Ironclad Monitors: IRN Novgorod 1874

[Brian James]

Circular design Ironclad Monitor IRN Novgorod displays her 2 × 11inch rifled muzzle-loading main armament.
Built at the New Admiralty Shipyards,Saint Petersburg in 1874 She was one of the most unusual warships ever constructed, and still survives in popular naval myth as one of the worst Warships ever built. A more balanced assessment shows that she was relatively effective in her designed role as a Coast-Defence Ship. The hull was circular to reduce draught while allowing the ship to carry much more armour and a heavier armament than other ships of the same size. Novgorod played a minor role in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and was reclassified as a Coast-Defence Ironclad in 1892. Sheswas decommissioned in 1903 and used as a storeship until she was sold for scrap in 1911.
Rear-Admiral Andrei Alexandrovich Popov designed Novgorod to meet an 1869 requirement to defend the Dnieper-Bug Estuary and the Kerch Strait. The requirement was for four very heavily-armoured ships of 11-foot draught and armed with 11-inch rifled guns, for which the total programme cost should not exceed four million rubles. The 2,100-long-ton Charodeika-Class Monitor met all of the requirements except that their armament was not powerful enough, so General-Admiral Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich selected Popov's circular design in late December 1869. A model was built with a circular hull and performed well during tests in the Baltic Sea at St. Petersburg in April 1870; when Tsar Alexander II received reports of the trials, he nicknamed the ship a 'Popovka', a diminutive form of the designer's name.

[designeraccd]

The "round" hulled warships were pretty much a failure.
However, a similar round hulled yacht, the LIVIDIA, built in Scotland for the Tsar was somewhat successful.


General characteristics

Class and type: Powered yacht
Displacement: 4,420 tons[1]
4,500 tons[2]

Length: 71.63 m (submerged hull)[3]
79.25 m (overall)[3]

Beam: 46.64 m (submerged hull)[3]
33.53 (superstructure)[3]

Draft: 2.1 m (excluding propellers)
Propulsion: 3 steam engines (10,500 indicated h.p. standard, 12,354 i.h.p maximum[1]), 10 coal-fired boilers
Speed: 14 knots (15.725 knots maximum)[1]
Complement: 24 officers, 321 sailors and attendants (1880)[1]

The ROUND monitors......

Type: Monitor
Displacement: 2,491 long tons (2,531 t)
Length: 101 ft (30.8 m)
Beam: 101 ft (30.8 m)
Draught: 13 ft 6 in (4.1 m)
Installed power: 3,360 ihp (2,510 kW)
8 cylindrical boilers

Propulsion: 6 shafts, 6 compound-expansion steam engines
Speed: 6.5 knots (12.0 km/h; 7.5 mph)
Range: 480 nautical miles (890 km; 550 mi) at full speed
Complement: 151 officers and crewmen
Armament: 2 × 11-inch (279 mm) rifled muzzle-loading guns
Armour: Belt: 7–9 in (178–229 mm)
Barbette: 7–9 in (178–229 mm)
Deck: 2.75 in (70 mm)

Her gunnery trials revealed some of the problems:
While the first gunnery test revealed what should be deemed—at minimum—severe problems, coordination with the rudder and contra-rotation of the propellers helped to stop the ships from spinning off like tops in the field. However, the underlying problems of mobility could not be overcome. The rudder and propeller were undersized compared to the task of handling the unmoored disc, which rolled and pitched about in the waves of any river choppier than the Neva.

The result was poor aim, a 12-minute reload time, and a top speed less than half of that predicted by Popov and his acolytes. Not to mention that the designers had thought little of the crew, boiling in the poorly ventilated hull in the midst of brutal Ukrainian summers. Not even the compensations for the spin of the guns could salvage the round ship design.

Too much VODKA????????? Jules Verne might have been proud, looks wise!! DFO

[Brian James]

Excerpt from 'The Engineer' magazine dated May 9th 1879...The disappearing 11 inch rifled muzzle loader gun mount carriage fitted aboard the Black Sea Fleet circular Monitors Novgorod and Vice-Admiral Popov.