Sailors are considered the most superstitious people. Perhaps this is due to the fact that they have to defend their right to life in the fight against the unpredictable water elements. Many sailors' legends mention “cursed” places where ships are destroyed. For example, the Russian coast also has its own “ Bermuda Triangle» - off the coast of Sevastopol, Laspi district. Today, the place near the Pavlovsky Cape is considered the quietest; it is there that the naval hospital with a convenient berth is located. But in this place, with an interval of 49 years, the most modern and powerful battleships of the Russian Black Sea fleet, Novorossiysk and Empress Maria, perished.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the maritime powers of the world actively began to build at their shipyards warships of unprecedented power at that time, having colossal armor and equipped with modern weapons.
Russia was forced to respond to the challenge of its longtime enemy in the Black Sea region - Turkey, which ordered three Dreadnought-class battleships for its navy from European shipbuilders. These warships could turn the tide in Turkey's favor on the Black Sea.
The Baltic coast of Russia was reliably protected by four new battleships of the Sevastopol class. It was decided to build ships more powerful than the Baltic ones to protect the Black Sea borders of Russia.
In 1911, the very first ship was laid down at the Nikolaev shipyard new series- “Empress Maria”. The fact that Russian shipbuilders accomplished a feat is evidenced by the fact that the new battleship in shortest time was launched on the eve of World War II.
In August 1914, the German cruisers Goeben and Breslau, which broke into the Black Sea, were fictitiously acquired by Turkey and received new names Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli. The fictitious nature of the deal was confirmed by the fact that the “new Turkish” warships still had full German crews.
On the morning of October 29, the cruiser Goeben approached the entrance of Sevastopol Bay. Without Turkey declaring war, the cruiser's guns opened fire on the sleeping city and the ships in the roadstead. The shells spared neither civilians nor the hospital building, where several patients were killed as a result of the treacherous shelling. And although the Black Sea sailors resolutely entered the battle, the battleships then in service with the Russian fleet were much inferior in both power and speed to the Turkish raider, who “ruled” the Russian coastal waters with impunity and easily escaped pursuit.
The commissioning of the powerful Russian battleship Empress Maria made it possible to successfully repel attacks by the Turkish navy. On June 30, 1915, the battleship majestically entered Sevastopol Bay, carrying twelve 305-mm guns and the same number of 130-mm cannons. Soon, a warship of a similar class, the Empress Catherine the Great, stood alongside its predecessor to protect the southern sea borders of Russia.
The new battleships managed to end the dominance of German-Turkish raiders in the Black Sea. And in the spring of 1916, the gunners of the battleship "Empress Maria" with the third salvo caused irreparable damage to the Turkish-German cruiser "Breslau" located near Novorossiysk. And in the same year, the battleship Empress Catherine inflicted serious damage to the Goeben, which after that could barely “crawl” to the Bosphorus.
In July 1916, the talented and energetic Vice Admiral A. Kolchak took command of the Black Sea Fleet. Under his command, “Ekaterina” and “Maria” made 24 combat missions, demonstrating the power of the Russian fleet, and mine laying “locked” the Black Sea for visits from enemy warships for a long time.
On the morning of October 7, 1916, Sevastopol was awakened by loud explosions that thundered one after another on the battleship Empress Maria. First, the bow turret caught fire, and then the conning tower was demolished, and the explosion vomited most deck, the foremast and bow funnel were blown away. The ship's hull received a huge hole. The rescue of the ship became significantly more difficult after the fire pumps and electricity were turned off.
But even after such damage, the command had hope of saving the battleship - if another terrible explosion had not thundered, much more powerful than the previous ones. Now his ship could no longer stand it: as a result, the bow and cannon ports quickly sank into the water, the battleship tilted to the right side, capsized and sank. During the rescue of the warship, the pride of the Russian fleet, about 300 people died.
The death of "Empress Maria" shocked all of Russia. A very professional commission began to find out the reasons. Three versions of the death of the battleship were studied: negligence in handling ammunition, spontaneous combustion and malicious intent.
Since the commission concluded that high-quality gunpowder was used on the ship, the likelihood of explosions from fire was very low. The unique design of the powder magazines and towers at that time excluded the possibility of a fire caused by negligence. There was only one thing left - a terrorist attack. The penetration of enemies onto the ship was facilitated by the fact that at that time numerous repair work was carried out, in which hundreds of workers who were not part of the battleship’s crew participated.
After the tragedy, many sailors said that “the explosion was carried out by attackers with the aim of not only destroying the ship, but also killing the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, who, with his actions recently, and especially by scattering mines near the Bosphorus, finally stopped the predatory raids of the Turkish-German cruisers on the Black Sea coast...". It would be wrong to say that the counterintelligence of the Black Sea Fleet and the gendarme department were not looking for the attackers, but they were never able to confirm the version of the terrorist attack.
Only in 1933 did Soviet counterintelligence manage to arrest the head of a German reconnaissance group operating in shipyards, a certain Wehrmann. He confirmed that he participated in the preparation of sabotage on warships during the First World War. But on the eve of the death of “Empress Maria” he was deported from Russia. The question arises: even though he was deported, his reconnaissance group still remained in Sevastopol, and why was he awarded the Iron Cross in Germany soon after leaving Russia? By the way, the following established fact is interesting: the order to blow up the “Empress Maria” was received from German intelligence by agent “Charles,” who was also a Russian counterintelligence agent. Why did no one take appropriate measures in a timely manner?
A little later, a talented shipbuilder, Academician Krylov, proposed a very original and simple way to raise a battleship: lift the ship up with its keel, gradually displacing water with compressed air; then, bring the ship in such an inverted position into the dock and begin to eliminate all the damage caused by the explosions. This lifting project was implemented by the engineer of the Sevastopol port, Sidensner. In the summer of 1918, the battleship was docked, where it remained, upside down, for four years while the Civil War was raging. After the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Peace, shameful for Russia, German-Turkish ships brazenly settled in the Sevastopol Bay. Often blown up by Russian mines, the Turkish Goeben used the Sevastopol docks for its repairs, where nearby stood the hull of a Russian battleship that died not in open battle, but from a vile blow “in the back.”
In 1927, the hull of the battleship Empress Maria was finally dismantled. The multi-ton turrets of the legendary ship and guns were installed on the Black Sea coastal battery. During World War II, the guns of the battleship Empress Maria defended the approaches to Sevastopol until June 1942 and were knocked out only after the Germans used more powerful weapons against them...
Also, one cannot remain silent about another legend of the Black Sea Fleet - the battleship Novorossiysk.
The history of this ship began on the eve of the First World War. Three battleships were built in Italian shipyards - Conte di Cavour, Giulio Cesare and Leonardo da Vinci. They were the main force of the entire Italian navy and participated in two world wars. But these ships did not bring glory to their state: in battles they failed to inflict any significant damage on their numerous opponents.
“Cavour” and “Leonardo” met their death not in battle, but in the roadstead. But the fate of “Giulio Cesare” turned out to be very interesting. At the Tehran Conference, the Allies decided to divide the Italian fleet between Great Britain, the USA and the USSR.
It should be noted that by the end of World War II, the Soviet navy had only two battleships that were built at the beginning of the century - Sevastopol and October Revolution. But the USSR was unlucky, by lot, it received the rather battered Giulio Cesare, while Great Britain received the latest Italian battleships, superior in all characteristics to the famous German Bismarck.
Soviet specialists were able to deliver their part of the heritage of the Italian fleet to the Black Sea harbor only in 1948. The battleship, although worn out and obsolete, nevertheless became the flagship of the post-war Black Sea Soviet fleet.
The battleship, after a five-year stay in the port of Toronto, was in a very poor condition: the ship's mechanisms needed to be replaced, the outdated in-ship communications practically did not work, there was a poor survivability system, the cockpits were damp with three-tier bunks, and there was a tiny, unkempt galley. In 1949, the Italian ship was docked for repairs. A few months later it was given a new name - “Novorossiysk”. And although the battleship was set sail, it was constantly being repaired and equipped. But even despite such efforts, the battleship clearly did not meet the requirements for a warship.
