Rurik was the last armored cruiser to be built for the Imperial Russian Navy. The ship was designed by the British firm Vickers, Sons and Maxim and built in their shipyard, being laid down in 1905 and completed in 1908. She was armed with a main battery of four guns and a secondary battery of eight guns; her top speed was rated at . Her design was well regarded and naval historians rate her as one of the best vessels of her type ever built. Intended as the first of a three-ship class, Ruriks sisters were cancelled with the advent of the British battlecruiser which was more powerfully armed and faster such that Rurik was rendered obsolete.
Rurik served as the flagship of the Russian Baltic Fleet for much of her relatively short career. She made one overseas cruise with a trip to the Mediterranean Sea in mid-1910, but spent the rest of her early career in the Baltic Sea. After the start of World War I, she operated with the other cruisers of the fleet, making raids on German positions in the southern Baltic, and after being modified to carry naval mines, took part in laying offensive minefields to block German naval traffic. She saw one major action, the Battle of Åland Islands, in July 1915. There, she engaged three German cruisers; she failed to score any hits and was struck several times, though she was not seriously damaged and her presence convinced the Germans to retreat.
The ship was badly damaged by a German mine in November 1916 and spent the next several months under repair. During that period out of service, the Russian Revolution toppled the Imperial government and ultimately led to the Bolshevik seizure of power late that year. The resulting Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ended the war for Russia and Rurik was laid up in Kronstadt in October 1918. She lingered there for another three years in a state of preservation, but by November 1923, she was in poor condition. The new Soviet Navy decided to break up the ship and she was towed to Petrograd, being scrapped there between 1924 and 1925.
Design
In July 1904, the Imperial Russian Navy held a design competition that solicited tenders from several foreign and domestic shipyards to design a new armored cruiser. Maximum displacement was limited to , more than twice that of the preceding of armored cruisers. Vickers won the competition to build the ship in June 1905, and the company offered several proposals, including a vessel armed with a dozen guns, though the Russians opted for a slightly smaller vessel displacing around that carried four of the 254 mm guns and twelve guns, along with a defensive armament of twenty guns.
Before construction work began, refinements were made to the design based on experiences gathered during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. The defensive battery was increased to guns since the 75 mm guns were no longer sufficiently powerful to deal with modern torpedo boats and destroyers. To save weight, four of the 203 mm guns were removed. Side armor had proved to be critically important in the battles against Japan, and so the ship's armor was strengthened. Despite the weight savings measures, displacement increased by about . The Russian Navy had originally planned to build another two cruisers to the same design in domestic shipyards, but budgetary problems, coupled with the advent of the steam turbine-powered, all-big-gun battlecruisers of the British in 1907 rendered the plans moot.
Despite the appearance of more powerful battlecruisers before her completion, Rurik is generally considered to have been a very good design. N. J. M. Campbell states that Rurik was "the best large ship laid down for the Russian Navy up to 1905 and one of the best armored cruisers ever built." Anthony Watts concurs, describing her as "one of the finest armoured cruisers ever built."
General characteristics and propulsion machinery
Rurik was long between perpendiculars, long at the waterline, and long overall. She had a beam of and a draft of and displaced . Her hull featured a long forecastle deck that extended to her main mast and incorporated a pronounced ram bow. Her superstructure was minimal, consisting primarily of her main conning tower forward with a command bridge and a smaller, secondary conning tower aft.
She was completed with just the pole main mast that was placed just ahead of the rear conning tower, but around the time she entered service in 1909, a pole fore mast was installed atop her forward conning tower as well. By 1917, the fore mast had been replaced with a sturdier tripod mast to support a spotting top to help the direction of her armament. Steering was controlled by a single rudder. Her crew numbered 26 officers and 910 enlisted men.
The ship's propulsion system consisted of two vertical triple-expansion steam engines that drove a pair of screw propellers. Steam was provided by twenty-eight coal-fired Belleville type water-tube boilers, which were vented through three funnels located amidships. The power plant was rated to produce for a top speed of . Coal storage amounted to . While steaming at a more economical , Rurik could cruise for .
Armament
Ruriks main battery consisted of four 50-caliber (cal.) guns in a pair of twin gun turrets, mounted fore and aft on the centerline. These guns and their turrets were designed by Vickers specifically for Rurik. The turrets were oval-shaped and sat atop a working chamber that handled shells and propellant charges brought up from the magazines below. One set of hoists brought the munitions up to the working chambers from their magazines, and another set transferred them up to the turrets. In addition to the split hoist arrangement, anti-flash precautions included a sprinkler system in the magazines and provisions to quickly flood them in the event of a serious fire. The guns fired armor piercing (AP) or high explosive (HE) shells at a muzzle velocity of . At their maximum elevation of 21 degrees, the guns had a range of for the AP round and for the HE variant. The guns had to be returned to between −5 and 8 degrees of elevation to be reloaded. The guns had a rate of fire of two shots per minute.
