beam: 101 ft

Draught: 12.32 ft

Propulsion: 8 coal-fired boilers, 6 screws

Speed: 7 knts & 2,000 ihp

Range:

Complement: 150

Armament: 2 11″ guns, 2 4-pdr guns, 2 37-mm guns

Armor: 9″ belt, 2.3″ deck

With the advent of steam propulsion and armor, there were three major areas that dominated the design of a warship. Those were machinery, which determined speed, armor and armament. Normally any design was a series of compromises among these three areas. However, sometimes additional requirements were thrown into the mix that could have great impact in the design. One such requirement would be the need for a design to be able to operate in shallow water. In 1870 Imperial Russian had a requirement for an armored ship that would carry heavy guns and was further capable of operating in shallow water.

It was only 15 years since the Crimean War in which France and then Great Britain employed armored warships for the first time. These were armored batteries, rather than full-fledged warships but with their introduction, the genie was out of the bottle. France with the Gloire and then Great Britain with the Warrior, started building armored, steam powered capital ships. In 1870 in the Black Sea there were no armored warships but Russia decided that she needed armored warships mounting heavy guns to protect her southern border. Further, it was decided that any design to steam in the Black Sea had to have a shallow draft in order to operate in and through the Straits of Kerch and around the mouth of the Dneiper River. Vice Admiral A. A. Popov came up with a design that he thought would meet all of the requirements. To maximize armor and carry the heaviest guns possible on the lowest displacement and shallowest draught, Popov designed a ship whose beam equaled its length, a circular ship. Popov had not been the first to advocate a circular ship. Sir Edward Reed, chief designer for the Royal Navy in late 1860s had considered round ships for coast defense of England but they would never built.

Popov used a test tank for experiments with a model of a round warship. He then had a larger model, really a miniature ship, built to further test the concept. This model was 24-feet (7.5m) in diameter and was tested on the Neva River in 1870. The round design showed promise. Popov’s design was chosen as the first armored warship design to be employed in the Black Sea. The original decision was to build ten round “Popovki” to be used as armored steam batteries or floating forts in the Black Sea. The first of these ships was laid down in 1872 and was named the Novgorod. The ship was built in sections and these sections were transported to Nikolaev on the Black Sea for final assembly.

Length or width, with the Novgorod it didn’t matter as the dimension was a constant 101-feet (30.78m). The ship, displacing 2,491-tons, was capable of operating in shallow water with a draught of 13-feet 6-inches (4.11m). Eight boilers provided the steam for a horizontal compound engine, which developed a combined 3,000shp. This engine provided the power for the six propellers that drove the ship at a maximum speed of 6-knots when new, one-knot slower than designed. Two 11-inch/20 guns were on open mounts within a barbette with 9-inches of wrought iron armor. The sides had an 11-inch upper belt and 9-inch lower belt, while bow and stern areas had 9-inch belts. The ship was launched in 1873 and commissioned in 1874. The first three feet of the funnel base also was armored at 4 ½ inches. The main deck was not flat but was convex with the highest point 5-feet 3-inches above the waterline. With such a low freeboard the design would be very vulnerable in deep water in any sort of bad weather.

The design did have some advantages. One was the fairly low displacement for a ship that was heavily armored and that mounted two heavy guns. Another advantage was that the circular design allowed the heavy armor to amount to 20% of the ship’s displacement instead of the 30-40% needed for a conventional design. However, the negative aspects significantly outweighed the positives. A round design maximized water resistance and therefore resulted in a very low maximum speed. The circular design also proved unstable. It was almost impossible to keep the Novgorod steaming in a straight line. The low freeboard, shallow draft ship also pitched and rolled excessively in any sea state other than calm, greatly hindering accurate gunnery. Probably the worst characteristic occurred when one of the eleven-inch guns was fired. One rule of physics is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. With Novgorod when one of the guns was fired, the ship would start to spin, like a top. Even using some of propellers to counteract the movement could not prevent this rotation. It was obvious to the Russian Admiralty that the round design did not fulfill its promise. The second, larger “Popovki” was already building, so it was completed. Originally to be named Kiev, she was launched as the Popov in honor of her designer.

However, even with all of her negative qualities, the Novgorod was the only armored warship in the Black Sea for a time. She was kept operational until conventional warships started arriving. At one point the two outer shafts were removed, which lowered her to 2,000 ihp with a maximum speed of 5 ½ knots. In 1900 she was stricken as a warship and turned into a store ship at Sevastopol. Novgorod was finally scrapped just before World War One.

(History from Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1860-1905, 1979, N.J.M. Campbell for Russian Subjects; Warships of the Imperial Russian Navy, Volume 1 Battleships, 1968, by V.M. Tomitch)