On October 28, 1955, the Novorossiysk, returning from another voyage, moored at the Naval Hospital - it was there that the Empress Maria stood 49 years ago. On this day, reinforcements arrived on the ship. The new arrivals were placed in the forward quarters. As it turned out, for many of them this was the first and last day of service. In the dead of night, a terrible explosion was heard under the hull, closer to the bow. The alarm was declared not only on the Novorossiysk, but also on all ships nearby. Medical and emergency teams urgently arrived at the damaged battleship. The commander of the Novorossiysk, seeing that it was impossible to eliminate the leak, turned to the fleet commander with a proposal to evacuate the crew, but was refused. About a thousand sailors gathered on the deck of the slowly sinking battleship. But time was lost. Not everyone was able to be evacuated. The hull of the ship twitched, began to sharply list to the left side and in an instant turned upside down with its keel. “Novorossiysk” practically completely repeated the fate of “Empress Maria”. Hundreds of sailors suddenly found themselves in the water, many immediately sank under the weight of their clothes, part of the crew managed to climb to the bottom of the overturned ship, some were picked up by lifeboats, others managed to swim to the shore themselves. The stress of those who reached the shore was so great that many lost their hearts and fell dead. For some time, a knock could be heard inside the overturned ship - this was the signal from the sailors remaining there. Undoubtedly, all responsibility for the loss of life lies with Vice Admiral, Commander of the Black Sea Fleet Parkhomenko. Because of his lack of professionalism, inability to assess the real situation and uncertainty, hundreds of people died. Here is what a diver participating in rescuing people wrote: “At night, for a long time, I dreamed about the faces of people whom I saw under water in the portholes that they tried to open. With gestures I made it clear that we would save them. People nodded, they said, they understood... I sank deeper, I heard them knocking in Morse code, the knocking in the floor was clearly audible: “Rescue quickly, we are suffocating...” I also tapped them: “Be strong, everyone will be saved.” And then it started! They started knocking in all the compartments so that those above would know that the people trapped under water were alive! I moved closer to the bow of the ship and couldn’t believe my ears - they were singing “Varyag”!” In reality, only a few people were saved from the overturned ship. In total, about 600 people died.
The ship was raised from the bottom in 1956 and dismantled for scrap.
Based on the results of the commission’s work, it was recognized that the cause of the explosion was a German magnetic mine, which, after being at the bottom for ten years, came into action. But this conclusion surprised all the sailors. Firstly, immediately after the war, a thorough trawling and mechanical destruction of all explosive objects was carried out. Secondly, over the course of ten years, many other ships anchored at this place hundreds of times. Thirdly, what strength should this magnetic mine be if as a result of the explosion a hole of more than 160 square meters was formed in the stern. meters, eight decks were pierced by the explosion, three of which were armored, and the upper deck was completely mangled? That this mine had more than a ton of TNT? Even the most powerful German mines did not have such a charge.
According to one of the versions circulating among the sailors, it was a sabotage by Italian underwater saboteurs. This version was followed by an experienced Soviet admiral Kuznetsov. It is known that during the war years, Italian submariners, under the leadership of Prince Borghese, destroyed a number of English warships equal to all to the navy Italy. A submarine could have delivered the swimmers to the sabotage site. Using the latest diving devices, they could use guided torpedoes to get close enough to the bottom of the ship and set a charge. They say that after signing the capitulation, Prince Borghese publicly declared that the battleship Giulio Cesare, dear to the hearts of all Italians, would never sail under the enemy flag. If we also take into account the fact that during the war it was in Sevastopol that the Italian submariners had a base (and, therefore, they knew the Sevastopol Bay well), then the version of sabotage looks very plausible.
After the disaster, while exploring the ship, captain of the second rank Lepekhov discovered a secret, previously carefully welded, compartment at the very bottom of the Novorossisk. It is possible that there was a hidden charge of enormous power there. Borghese undoubtedly knew this, so a device of lesser force might have been required to detonate the explosion. But the command did not consider this version when investigating the disaster. Although she is very viable. After all, if we imagine that all the explosives were delivered to the ship by underwater saboteurs, then how many trips from the submarine to the battleships would they need to make in order to transfer a thousand tons of TNT undetected?
They tried to quickly “hush up” the disaster by firing commander V.A. Parkhomenko and Admiral N.G. Kuznetsov, paid benefits to the families of the victims. The Novorossiysk was scrapped, followed by the battleship Sevastopol. A few years later, the Turks, refusing to hand over the rusting Goeben to the French to create a museum, also cut it up.
It must be said that today there is a monument to the sailors of the Novorossiysk, but they forgot to immortalize the heroically dead sailors of the Empress Maria.
At the end of October 1916, Russia was shocked by the news of the death of its newest battleship, the Empress Maria, and hundreds of sailors from its crew in the Sevastopol harbor. Until now, the real cause of this disaster has not been clarified. However, documents appearing in last years, allow us to get closer to the truth
Confrontation
With the appearance in Sevastopol in the summer of 1915 of two new powerful and high-speed battleships - the Empress Maria and the Empress Catherine the Great - the overall balance of naval forces in the Black Sea changed in favor of Russia. Before Turkish fleet had a certain advantage. It was provided by large and fast warships received from Germany along with their crews: heavy cruiser“Goeben” with a displacement of 23,000 tons, with large-caliber and long-range artillery, and the light cruiser “Breslau” (renamed by the Turks, respectively, “Yavyz Sultan Selim” and “Midilli”). More than once, this “couple” invaded Russian territorial waters, carrying out daring artillery attacks on the coast and port cities. And at the same time, sometimes even having received combat damage from a superior Russian squadron, taking advantage of its advantage in speed, it always escaped pursuit. The only serious counterweight to “Goeben” and “Breslau” were “Maria” and “Catherine”.
The morning of October 7, 1916 began in the fortified city of Sevastopol, as usual, with a discordant sound of ship signals, notifying their crews of a wake-up call. The sailors began the next day of naval service by removing hanging canvas bunks from the racks that were removed for the day, tying them up and placing them in rows on lockers (lockers) in the cockpits, washing and dressing, and then lining up for morning roll call and prayer.
Catastrophe
Among large ships, standing on anchors and barrels in the waters of the Sevastopol internal roadstead on October 7, two new battleships stood out for their size and power of armament. That morning, only one of them, the “Empress Maria” (which had returned to base the day before after a multi-day voyage), did not hear wake-up signals at the usual time. The commander of the battleship, Captain 1st Rank Kuznetsov, ordered to move it an hour later to give the crew a rest after the intense emergency work of reloading thousands of tons of coal onto the ship, completed well after midnight.
At approximately 6:15 am, residents of the coastal part of Sevastopol and the crews of ships standing at the berths, piers and anchors in the Northern and Southern bays of the harbor heard the thunderous sound of a powerful explosion coming from the side where the new battleships were moored. And immediately a black plume of smoke rose high above the bow of the Empress Maria. From the nearby battleships “Ekaterina the Great” and “Eustathius” it was clear that in the place of the hull where the “I. M.” There was the first main caliber artillery tower, a foremast with a conning tower and a forward chimney, and a huge smoking cavity formed. Its edges almost reached the surface of the water and were engulfed in flames, which soon spread to the paint of the superstructures and canvas coverings, and along them to the casemates of mine-caliber guns. A whole series of new explosions followed, raising into the air a fiery fireworks display from many flaming ribbons of charging gunpowder scattered around. From the heights of the bridges of the masts, the signalmen of neighboring ships could see how burned and engulfed in fire people were rushing about on the upper deck of the burning battleship, the dead were lying and the wounded were moving. The fire extinguishing system and other ship mechanisms did not work. The half-naked officers of the battleship, led by the commander (who ordered - as required by the Ship's Regulations - to open the kingstons and flood the artillery cellars of the surviving main caliber towers) and the first mate who helped him (Captain 2nd Rank Gorodysky) tried to organize the extinguishing of numerous fires using improvised means. The sailors selflessly put out the fire with tarpaulin covers, pieces of canvas, greatcoats, pea coats... But this did not help much. After all, with explosions of lesser force and strong winds, burning ribbons of charging gunpowder were carried throughout the ship everywhere, causing new fires and new explosions, and falling into the water near the ship, they also set fire to the leaked oil... About what happened on “I. M.” reported to the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Vice Admiral A.V. Kolchak. The Comflot ordered the base ships and neighboring ships to provide assistance to the blown up battleship. Port tugs and fire boats were sent to it, and from “Eustathia” - motor and rowing longboats and boats were sent to rescue those who found themselves in the water, in places engulfed in flames due to oil spilled on its surface...