Her main battery was supported by a secondary battery of eight 203 mm 50 cal. Pattern 1905 guns in four twin turrets, which were placed on the corners of the superstructure, two turrets per broadside. These were also Vickers designs, though they had been used on a number of earlier Russian pre-dreadnought battleships. They fired a semi-armor-piercing (SAP) shell at a muzzle velocity of . At the elevation of 15 degrees, they could hit targets out to ; the turrets allowed elevation from −5 to 25 degrees, but range figures at maximum elevation are unknown. The turrets were broadly similar to the 254 mm guns, but the guns could be reloaded at any angle of elevation. The guns could fire three shells per minute.
For defense against torpedo boats, the ship carried a tertiary battery of twenty 120 mm 50 cal. guns carried individually in casemates. Sixteen were located in the forecastle deck, clustered around the superstructure, while the remaining four were located in the stern. They fired a SAP shell at a velocity of 792.5 m/s, and at an elevation of 19.5 degrees, had a range of . Their rate of fire was eight rounds per minute. Four 43 cal. Hotchkiss guns rounded out the armament. She was also armed with a pair of torpedo tubes. The M1908 torpedo carried a warhead and had a range of at a speed of ; the range doubled when they were set to . These were later replaced with M1912 variants, which increased the warhead to . Their performance increased considerably, reaching at a speed of and at .
Armor The ship was protected with Krupp cemented armor plate. Her armor belt covered the side of the hull from above the waterline and below. The main section of belt, between the barbettes for the 254 mm guns, was thick, tapering to at the top edge and at the bottom. Forward of the main section, the belt was reduced to 102 mm with a bottom edge, while aft, the belt was a uniform thickness of 76 mm. The aft section did not extend all the way to the sternpost, instead terminating at a 76 mm transverse bulkhead. Above the belt, a strake of armor that was 76 mm thick covered the tertiary casemates. There were three armored decks; the lower deck was thick, with sloped sides that were and connected to the bottom edge of the belt. The main deck was also 38 mm thick, and above that, the roof of the casemate battery was 25 mm.
Ruriks conning tower had 203 mm of armor plate on the sides. Her main battery turrets consisted of 203 mm on the front and sides and sloped roofs, and they were supported by barbettes that extended down to the ammunition magazines. Behind the belt, the barbettes reduced in thickness to . The secondary turrets received slightly lighter protection, with 180 mm sides and faces and 50 mm roofs. Their barbettes were 152 mm thick above the belt and 38–76 mm below. Underwater protection consisted of a torpedo bulkhead that was 38 mm thick, set back about from the side of the ship. It covered the ship's citadel.
Service history
The keel for Rurik was laid down on 22 August 1905, and she was launched on 17 November 1906. Structural weaknesses were revealed during gunnery testing in 1907, but the Russian Navy decided to remedy the defects after delivery rather than delay her completion. The testing included firing thirty rounds from two of the 254 mm guns, another thirty shells from two of the 203 mm guns, and fifteen shots from the 120 mm guns. During steam trials in 1908, she exceeded her design speed and horsepower. The ship was completed in September 1908 and delivered to the Russian fleet. Upon arrival, she was sent to the shipyard in Kronstadt for modifications to her hull structure to correct the design problems. She operated in the Baltic Sea over the following two years, and in July 1910, she was sent on a cruise in the Mediterranean Sea. She returned to the Baltic, where she remained for the next three years. Starting in 1913, she served as the flagship of the Baltic Fleet.
World War I At the start of World War I in July 1914, Russia had not yet completed its s or dreadnought battleships, leaving Rurik and the Bayan-class cruisers as the core of the Baltic Fleet. These ships bore the burden of naval operations against the significantly more powerful Imperial German Navy in the Baltic. At the time, Rurik served as the flagship of Admiral Nikolai Ottovich von Essen, the commander of Russian naval forces in the Baltic. Ruriks commander was initially Captain Mikhail Bakhirev. He sortied with Rurik and the armored cruiser on 27 August to make a sweep into the western Baltic in the vicinity of Bornholm, Denmark, and Danzig, Germany. They failed to locate any enemy vessels, however. The operation bolstered the morale of the Baltic Fleet, but Tsar Nicholas II refused to grant Essen the freedom of maneuver he sought to force action with the German fleet. The Russians nevertheless won a major intelligence victory that month when the German cruiser ran aground in Russian territory and they were able to recover German code books, allowing the Russian Navy to decrypt German wireless signals.