Poltava

The Russian battleship Poltava was one of three pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1890s. The ship was transferred to the Pacific Squadron shortly after completion and based at Port Arthur from 1901. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, she participated in the Battle of Port Arthur and was heavily damaged during the Battle of the Yellow Sea. She was sunk by Japanese artillery during the subsequent siege of Port Arthur in December 1904, but was raised by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) after the war and renamed Tango (丹後). During World War I, she bombarded German fortifications during the siege of Qingdao. The Japanese government sold Tango back to the Russians at their request in 1916. She was renamed Chesma (Чесма) as her former name had been given to a new ship. En route to the White Sea, she joined an Allied force that persuaded the Greek government to disarm their ships. Her crew declared for the Bolsheviks in October 1917, but made no effort to resist when the British captured her during the North Russia intervention in early 1918. In poor condition, the ship was used as a prison hulk. Abandoned by the British when they withdrew in 1919 and recaptured by the Bolsheviks, she was scrapped in 1924. Design and description The design of the was derived from the battleship , but was greatly enlarged to accommodate an armament of four and eight guns. While under construction their armament was revised to consist of more powerful 12-inch guns and the 8-inch guns were replaced by a dozen guns. The ships were long overall, with a beam of and a draft of . Designed to displace , Poltava was over overweight and displaced when completed. The ship was powered by two vertical triple-expansion steam engines, built by the British firm Humphrys, Tennant and Dykes, each driving one shaft, using steam generated by 14 cylindrical boilers. The engines were rated at and designed to reach a top speed of , but Poltava reached a speed of from during her sea trials. She carried enough coal to give her a range of at a speed of . Her crew consisted of 26–27 officers and 605–625 enlisted men. The Petropavlovsk-class ships' main battery consisted of four 12-inch guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one forward and one aft of the superstructure. Designed to fire one round per 90 seconds, the actual rate of fire was half that. Their secondary armament consisted of twelve Canet six-inch quick-firing (QF) guns.