Soon on “I. M.”, where explosions of lesser force continued, but located on an even keel with a slight trim on the bow, the fleet commander arrived on a boat. His short presence on board could no longer help the burning, de-energized ship, which was listing to starboard, and Kolchak, taking several wounded with him, left for the shore.
After a particularly powerful explosion, the agonizing battleship began to rapidly fall to the starboard side, abruptly turned upside down with its keel and sank under the water. Less than an hour had passed since the first explosion.
Investigation
According to official reports, the following people died along with the ship: a mechanical engineer (officer), two conductors (foremen) and 149 lower ranks. Soon, another 64 people died from wounds and burns. In total, over 300 sailors became victims of the disaster. There could have been more of them if at the time of the explosion in the bow tower of the battleship, its crew had not been praying in the stern of the ship. Many officers and conscripts were saved by the fact that they were on shore leave before the flag was raised in the morning...
The next day after the disaster, two special commissions appointed by the highest order of the Tsar - technical and investigative - left Petrograd for Sevastopol under the joint chairmanship of Admiral N. M. Yakovlev (member of the Admiralty Council, former commander of the Pacific squadron battleship Petropavlovsk, which was blown up by Japanese mines in 1904). One of the members of the technical commission was appointed as a general on behalf of the Minister of Naval Affairs - A. N. Krylov, an academician, an outstanding naval engineer who designed and participated in the construction of the I.N. M.”
During the week and a half of the commission’s work in Sevastopol, all the surviving officers, conductors and sailors of I.G. passed before it. M.”, as well as eyewitnesses from other ships who testified about the circumstances of the disaster. As a result of the investigation, it was established that: “... the cause of the explosion was a fire that broke out in the bow charging artillery magazine of the main caliber of the battleship...”
Having considered the possible causes of the fire in the artillery cellar, the commission settled on the three most probable: spontaneous combustion of the gunpowder charge, negligence in handling the fire or the gunpowder itself, and “malicious intent.”
Spontaneous combustion of gunpowder and carelessness in handling fire and gunpowder were considered unlikely. At the same time, it was noted that “... on the battleship “I. M.” there were significant deviations from the statutory requirements regarding access to artillery cellars. In particular, many of the hatches in the tower did not have locks. During the stay in Sevastopol, representatives of various factories worked on the battleship. A family check of the artisans was not carried out...” Therefore, the commission did not rule out the possibility of “malicious intent.” Moreover, noting the poor organization of service on the battleship, she pointed out the relatively easy possibility of its implementation...
In November 1916, the secret report of the commission landed on the desk of the Minister of Naval Affairs, Admiral I.K. Grigorovich, who reported the conclusions from it to the Tsar. And then - in connection with the revolutionary events of subsequent years - the documents were sent to the archive. The new authorities did not engage in further investigation in order to identify the real cause of the fire in the artillery cellar. This whole story seemed to have sunk into oblivion.
New information
In the 1920s, information appeared that in the summer of 1917, Russian agents working in Germany obtained and delivered several small metal tubes to naval headquarters. They were sent to the laboratory and turned out to be mechanical fuses made of extremely fine brass. Later it turned out that exactly the same pipe was found in a sailor's visor in a bomb cellar that mysteriously exploded in August 1915 in the harbor of the Main Base of the Italian Fleet - Taranto from a fire in the artillery cellar of the main caliber tower, but not the sunken Italian dreadnought "Leonardo da Vinci" .
Bring it to “I.” M.” such a tube and placing it in the unlocked turret compartment did not, as we already know from the commission’s report, require much difficulty - it could have been done by the “workers” of the factories, or by “someone” when reloading coal from barges to a battleship. In general, the relevant “specialists” will find other ways to cause a fire in a selected room, especially a ship (more on them below). And the above and other facts of those years indicate the commitment of Austro-German intelligence to sabotage methods of disabling enemy ships...
Werman spy group
After the Great Patriotic War Researchers who managed to get to documents from the KGB archive identified and made public information about the work in Nikolaev since 1907 (including at a shipyard that built Russian battleships) of a group of German spies led by resident Werman. It included many well-known people in this city and even the mayor of Nikolaev, Matveev, and most importantly, shipyard engineers: Sheffer, Linke, Feoktistov and others, in addition, electrical engineer Sgibnev, who studied in Germany. This was revealed by the OGPU in the early thirties, when its members were arrested and during the investigation testified about their participation in the bombing of “I. M." For which, according to this information, the direct perpetrators of the action - Feoktistov and Sgibnev - were promised 80 thousand rubles in gold by Verman each, however, after the end of hostilities... Our security officers were of little interest in all this then - cases from pre-revolutionary times were considered nothing more than historically curious “ texture". And therefore, during the investigation of the current “sabotage” activities of this group, information about the bombing of “I. M.” did not receive further development.
Not long ago, employees of the Central Archive of the FSB of Russia A. Cherepkov and A. Shishkin, having found part of the investigative materials in the case of the Verman group, documented the fact of the exposure in 1933 in Nikolaev of a deeply secret network of intelligence officers working for Germany, operating there since pre-war times and “ focused” on local shipyards. True, they did not find specific evidence of their participation in the bombing of “I.G.” in the archival documents they initially discovered. M.” But the contents of some protocols of interrogations of members of Verman’s group even then gave quite strong reasons to believe that this espionage organization, which had great capabilities, could well have carried out such sabotage. After all, she hardly “sat idly by” during the war: for Germany, the need to disable the new Russian battleships on the Black Sea, which posed a mortal threat to the Goeben and Breslau, was acute...
Recently, the above-mentioned employees of the Central Election Commission of the FSB of the Russian Federation, having continued the search and study of materials related to the case of the Verman group, found in the archival documents of the OGPU of Ukraine for 1933-1934 and the Sevastopol Gendarmerie Directorate for October - November 1916, new facts that significantly complement the -revealing in a new way the “sabotage” version of the reason for the explosion of “I. M.” Thus, the interrogation reports indicate that a native (1883) of the city of Kherson - the son of a native of Germany, steamship operator E. Werman - Viktor Eduardovich Werman, educated in the Fatherland and Switzerland, a successful businessman, and then an engineer at the Russud shipbuilding plant, indeed was a German intelligence officer since pre-revolutionary times (the activities of V. Werman are described in detail in that part of the archival investigative file of the OGPU of Ukraine for 1933, which is called “My espionage activities in favor of Germany under the tsarist government”). During interrogations, he testified, in particular: “...I began to engage in espionage work in 1908 in Nikolaev (it was from this period that the implementation of a new shipbuilding program in the south of Russia began. - O.B.), working at the Naval plant in the department marine vehicles. I was involved in espionage activities by a group of German engineers from that department, consisting of engineer Moor and Hahn.” And further: “Moor and Hahn, and most of all the first, began to process and involve me in intelligence work in favor of Germany...” After Hahn and Moor left for the Fatherland, the “management” of Werman’s work passed directly to the German vice-consul in Nikolaev, Mr. Winstein. Wehrman in his testimony gave comprehensive information about him: “...I learned that Winstein is an officer of the German army with the rank of Hauptmann (captain), that he is in Russia not by chance, but is a resident of the German General Staff and carries out a lot of intelligence work on south of Russia. Around 1908, Vinstein became vice-consul in Nikolaev. He fled to Germany a few days before the declaration of war - in July 1914.” Due to the prevailing circumstances, Woerman was tasked with taking over the leadership of the entire German intelligence network in southern Russia: Nikolaev, Odessa, Kherson and Sevastopol. Together with his agents, he recruited people there for intelligence work (many Russified German colonists then lived in the south of Ukraine), collected materials on industrial enterprises, data on surface and submarine military vessels under construction, their design, armament, tonnage, speed and T. n. During interrogations, Werman said: “... Of the people I personally recruited for espionage work in the period 1908-1914, I remember the following: Steiwech... Blimke... Linke Bruno, engineer Schaeffer... electrician Sgibnev" (the German consul brought him together with the latter in 1910 in Nikolaev, Frischen, who chose the experienced electrical engineer Sgibnev, the money-hungry owner of the workshop, with his trained intelligence eye as the necessary figure in the “ big game" Considering that both Verman and Sgibnev knew each other from the city yacht club, since both were inveterate yachtsmen...). All those recruited were or, like Sgibnev, became (he, on Verman’s instructions, went to work at Russud in 1911) as employees of shipyards who had the right of passage to the ships being built there. Electrician Sgibnev was responsible for work on electrical equipment on warships built by Russud, including the Empress Maria.
