Petropavlovsk

The Vessel

The Petropavlovsk was a Russian Imperial Navy battleship, commissioned at the Galernyy Shipyard in St. Petersburg in 1897. She was 113 metres long, 10,960 tons standard displacement, armed with four 12-inch guns in two twin turrets fore and aft, and a secondary battery of twelve 6-inch guns in casemate mountings. She was the lead ship of her class of three pre-dreadnought battleships (Petropavlovsk, Poltava, Sevastopol), built as the principal Russian Baltic Fleet class of the 1890s.

The Petropavlovsk class was built specifically in response to the Russian Imperial Navy's strategic assessment of the 1890s: the specific threat from the expanding Japanese Imperial Navy in the Far East. By 1899, Petropavlovsk had been transferred from the Baltic Fleet to the Russian Pacific Squadron based at Port Arthur on the Liaodong Peninsula (the Russian leased territory on the Chinese coast). Her service at Port Arthur through 1899-1904 had been routine peacetime operations; she had not been substantially refitted since her 1899 transfer.

Her commanding officer in April 1904 was Vice-Admiral Stepan Osipovich Makarov, 55, one of the most respected naval officers in the Imperial Russian Navy. Makarov was an exceptional figure in late-nineteenth-century Russian naval culture: a distinguished oceanographer (his 1870s expedition to the Pacific had been one of the Russian Navy's principal scientific contributions), an experienced sea commander (he had commanded Russian naval forces in the 1877-78 Russo-Turkish War), and a published theorist of naval tactics. His appointment as commander-in-chief of the Russian Pacific Squadron in February 1904 had been widely recognised as a specific attempt to strengthen Russian naval operations at Port Arthur.

The Voyage

The Russo-Japanese War had begun on 8 February 1904 with the Japanese surprise attack on the Russian Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur. The initial Japanese torpedo attack had damaged three Russian battleships (Tsesarevich, Retvizan, and Pallada) at anchor in Port Arthur's outer roadstead. The subsequent Russian naval response had been inadequate under the previous commander-in-chief, Vice-Admiral Oskar Stark; Makarov's appointment in February 1904 had been specifically intended to restore the Russian naval initiative.

Through March and April 1904 Makarov had been conducting aggressive Russian naval operations from Port Arthur, attempting to disrupt Japanese naval operations off the Liaodong Peninsula. The specific mission pattern was the sortie of Russian battleships and cruisers at dawn each day to engage any Japanese naval force operating off Port Arthur. Makarov's approach had restored some of the Russian naval initiative but had produced substantial operational wear and tear on the Russian ships.

On 13 April 1904, Makarov led the Russian Pacific Squadron (including Petropavlovsk, Poltava, Sevastopol, Pobeda, Peresvet, and Diana) in a dawn sortie from Port Arthur. The Russian force had encountered Japanese Admiral Heihachirō Tōgō's Combined Fleet approximately 10 nautical miles east of Port Arthur. Makarov had ordered the Russian squadron to withdraw into the harbour rather than engage the stronger Japanese force.

The Disaster

At approximately 09:43 on 13 April 1904, as Petropavlovsk was proceeding north-northwest into Port Arthur's outer roadstead, she struck a Japanese naval mine. The Japanese mine-laying operation of the preceding weeks had placed approximately 500 mines in the approaches to Port Arthur; the specific mine that struck Petropavlovsk had been laid by the Japanese mine-layer Kōryū Maru on the night of 12 April 1904, approximately 18 hours before the strike.

The mine exploded against Petropavlovsk's starboard bow below the waterline. The damage was immediately catastrophic: the explosion breached her forward magazine; her forward magazine detonated approximately 30 seconds later. The secondary magazine explosion was substantially larger than the initial mine explosion; the combined effect produced essentially total destruction of Petropavlovsk's forward third.

Petropavlovsk capsized to starboard and sank in approximately 90 seconds at approximately 38°48′N 121°15′E, in approximately 35 metres of water. Of her 725 aboard, 632 died: Vice-Admiral Makarov, his staff, the ship's officers, and approximately 580 enlisted crew. Among the dead was the war-artist Vasily Vereshchagin, 62, one of the most celebrated Russian artists of the period, who had been aboard Petropavlovsk to document the Russian naval operations for a planned painting series. Vereshchagin had been on the afterdeck of the ship at the moment of the explosion and had gone down with her.

80 survivors were recovered by the Russian destroyers Storozhevoi and Siltny, which had been escorting the Pacific Squadron.

The Legacy

The death of Vice-Admiral Makarov aboard the Petropavlovsk was the specific turning point of the Russian Pacific naval campaign of the Russo-Japanese War. Makarov had been the only senior Russian officer in the Far East with the command experience and operational initiative to effectively contest Japanese naval superiority; his death produced an immediate collapse of Russian naval initiative that continued through the remainder of the 1904-1905 campaign.

Makarov's successor as commander-in-chief of the Russian Pacific Squadron, Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Vitgeft, was a substantially less capable officer. Vitgeft's operational approach through April-August 1904 was primarily defensive; his attempt at a breakout sortie in August 1904 (the Battle of the Yellow Sea on 10 August 1904) ended in tactical defeat and his own death. The subsequent Russian fleet actions at Port Arthur were conducted under continuing Japanese strategic superiority; the Russian Pacific Squadron was progressively destroyed through the siege of Port Arthur between August 1904 and January 1905.

The strategic consequences of the Petropavlovsk loss extended through the remainder of the war. The Russian Baltic Fleet (subsequently designated the 2nd Pacific Squadron) was dispatched from the Baltic to the Far East in October 1904 specifically to replace the lost Russian Pacific Squadron. The Baltic Fleet's 18,000-kilometre voyage to the Far East was one of the most difficult naval transits of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries; her arrival in Korean waters in May 1905 produced the catastrophic Battle of Tsushima (27-28 May 1905), in which Admiral Tōgō's Combined Fleet destroyed essentially the entire Russian Baltic Fleet in a single 24-hour engagement.

The Tsushima defeat, which followed directly from the earlier loss of the Russian Pacific Squadron (of which Petropavlovsk had been the lead), produced the terms of the September 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War. The Russian Empire's defeat in the war was one of the triggering events of the 1905 Russian Revolution and had substantial consequences for the subsequent Russian political order.

Vasily Vereshchagin's death aboard Petropavlovsk was a specific loss to Russian cultural life. Vereshchagin had been the most prominent Russian war-artist of the nineteenth century; his paintings of the Russo-Turkish War and of Central Asian subjects had achieved international recognition. His planned Russo-Japanese War series would probably have been his most significant work; the series was never begun.

The wreck of the Petropavlovsk was salvaged in stages by the Russian Imperial Navy between 1904 and 1907; approximately 400 of the 632 dead were recovered from the wreck for burial. The remaining wreckage was subsequently broken up during the Russo-Japanese War period. The 632 dead of the Petropavlovsk are commemorated at the Russian Navy Memorial Cathedral in Kronstadt, at the Makarov Memorial at the Petropavlovskaya Fortress in St Petersburg, and at the specific Vereshchagin Memorial at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. Vice-Admiral Stepan Osipovich Makarov remains, in modern Russian naval historiography, the single most respected Russian naval officer of the late Imperial period.