Russian ironclad Petr Veliky

An 1893 lithograph of Petr Veliky
History
Russian Empire
Name	Petr Velikiy
Namesake	Peter the Great
Operator	Imperial Russian Navy
Builder	Galerniy Island Shipyard, Saint Petersburg
Cost	over 5.5 million rubles
Laid down	23 July 1870[Note 1]
Launched	27 August 1872
Decommissioned	21 May 1921
In service	14 October 1876
Renamed	Blokshiv Nr. 1, 4 December 1923 Blokshiv Nr. 4, 1 January 1932 BSh-3, 16 May 1949
Reclassified	Training ship, 1908 Depot ship, 1917 Hulk, 1921
Stricken	18 April 1959
Fate	Scrapped after April 1959
General characteristics (as built)
Type	Turret ship
Displacement	10,406 long tons (10,573 t)
Length	333 ft 8 in (101.7 m)
Beam	63 ft (19.2 m)
Draft	24 ft 9 in (7.5 m) (designed)
Installed power	12 rectangular boilers 8,258 ihp (6,158 kW)
Propulsion	2 shafts; 2 horizontal-return, connecting rod-steam engines
Speed	about 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph)
Range	2,900 nautical miles (5,400 km; 3,300 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement	24 officers and 417 crewmen
Armament	As built: 2 × twin 12-inch (305 mm) guns 6 × single 4-pounder guns 2 × single 4-pounder Gatling-type machine guns 4 × spar torpedoes After 1907 refit: 4 × single 203 mm (8 in) guns 12 × single 152 mm (6 in) guns 12 × single 75 mm (3 in) guns 4 × single 57 mm (2.2 in) guns 8 × single 47 mm (1.9 in) guns 2 × single 37 mm (1.5 in) guns
Armor	Belt: 8–14 in (203–356 mm) Citadel: 14 in (356 mm) Deck: 2.5–3 in (64–76 mm) Gun turrets: 14 in (356 mm)

Petr Velikiy (Russian: Пётр Великий – Peter the Great) was an ironclad turret ship built for the Imperial Russian Navy during the 1870s. Her engines and boilers were defective, but were not replaced until 1881. The ship made a cruise to the Mediterranean after they were installed, and before returning to the Baltic Fleet, where she remained for the rest of her career. She did not, like the rest of the Baltic Fleet, participate in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878. Petr Veliky was deemed obsolete by the late 1890s, but she was not ordered to be converted into a gunnery training ship until 1903.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 slowed her reconstruction, and the ship was not completed until 1908. She spent most of World War I as a training ship, although she became a depot ship for submarines in 1917. Petr Veliky was in Helsinki in March 1918 when the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk required the Soviets to evacuate their naval base at Helsinki or have their ships interned by newly independent Finland even though the Gulf of Finland was still frozen over. The ship reached Kronstadt in April 1918 and was hulked on 21 May 1921. She remained in service with the Soviets, in various secondary roles, until she was finally stricken from the Navy List in 1959 and subsequently scrapped.
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