In 1933, during the investigation, Sgibnev showed that Verman was very interested in the electrical equipment of the main caliber artillery towers on the new battleships of the Dreadnought type, especially on the first of them transferred to the fleet, the Empress Maria. “During the period 1912-1914,” said Sgibnev, “I conveyed various information to Verman about the progress of their construction and the timing of the readiness of individual compartments - within the framework of what I knew.” The special interest of German intelligence in the electrical circuits of the main caliber artillery turrets of these battleships becomes understandable: after all, the first strange explosion on the Empress Maria occurred precisely under its bow main caliber artillery turret, all the premises of which were saturated with various electrical equipment...
In 1918, after the German occupation of the South of Russia, Woerman's intelligence activities were rewarded. From the protocol of his interrogation: “...Upon presentation, the captain was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd degree, for his work and espionage activities in favor of Germany.” Having survived the intervention and civil war, Verman is a “donkey” in Nikolaev.
Thus, the explosion on “I. M.”, despite Werner’s deportation during this period, was most likely carried out according to his plan. After all, not only in Nikolaev, but also in Sevastopol, he prepared a network of agents. During interrogations in 1933, he spoke about it this way: “...I personally have been in contact since 1908 on intelligence work with the following cities: ...Sevastopol, where intelligence activities were led by a mechanical engineer from the Naval plant, Vizer, who was in Sevastopol on behalf of our plant specifically for the installation of the battleship Zlatoust, which was being completed in Sevastopol. I know that Vizer had his own spy network there, of which I remember only the designer of the Admiralty, Ivan Karpov; I had to deal with him personally.” In this regard, the question arises: did Wieser’s people (and he himself) participate in the work on “Maria” in early October 1916? After all, at that time there were shipbuilding workers on board every day, among whom they could well have been. This is what is said about this in the report dated 10/14/16 from the head of the Sevastopol gendarmerie department to the chief of staff Black Sea Fleet(recently identified by researchers). It provides information from secret agents of the gendarmerie on “I. M.”: “The sailors say that the electricity wiring workers, who were on the ship before the explosion until 10 o’clock in the evening, could have done something with malicious intent, since the workers did not look around at all when entering the ship and also worked without inspection. Suspicion in this regard is especially expressed against an engineer from the company at 355 Nakhimovsky Prospekt, who supposedly left Sevastopol on the eve of the explosion... And the explosion could have occurred from an incorrect connection of electrical wires, since before the fire the electricity on the ship went out...” (true a sign of a short circuit in the electrical network - O.B). The fact that the construction of the newest battleships of the Black Sea Fleet was carefully “supervised” by agents of German military intelligence is also evidenced by other recently discovered documents. In particular, information from a foreign agent of the Petrograd Police Department, operating under the pseudonyms: “Alexandrov” and “Charles” (his real name is Benitsian Dolin). In the period from 1914 to 1917, he, like many other Russian political police agents, was reoriented to work in the field of foreign counterintelligence and, as a result of operational combinations, came into contact with German military intelligence. And soon I received a proposal from the resident in Bern to organize an action “to disable the Empress Maria” (this is another argument indicating the serious intentions of the Germans to use any opportunities for this). “Charles” reported the orientation to the Petrograd police department and received instructions to accept the offer with some reservations. Upon returning to Petrograd, agent Dolin was placed at the disposal of the military authorities, who showed complete inaction. As a result, contacts with German intelligence were lost, with whom “Charles” was supposed to attend the next meeting two months later in Stockholm. And after some time, Dolin “Charles” learned from the newspapers about the explosion and death of “I. M." The letter he sent to the police department in connection with this news remained unanswered...
The investigation into the case of German agents arrested in Nikolaev ended in 1934. Sheffer suffered the heaviest punishment (he was sentenced to death, but there is no note in the court file about his execution), Sgibnev escaped with three years in the camps. But Verman was “simply” expelled from the USSR. Thus, Werner achieved what he, apparently, sought, in every possible way inflating his importance as a major intelligence resident, giving very detailed explanations during interrogations during the investigation about the content of many years of intelligence work. It recently became clear that all the persons who were investigated in 1933-1934 by the OPTU of Ukraine in Nikolaev, during which their participation in intelligence work in favor of Germany from 1907 and subsequent years, with a clear focus on the war of 1914-1916, “came to light” gg. to disable the battleship “Empress Maria”, in 1989 were rehabilitated by the relevant authorities of our country as falling under the Decree of the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of January 16, 1989 “On additional measures to restore justice for victims of political repression in the period 30-40 's and early 50s." This is the understanding of justice in relation to hundreds of Black Sea sailors who died in this disaster along with the “Empress Maria” - to which members of the Verman group were undoubtedly involved...
Afterword
The sailors who died in the explosion and sinking of the I. M.”, as well as those who died from burns and wounds in the hospital, were buried in Sevastopol (mainly in the old Mikhailovskoye cemetery). Soon, in memory of the disaster and its victims, a memorial sign was erected on the boulevard of the Korabelnaya side of the city - the St. George Cross (according to some sources - bronze, according to others - stone, from local white Inkerman stone). Preserved during the Great Patriotic War and stood there until the early 50s and then demolished. About ten years ago, on the northern side of Sevastopol - at the Fraternal Cemetery, where soldiers who died on the battlefield have been buried since ancient times, concrete segments appeared on the right side of the ascent to the hill, which is crowned by an ancient pyramidal chapel (in the navy, the so-called “dead bodies” are made from such anchors” for anchor-mooring barrels), on which it is written that Russian sailors from the battleship “Empress Maria” are buried there. Until now, there are no names or any other information about the number of people “buried” there...
It seems that, having solemnly celebrated the 300th anniversary of the Russian fleet, we should also remember the death of the battleship “Empress Maria”, adequately reflecting this tragic fact in its historical chronicle. The names of the sailors who died in this case must appear on their mass graves in Sevastopol. And the memorial sign about this event, which was demolished there, was restored through the joint efforts of the current Russian and Ukrainian Black Sea fleets.
Our information
The battleship “Empress Maria” is the first of a series of “Russian dreadnoughts” laid down according to the designs of famous naval engineers A. N. Krylov and I. G. Bubnov before the war of 1914-1918 at the Black Sea shipyards in Nikolaev. Entered service in July 1915. The second battleship, Empress Catherine the Great, was soon built and commissioned into the Black Sea Fleet. (Dreadnought is a generalized name for the type of new battleships that appeared at the beginning of our century, with powerful artillery weapons, strong armor, increased unsinkability and increased speed, which replaced battleships, the basis of the then military fleets. Named after the first of these ships - the English battleship Dreadnought - Neustrashimy, built in 1906.)
The name “Empress Maria” was borne by the sailing 84-gun battleship of the Black Sea squadron. On it during Sinop sea battle On November 18 (30), 1853, which ended in the crushing defeat of the Turkish squadron, P. S. Nakhimov held his flag. The displacement of the new Russian battleships reached 24,000 tons, length -168 m, width -27 m, draft -8 m. The power of steam turbines was 26,500 liters. s, speed up to 24 knots. Reservation of decks, sides, artillery towers, conning tower - up to 280 mm. Armament: main caliber artillery - twelve 305 mm guns in 4 three-gun turrets; anti-mine caliber - twenty 130-mm casemate guns. The ship had 12 anti-aircraft guns and four underwater torpedo tubes, and could carry two seaplanes. The battleship's crew consisted of 1,200 people.
To this day, the minds of historians and researchers are haunted by the tragic death in 1916 of one of the strongest Russian warships, the Black Sea battleship Empress Maria.
Ships, like people, have their own destiny. Some of them, having lived a long and glorious life and served their due term, went down in history, others, whose life was fleeting, like a meteorite, left a trace of their short but vivid biography forever. The battleship Empress Maria had such a short combat life.
The birth of this vessel occurred during the period of development of the Russian navy, when the revival of domestic naval power after the Tsushima tragedy became one of the main tasks.
The predecessors of the "Empress" - a brigade of battleships of the Baltic Fleet: "Sevastopol", "Poltava", "Gangut" and "Petropavlovsk" - an example high level development of domestic shipbuilding and shipbuilding skills. The appearance of a powerful group of modern warships in the Baltic has become a reliable defense of Russia's interests in this theater of military operations.
However, there still remained the Black Sea Fleet, which included obsolete battleships (formerly squadron battleships), which, due to their tactical and technical data, no longer had the ability to solve combat missions in accordance with the new conditions of war at sea. The decision to strengthen the Black Sea Fleet with new battleships was also caused by the intention of Russia’s eternal enemy in the south - Turkey - to acquire three modern Dreadnought-class battleships abroad, which could immediately provide it with overwhelming superiority in the Black Sea.
To maintain parity, the Russian Maritime Department insisted on urgently strengthening the Black Sea Fleet by commissioning new battleships.
It was planned to launch 4 battleships, the tactical and technical data of which were higher than even the Baltic battleships of the Sevastopol type. After many competitions and examinations, the honor of building the first battleship on the Black Sea was given to the Russud shipbuilding joint-stock company in Nikolaev.
1911, June 11 - together with the official laying ceremony, the new ship was included in the Russian imperial fleet called "Empress Maria".
According to the contract, it had to be launched in July 1913, and this deadline was almost met - the Empress was launched on October 6, 1913. Further construction work followed.
1915, June 23 - raising the flags, the battleship Empress Maria began real naval combat life.
The battleship had a displacement of 25,465 tons, the length of the vessel was 168 m, and the speed was 21 knots. "Maria" carried on board twelve 305-mm main caliber guns, twenty 130-mm guns, mine artillery and torpedo tubes, the battleship was well armored.
At that time, the fighting in the Black Sea was in full swing. The real danger to the Russian fleet was posed by the German battleship Goeben, which broke through the Black Sea straits and the light cruiser Breslau, which always accompanied it, renamed by the Turks respectively as Yavuz Sultan Selim and Midilli. The wonderful “walkers” had powerful weapons, and their raids caused a lot of trouble for our sailors.
Just a few months after arriving at the main base, Sevastopol, “Maria” took an active part in combat operations against the German-Turkish fleet. The commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, holds the flag on the battleship. Salvos of the main caliber guns of the high-speed battleship, as well as the commissioning of a ship of the same type - "Catherine the Great" - put an end to the impudent actions of German cruisers in the Black Sea waters. The load on battleships especially increased in the second half of 1916. In June - October alone, they made 24 military campaigns. It was hard, but quite effective service.
The enemy's combat activity was constrained by the actions of "Maria" and "Catherine the Great". But... in the dead of night on October 7, 1916, at 00:20, an explosion occurred on the battleship “Empress Maria” stationed in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol. Then within 48 minutes - another 15. The ship begins to list to starboard and, capsizing, sank. The Russian Navy lost 217 sailors and its strongest warship.
The tragedy shocked all of Russia. A commission of the Naval Ministry, headed by a combat officer and member of the Admiralty Council, Admiral N. Yakovlev, began to determine the reasons for the death of the battleship. In the years Russo-Japanese War he commanded the battleship Petropavlovsk and was on the command bridge of the battleship, which sank after being blown up by a Japanese mine, together with Admiral S. Makarov and the headquarters of the 1st Pacific Squadron.
The captain of the ship himself was thrown from the bridge by a blast wave, then he was picked up by a boat sent from one of the squadron cruisers to rescue the crew of the Petropavlovsk. The commission also included the famous shipbuilder, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences A. Krylov, who became the author of the conclusion approved by all members of the commission.
During the investigation, three versions of the death of the battleship were presented:
1. Spontaneous combustion of gunpowder.
2. Carelessness in handling fire or gunpowder.
3. Malice.
But after considering all three versions, the commission came to the conclusion that “it is not possible to come to an accurate and evidence-based conclusion; we only have to assess the likelihood of these assumptions by comparing the circumstances that emerged during the investigation.”
Of the possible versions, the commission did not exclude the first two in principle. As for malicious intent, even having established a number of violations in the rules of access to artillery magazines and a lack of control over the repair workers on board the ship, the commission considered this version unlikely.
The possibility of malicious intent was not confirmed by Admiral A. Kolchak, who arrived on the doomed ship 15 minutes after the fire started. In his testimony after his arrest by the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry on January 24, 1920, Kolchak stated: “As far as the investigation (the Naval Ministry commission - Author) could find out, as far as it was clear from the whole situation, I believed that there was no malicious intent here.
A number of similar explosions occurred abroad during the war - in Italy, Germany, England. I attributed this to completely unforeseen processes in the masses of new gunpowder that were prepared during the war... Another reason could have been some kind of carelessness, which, however, I do not assume. At least there was no evidence that this was malicious intent.”
To put it another way, none of the versions put forward by the commission found sufficient factual confirmation.
The investigation into the causes of the death of the battleship "Empress Maria" was also carried out by the Sevastopol Gendarmerie Directorate, closely related due to the specifics of their activities and at the same time sharply competing with each other, under the command of Colonel Redlov, and an independent counterintelligence department created on the initiative of the sailors at the end of 1915 at the headquarters of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet , whose chief was Captain Avtamonov, seconded to the Sevastopol Gendarmerie Directorate.
Along with the task assigned to the department to combat “foreign spying”, special agents, previously maintained by the Sevastopol Gendarmerie Directorate with funds allocated by the command of the Black Sea Fleet, also came under its jurisdiction.
Immediately after the sinking of the ship, the gendarme department in Sevastopol began a flurry of activity - searches were carried out in apartments, and 47 suspects of involvement in the explosion were arrested. A week after the tragedy, Redlov, using information received from agents, in a letter addressed to the chief of staff of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, gave possible versions of the causes of the explosion, not excluding the possibility that the ship was blown up by spies.
“Among the sailors,” he wrote, “there is definitely a rumor that the explosion was carried out by attackers with the aim of not only destroying the battleship, but also killing the commander of the Black Sea Fleet, who, by his actions recently, and especially by scattering mines near Bosporus, finally stopped the predatory raids of Turkish-German cruisers on the Black Sea coast; in addition, with his energetic actions in this direction, he aroused discontent among the command staff, especially among people with German surnames, who, under the former commander of the fleet (Admiral Eberhard. - Author. ) did absolutely nothing.”
But none of the versions put forward by the gendarmes subsequently collected a sufficient number of facts.
The progress of the investigation was also hampered by mutual bickering between the gendarme department of Sevastopol and the counterintelligence department of the Black Sea Fleet headquarters, which was tasked with investigating the causes of this explosion.
The reason for the bickering probably lies in the fact that the counterintelligence department created during the war completely pushed the gendarmerie department away from espionage affairs. In a letter to the director of the police department, Redlov, speaking sharply negatively about the activities of the head of Sevastopol counterintelligence, expressed the opinion of his complete failure to investigate the causes of the death of the battleship Empress Maria. These interdepartmental “showdowns” nullified attempts to establish the truth.
New documents from the archives of Soviet counterintelligence indicate close attention to the "Maria" and other ships of the Black Sea Fleet by the military intelligence of Russia's main enemy in the First World War - Germany. It is likely that the persons discussed were also involved in the sinking of the ship. 1933 - the organs of the OGPU of Ukraine in the large shipbuilding center of the country - Nikolaev - exposed the residency of German intelligence, which operated under the guise of the trading company "Control-K", headed by Viktor Eduardovich Verman, born in 1883, a native of the city of Kherson, who lived in Nikolaev and worked Head of the Plow and Hammer mechanical assembly shop.
The purpose of the organization is to disrupt the shipbuilding program of the increasingly powerful military and merchant fleet of the USSR. Specific tasks were to commit sabotage at the Nikolaev plant named after Henri Marty, as well as to collect information about the ships being built there, most of which were military. This largest shipbuilding plant in the country was formed on the basis of the same Russian shipbuilding joint-stock company "Russud", from whose stocks the "Empress Maria" and the same type of battleship " Alexander III" During the investigation, many interesting facts emerged that had their roots in pre-revolutionary Nikolaev.
Verman himself was an intelligence officer with “pre-revolutionary” experience. During interrogation, he said: “I began to engage in espionage activities in 1908 (it was from that time that the implementation of Russia’s new naval program began. - Author) in Nikolaev, working at the Naval plant in the marine machinery department. I was involved in espionage activities by a group of German engineers from that department, consisting of engineer Moor and Hahn.” And further: “Moor and Hahn, and most of all the first, began to process me and involve me in intelligence work in favor of Germany.”
The activities of V. Verman are described in detail in that part of the archival investigative file called “My espionage activities in favor of Germany under the tsarist government.”
After Hahn and Moor left for the Fatherland, the “management” of Werman’s work passed directly to the German consul in Nikolaev, Mr. Winshteit. Werman gave comprehensive information about him: “...I learned that Winshteit is an officer of the German army with the rank of Hauptmann (captain), that he is in Russia not by chance, but is a resident of the German General Staff and carries out extensive intelligence work in the south of Russia. Around 1908, Vinshtait was appointed vice-consul in Nikolaev. He fled to Germany a few days before the declaration of war - in July 1914."
Circumstances just so happened that Werman was tasked with taking over the leadership of the entire German intelligence network in the south of Russia: in Nikolaev, Odessa, Kherson and Sevastopol. Together with his agents, he recruited people for intelligence work in Nikolaev, Odessa, Sevastopol and Kherson, collected materials on industrial enterprises, data on submarine and surface warships under construction, their design, armament, tonnage, speed.
During interrogation, Werman said: “Of the people who were personally recruited by me for espionage work in the period 1908–1914, I remember the following: Steiwech... Blimke... Nymaer... Linke Bruno, engineer Schaeffer... electrician Sgibnev.” All of them were employees of shipyards who had the right of passage to ships under construction.
Electrician A. Sgibnev was of particular interest. He was responsible for the work on equipping temporary lighting for military ships being built on the Russud, including the Empress Maria. 1933 - during the investigation, Sgibnev testified that Werman was very interested in the design of the artillery towers of the dreadnoughts. But the first explosion on the battleship occurred precisely under the bow artillery turret. “During the period 1912–1914,” said Sgibnev, “I conveyed information orally to Verman about the battleships of the Dreydnout, Maria and Alexander III types under construction, within the framework of what I knew about the progress of their construction and the timing of readiness of individual ship compartments.”
Thus, Werman possessed the most valuable information about the growing power of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. After the occupation of the South of Russia by the Germans, Werman's intelligence activities were rewarded. From the interrogation protocol: “In 1918, on the recommendation of Captain-Lieutenant Kloss, I was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd degree, by the German command for selfless work and espionage activities in favor of Germany.”
Having survived the intervention and civil war, Verman “settled” in Nikolaev. There, in 1923, the secretary of the German consulate in Odessa, Mr. Hahn, contacted him. Reminding Werman of his past services to German intelligence, the diplomat invited him to continue cooperation in his “specialty.” Werman agreed. The intelligence network he recreated was very effective before it was discovered by the Soviet state security agencies. Viktor Eduardovich was a master of his craft.
But let's return to the explosion on the Empress. At this time, Verman was deported and had no opportunity to organize an explosion. However, a well-established intelligence network was left in Nikolaev and Sevastopol. Later, he himself spoke about this: “...I have personally been in contact since 1908 on intelligence work with the following cities:...
Sevastopol, where reconnaissance work was led by a mechanical engineer from the Naval plant, Vizer, who was in Sevastopol on behalf of our plant specifically for the installation of the battleship Zlatoust, which was being built in Sevastopol. I know that Vizer had his own spy network in Sevastopol, of which I remember only Admiralty designer Ivan Karpov, whom I personally encountered.”
Here the question arises: did Wieser take part in the “completion” of “Maria” or its repair at the beginning of October 1916? Back then, dozens of engineers, technicians and workers were on board the ship every day. It was not difficult for these people to board the battleship.
Here is what is said about this in a letter from the Sevastopol gendarme department to the chief of staff of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet: “... The sailors say that the electricity wiring workers who were on the ship on the eve of the explosion could have done something before 10 o’clock in the evening with malicious intent, so how workers were absolutely not searched upon entering the ship and also worked without inspection. In particular, suspicion is expressed in this regard against an engineer from the company at 355 Nakhimovsky Prospekt, who allegedly left Sevastopol on the eve of the explosion.”
There are many questions. But one thing is clear - the construction of the newest battleships of the Black Sea Fleet, including the Empress, was closely monitored by agents of German military intelligence. The Germans were very concerned about Russian military potential in the Black Sea, and they could take any action to prevent Russian superiority in this theater of operations.
In this regard, the information of an overseas agent of the Petrograd Police Department, who acted under the pseudonyms “Alexandrov” and “Charles,” is interesting. His real name is Benzian Dolin.
During the First World War, Dolin, like many other political police agents, was reoriented to work in the field of foreign counterintelligence. As a result of the operational combinations carried out, “Charles” made contact with German military intelligence and received the task of disabling the “Empress Maria”.
Bismarck, whom the Russian agent met in Bern, told him: “The Russians have one advantage over us on the Black Sea - this is the Empress.” Try to remove it. Then our forces will be equal, and if forces are equal, we will win.”
In response to “Charles’” request to the Petrograd Police Department, he received an order to accept, with some reservations, the proposal to destroy the Russian ship. Upon returning to Petrograd, the agent was placed at the disposal of the military authorities, but contact with him was not restored. As a result of such inaction, contacts with German intelligence were lost, and the agent was supposed to meet with them two months later in Stockholm. After some time, “Charles” learned from the newspapers about the explosions on the “Empress Maria”. The letter he sent to the police department in connection with this event remained unanswered.
The investigation into the case of the German agents arrested in Nikolaev was completed in 1934. The lightness of the punishment suffered by Werman and Sgibnev is also puzzling. The first one was expelled Soviet Union in March 1934, the second was sentenced to 3 years in the camps. Actually, why be perplexed?! They destroyed the hated tsarism!
1989 - they were rehabilitated. The conclusion of the justice authorities states that Verman, Sgibnev, as well as Sheffer (who suffered the heaviest punishment - they were sentenced to death, although there is no information about the execution of the sentence) fall under the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of January 16, 1989 “On additional measures to restore justice for the victims of political repression that took place during the 30-40s and early 50s.”
What happened to the remains of the once powerful battleship Empress Maria?
A member of the commission to investigate the cause of the death of the Maria, A. Krylov, was appointed chairman of the commission organized by the Marine Technical Committee to raise the ship. It was necessary to seal the compartments of the ship and supply compressed air to them, forcing the ship to float upside down. Then, at the dock, having completely sealed the hull, in deep water, place the ship on an even keel.
Work in accordance with this project progressed successfully. By the end of 1916, all the stern compartments were pressed out, and the stern floated to the surface. The entire ship (or rather, what was left of it) surfaced on May 8, 1918.
The civil war, intervention, and post-war devastation made us forget about “The Empress.” The ship was in the dock on wooden support cages with the bottom up. In 1923, the battleship's hull sank due to rotten supports; The dock was flooded due to damage. While the dock was being repaired, the battleship was grounded at the entrance to the bay, and in 1926 it was dismantled for scrap.
Later, the artillery towers of the ship were also raised, the 305-mm artillery guns of which continued their combat service. In 1941–1942 they were installed near Sevastopol on the 30th coastal defense battery during the assault on the city. They inflicted considerable damage on the advancing fascists. Only on June 25, 1942, while storming the 30th battery, the enemy lost up to 1,000 people killed and wounded.
Thus ended the combat biography of the battleship, which died for “unspecified reasons.”
The battleship Empress Maria inherited its name and heroic past from the flagship ship of Admiral P.S. Nakhimov. The sailing "Empress Maria" led the Russian squadron in the famous Battle of Sinop November 18, 1853, which wrote another worthy page in the chronicle of the glorious victories of St. Andrew's flag. The battleship "Empress Maria" worthily carried out a combat watch in 1915 -1916, increasing the glory of its predecessor.
And both ships have only one year of service and a common place of death - their native Sevastopol Bay. It is known why the sailing ship "Empress Maria" lay on the bottom of the bay. In August 1854, she was flooded to block the entrance to the Sevastopol Bay of the Anglo-French squadron. What made the battleship Empress Maria plunge into the waters of the Black Sea still remains a mystery.
The battleship "Empress Maria", one of the best combat ships of the Russian fleet, was lost in 1916. The appearance of this ship comes at a time when the revival of domestic naval power after the Tsushima tragedy became one of the most important tasks. The decision to strengthen the Black Sea Fleet with new battleships was also prompted by the intention of Turkey, Russia’s longtime enemy in the south, to acquire three modern dreadnought-type battleships abroad, which would immediately provide it with superiority in the Black Sea. To maintain parity, the Russian Maritime Department insisted on the immediate strengthening of the Black Sea Fleet by commissioning the latest battleships.
June 11, 1911, simultaneously with the official laying ceremony new ship was enlisted in the Russian Imperial Navy under the name "Empress Maria". "Maria" was launched on October 6, 1913, and on June 23, 1915, having raised the flags, she began real naval combat life.
The battleship had a displacement of 25,465 tons, the length of the ship was 168 meters, and the speed was 21 knots. "Maria" carried twelve 305-mm main caliber guns, twenty 130-mm guns, mine artillery and torpedo tubes, and the ship was well armored.
Just a few months after arriving in Sevastopol, “Maria” took an active part in combat operations against the German-Turkish fleet. The commander of the Black Sea Fleet, Admiral Alexander Kolchak, holds the flag on the battleship. And the commissioning of the same type battleship “Empress Catherine the Great” put the final limit to the dominance of German cruisers in the Black Sea.
In the early morning of October 7, 1916, at 00:20, an explosion occurred on the battleship Empress Maria stationed in the Northern Bay of Sevastopol. Then within 48 minutes - another fifteen. The ship began to list to starboard and, capsizing, sank. The Russian navy lost 217 sailors and one of its strongest warships that morning.
The tragedy shocked all of Russia. A commission of the Naval Ministry, headed by Admiral N.M., began to determine the reasons for the death of the battleship. Yakovlev. The commission included the famous shipbuilder, member of the Russian Academy of Sciences A.N. Krylov, who became the author of the conclusion approved by all members of the commission.
During the investigation, three versions of the death of the battleship were presented.
- Spontaneous combustion of gunpowder.
- Carelessness in handling fire or gunpowder.
- Evil intent.
However, after considering all three versions, the commission concluded that “it is not possible to come to an accurate and evidence-based conclusion; we only have to assess the likelihood of these assumptions by comparing the circumstances that emerged during the investigation.”
Of the possible versions, the commission did not exclude the first two in principle. As for malicious intent, even having established a number of violations in the rules of access to artillery magazines and a lack of control over the repair workers on board the ship, the commission considered this version unlikely. Thus, none of the versions put forward by the commission found sufficient factual confirmation.
Meanwhile, new documents, already from the archives of Soviet counterintelligence, indicate close attention to the Empress Maria and other ships of the Black Sea Fleet by German military intelligence. In 1933, the OGPU of Ukraine in the country's large shipbuilding center Nikolaev exposed a German residency operating under the guise of the Control-K trading company, headed by Viktor Eduardovich Verman, born in 1883, a native of the city of Kherson, who lived in Nikolaev and worked as the head of a mechanical assembly shop. The plow and the hammer." The purpose of the organization is to disrupt the shipbuilding program of the growing military and merchant fleet of the Soviet Union. Specific tasks were to commit sabotage at the Nikolaev plant named after Henri March, as well as to collect information about the ships being built there, most of which were military.
Verman himself was an intelligence officer with pre-revolutionary experience. During interrogation, he said: “I began to engage in espionage activities in 1908 (it was from this period that the implementation of Russia’s new naval program began. - Author) in Nikolaev, working at the Naval plant in the marine machinery department. I was involved in espionage activities by a group of German engineers from that department, consisting of engineers Moor and Hahn.” And further: “Moor and Hahn, and most of all the first, began to process me and involve me in intelligence work in favor of Germany.”
Werman was tasked with taking over the leadership of the entire German intelligence network in southern Russia: Nikolaev, Odessa, Kherson and Sevastopol. He recruited people for intelligence work in Nikolaev, Odessa, Sevastopol and Kherson, collected materials on industrial enterprises, data on underwater and surface military vessels under construction, their design, armament, tonnage, speed.
During interrogation, Verman said: “Of the people I personally recruited for espionage work in the period 1908-1914, I remember the following: Steiwech, Blimke, Nymaer, Linke Bruno, engineer Schaeffer, electrician Sgibnev.” All of them were employees of shipyards who had the right of passage to ships under construction. Electrician A.V. was of particular interest. Sgibnev. He was responsible for the work on equipping temporary lighting for warships being built on the Russud, including the Empress Maria.
During the investigation, Sgibnev testified that Werman was very interested in the design of the artillery towers of the dreadnoughts. But the first explosion on the battleship "Empress Maria" was heard precisely under the bow artillery tower. “During the period 1912-1914,” said Sgibnev, “I conveyed information orally to Verman about the battleships of the dreadnought, “Maria” and “Alexander III” types under construction, within the framework of what I knew about the progress of their construction and the timing readiness of individual ship compartments."
During the explosion on the Maria, Verman was deported and he could not personally organize sabotage. But a well-prepared intelligence network was left in Nikolaev and Sevastopol. Later, he himself spoke about this: “I have personally been in contact since 1908 on reconnaissance work with the following cities: ... Sevastopol, where the reconnaissance work was led by a mechanical engineer from the Naval plant, Vizer, who was in Sevastopol on behalf of our plant specifically for the installation of what was being built in Sevastopol battleship "Zlatoust". I know that Vizer had his own spy network in Sevastopol, of which I remember only the Admiralty designer Ivan Karpov, whom I personally encountered.”
Was Wieser involved in the completion of the Empress Maria or her repairs in early October 1916? Back then, dozens of engineers, technicians and workers were on board the ship every day. It was not difficult for these people to board the ship. Here is what is said about this in a letter from the Sevastopol gendarme department to the chief of staff of the commander of the Black Sea Fleet: “The sailors say that the electricity wiring workers who were on the ship on the eve of the explosion before 10 o’clock in the evening could have done something with malicious intent, since the workers were not inspected at all when entering the ship and also worked without inspection. Suspicion is especially expressed in this regard against an engineer from the company at 355 Nakhimovsky Prospekt, who allegedly left Sevastopol on the eve of the explosion.”
There are many questions. But one thing is clear - the construction of the newest battleships of the Black Sea Fleet, including the Empress Maria, was closely monitored by agents of German military intelligence. The Germans were very concerned about Russian military potential in the Black Sea, and they could take any action to prevent Russian superiority in this theater of operations.
In this regard, the information of an agent of the Petrograd Police Department, who acted under the pseudonyms “Alexandrov”, “Lenin” and “Charles”, is interesting. His real name is Benzian Dolin. During the First World War, Dolin, like many other political police agents, was reoriented to work in the field of foreign counterintelligence. “Charles” made contact with German military intelligence and received the task of disabling the “Empress Maria”. One of the German intelligence leaders whom the agent met in Bern told him: “The Russians have one advantage over us on the Black Sea - this is the Maria. Try to remove it. Then our forces will be equal, and if forces are equal, we will win.”
In response to “Charles’” request to the Petrograd Police Department, he received an order to accept, with some reservations, the proposal to destroy the Russian battleship. Upon returning to Petrograd, the agent was placed at the disposal of the military authorities, but contact with him was not restored. As a result of such inaction, contacts with German intelligence were lost, with whom the agent was supposed to attend the next meeting two months later in Stockholm. After some time, “Charles” learned from the newspapers about the explosions on the “Empress Maria”. The letter he sent to the police department in connection with this event remained unanswered.
The investigation into the case of German agents arrested in Nikolaev was completed in 1934. The ease of punishment suffered by Verman and Sgibnev is puzzling. The first was expelled from the USSR in March 1934, the second was sentenced to 3 years in the camps. Moreover: in 1989 both were rehabilitated. The conclusion of the justice authorities states that Verman, Sgibnev, as well as Sheffer (who suffered the heaviest punishment - he was sentenced to death, although there is no information about the execution of the sentence) fall under the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR dated January 16, 1989 " On additional measures to restore justice for the victims of political repression that took place during the 30-40s and early 50s."
From the conclusion of the commission that tested the ship: “The air refrigeration system for the artillery magazines of the Empress Maria was tested for 24 hours, but the results were uncertain. The temperature of the cellars has hardly dropped, despite the daily operation of the refrigeration machines.”
Captain 2nd Rank A. Lukin
“Pre-dawn breeze. The silhouettes of ships turning gray in the early morning darkness turn their noses towards him. It felt cold. Dew wet the deck and towers. The sentries wrapped themselves tighter in their sheepskin coats—the watch commander, midshipman Uspensky, glanced at his watch. Wake up in a quarter of an hour. I went up to the control room once again to look at the book with the senior officer’s orders. On all ships the bells struck 6 am.
Reveille!
The bugles sounded. The pipes whistled. Sleepy people reluctantly run out. Below the gangway, the sergeant major is cheering them on in a bass voice. The team huddled in the washbasins, near the first tower...
The ship shook. The cabin began to shake. The light went out. Confused as to what had happened, the senior officer jumped up. An inexplicable crash was heard. An ominous glow illuminated the cabin.
In the washbasin, putting their heads under the taps, the crew was snorting and splashing when a terrible blow thundered under the bow tower, knocking half the people off their feet. A fiery jet, shrouded in poisonous gases of yellow-green flame, burst into the room, instantly turning the life that had just reigned here into a pile of dead, burnt bodies...”
Sailor T. Yesyutin
“There was such a deafening explosion that I involuntarily froze in place and could not move further. The lights throughout the ship went out. It became impossible to breathe. I realized that gas was spreading throughout the ship. In the lower part of the ship, where the servants were located, an unimaginable cry arose:
- Save me!
- Give me some light!
- We're dying!
In the darkness, I could not come to my senses and understand what had finally happened. In desperation, he rushed upstairs through the compartments. On the threshold of the fighting compartment of the tower, I saw a terrible picture. The paint on the walls of the tower was in full flame. Beds and mattresses were burning, and comrades who had not managed to get out of the tower were burning. Screaming and howling, they rushed around the fighting compartment, rushing from one side to the other, engulfed in fire. The door leading from the tower to the deck was a continuous flame. And this whole whirlwind of fire rushed into the tower just from the deck, where everyone had to escape.
I don’t remember how long I was in the fighting compartment. The gases and heat made my eyes watery, so I saw the entire fighting compartment of the turret, engulfed in fire, as if through mica. My vest began to light up in one place and then in another. What to do? No commanders are visible, no commands are heard. There was only one salvation left: to rush into the flaming door of the tower, the only door that was the exit to the deck. But I don’t have the strength to throw myself from the fire into an even bigger fire. And standing still is also impossible. The vest is burning, the hair on my head is burning, my eyebrows and eyelashes are already burnt.
The situation is desperate. And suddenly, I remember, one of Comrade Morunenko’s team (served since 1912) was the first to rush through the flaming door - onto the deck. We were amazed by such heroism, and all the sailors, and I with them, one after another, began to throw ourselves in turn at this terrible door. I don't remember how I flew through the furiously raging fire. Even now I don’t understand how I survived...
It was difficult to swim. My throat was dry. I felt sick. The burned areas hurt from the salt water. My right leg was cramping. It became difficult not only to swim, but even to stay on the water. Well, I think it's gone! There is no salvation in sight. I looked back and was even scared: I swam and swam, but only went some twenty to thirty meters away from the ship. This circumstance, I remember, greatly weakened me. I began to get exhausted and no longer swam, but only tried to stay on the water. To this end, I greedily grabbed the floating pieces of wood from the deck of the ship and tried to stay on them. But the strength was declining, and the shore was still far away.
At that moment I saw that a small two-oared boat was coming towards me. When she approached me, I began to grab her sides, but I could not climb into her. There were three sailors on the boat, and with their help I somehow got out of the water. Others were swimming near us. We didn't have time to save them, and the poor fellows sank. Not because the boat did not want to take them - the sailors on it made every effort to save them - but they could not do anything.
At this time, a longboat from the battleship “Catherine the Great” approached us. The longboat is very large and could take up to 100 people on board. We managed to approach the side of the longboat and board it. We started rescuing drowning people. It turned out to be not so simple. There were no poles, no circles, no hooks. We had to hand the floating and exhausted man an oar, then take him by the hands and drag him on board. But we still caught about 60 people, took 20 people from other boats and went to the battleship “Catherine the Great”. This ship stood not far from our burning ship. We came aboard the Catherine. Many of the burned and wounded sailors could not go. They were supported by less disfigured sailors. We were accepted onto the ship and sent straight to the infirmary for dressing.”
The conclusion of the commission to investigate the events: “On the battleship “Empress Maria” there were significant deviations from the statutory requirements regarding access to artillery magazines. In particular, many of the tower hatches did not have locks. During the stay in Sevastopol, representatives of various factories worked on the battleship. No family checks were carried out on the artisans.”
“In the depths of the bay near the North side, the battleship Empress Maria, which exploded in 1916, floats keel up. The Russians continuously worked to raise it, and a year later, the colossus was lifted keel up. The hole in the bottom was repaired underwater, and the heavy three-gun turrets were also removed underwater. Incredibly hard work! Pumps worked day and night, pumping out the water there from the ship and at the same time supplying air. Finally its compartments were drained. The difficulty now was to put it on an even keel. This almost succeeded - but then the ship sank again. They began work again, and after some time, the “Empress Maria” again floated upside down. But there was no solution on how to give it the right position.”