That now forgotten tragedy shook the Russian Empire no less than the destruction of the Kursk Russian Federation. A terrible event - in peacetime, a combat ship died with the entire crew. Not that this has not happened before - it happened: there was an explosion at the Plastun clipper in 1860, with 75 dead.
There was the death of the clipper "Oprichnik" in the Indian Ocean.
The Oprichnik left Batavia on Tuesday December 10, 1861 … On leaving the Sunda Strait on the 12th, at 7 1/4 o'clock in the morning, the Oprichnik was visible under sail, but soon lost sight of it. We passed the Sunda Strait at night and headed for SW 45 ° and the first observation point was at noon at latitude 7 ° 58′S, longitude 101 ° 20′0 from Paris. The Russian ship was close and with a light wind kept more to the north. Since then he has not been seen again …"
But that was really different. In the first case, there was an accident. Explosions of powder magazines are not uncommon in all countries of the world in the era of still young chemistry. In the second, the ocean is the ocean and, sadly, it always takes its toll.
The Rusalka died in the Gulf of Finland, without explosions or accidents.
Birth
After we lost the Crimean War, relations between Russia and Great Britain were on the brink. And the war between empires seemed inevitable to many. In Russia, reforms were in full swing, affecting literally all spheres of life. They also touched the Imperial Navy. Gone is the era of sailing ships, and the need to fight a much stronger enemy spurred the naval thought to an unprecedented height until that moment. There were two answers to the mistress of the seas: cruising squadrons of unarmored ships, which, according to the idea, were supposed to paralyze the sea trade of the British, and an armored squadron, to cover the Gulf of Finland and the capital, St. Petersburg.
Monitors were taken as a sample - low-side metal armored ships with a shallow draft, no seaworthiness, but with powerful protection and artillery. There was logic in all this - these combat units did not shine on ocean campaigns. Their business is to stop the British fleet and save the capital behind the minefields and with the support of the forts of Kronstadt. Neither seaworthiness nor driving performance is particularly important in this matter - armor and guns are paramount. Specifically, "Mermaid" and her twin sister "Enchantress" were laid down:
During the implementation of the "armored" program, the Maritime Admiralty on January 14, 1865 signed a contract with the contractor Kudryavtsev for the construction of two armored turret ships made of iron. The project was based on the project of a warship code "F" of the English company "Mitchell and Co.", completely revised by the engineers of the MTK. On May 29, 1865, on the stocks of Galerny Island, shipbuilders laid keels for the ships, which were later named "Mermaid" and "Enchantress", which caused a scandal on the part of the Orthodox Church, which, as a result, refused to consecrate ships with pagan names.
This scandal was rather from the realm of curiosities. Although there were those who believed that the name had killed the monitor. They are still there. Be that as it may, but in the spring of 1869, monitors classified as armored turret boats entered the ranks of the Baltic Fleet.
Service
What was the "Rusalka"?
The length of the ship was 62, 9 meters, width - 12, 8 meters, displacement - 1871 tons.
Speed - 9 knots.
The thickness of the armor is 115 millimeters.
The Rusalka had two rotating artillery towers with four 229mm cannons and four rapid-fire cannons.
The crew is 177 people.
It is worth adding to this - from the waterline to the upper deck about half a meter. A heavy target for artillery, but a potential victim of the storm. Although many monitors were built in the Baltic, and there were no particular problems with them. Within the Gulf of Finland and with proper operation, ships are quite suitable for their tasks.
And the tasks changed. The threat of an attack by the British fleet decreased, and after 1870 and the creation of the German Empire it became more virtual in size, and the fleet was constantly growing, replenishing with full-fledged seaworthy battleships and armored cruisers.
Monitors lost their combat value every year. And if under Butakov it was really a squadron and a school for future naval commanders, then by the end of the 80s a museum of exhibits turned out that were not suitable for battle, but still suitable for training recruits. Although in the plans for the war with Germany, monitors were taken into account. And even, to the fear of the adversary, they were classified as coastal defense battleships. In 1891 "Rusalka" underwent repairs with replacement of boilers. And the twenty-two-year-old ship continued its hard work of training sailors.
It is worth adding here - in those days there was no single approach to the service life of ships. On the one hand, along the hull, they could be in the ranks for 50-60 years. On the other hand, technical progress made warships hopeless old people in 5–10 years. In the Russian Empire, as now, the high authorities liked it when there were a lot of ships. This opened up ample opportunities for increasing funding, ranks, and simply consoled the soul. In the end, the peers of the "Mermaid" (and older armored batteries) will serve as battleships even in the Russo-Japanese War. And sailors trained on outdated equipment will add a headache to their commanders. In the context of the tragedy of a particular "Mermaid", the fact that she remained in the ranks, having outlived her era, and became the first step towards her death.
Doom
When you read materials from that era, and even modern researchers, it is difficult to understand what is more in this story - sloppiness, unprofessionalism, or is it a coincidence?
Still, the ship was old, but reliable. The commander, 41-year-old Captain 2nd Rank Viktor Khristianovich Jenish, was a brilliant officer, practitioner and theorist of artillery, the author of a number of works. The crew also went to the area on several occasions and knew their ship.
Yes, and the transition was coming routine, just something from Revel to Helsinfors, and from there to Kronstadt. And the security measures seemed to have been thought out - the gunboat Tucha was supposed to follow the Rusalka. And then began something that is difficult to interpret.
On September 7, 1893, the ships went to sea:
1. Storm hatch covers were not accepted on the ship. For a modern battleship it is not critical, for a monitor it is a step towards disaster. With such a "high" deck, even of medium strength, the storm is a threat.
2. The ship left in troubled weather. Again, if it were not a monitor, nothing terrible would have happened. Something, but Russian sailors knew how to walk in the ocean, and in any weather. And here there is not even an ocean, but the Baltic Sea, which is well-trodden along and across.
3. The commander of the "Rusalka" was ill, he suffered from severe headaches. Despite this, he led his ship for the winter. And Admiral Burachek, knowing about this, did not forbid him. The logic of both is not difficult to understand: there were no experienced officers in reserve, and the transition, I repeat, was short and routine.
4. The excitement quickly escalated into a nine-point storm, dangerous even for large ships.
5. "Cloud" did not go with "Mermaid". More precisely - she went, but the seaworthy gunboat under the command of the captain of the 2nd rank Nikolai Mikhailovich Lushkov quickly overtook her fellow traveler and reached Gelsinfors on her own. In the report, Lushkov said nothing about the fate of the "Rusalka". In Soviet times, they wrote that his young wife was on board the Tucha, and he did not want to risk it.
6. Admiral Burachek did not raise the alarm until September 10, where the ship of his detachment was not interested. Meanwhile, even an old slow-moving armored boat, even in a storm, could go through a 90-kilometer journey in a maximum of a day. And only when the boat with the corpse of the sailor was thrown ashore, the search began. Of course, at that time already meaningless.
So what happened?
It seems to me that at the beginning of the transition, the commander had another attack of illness, otherwise such an experienced sailor would have simply returned to Revel. And the "Mermaid", despite the storm, followed its course. The crew took refuge below, otherwise the only corpse found cannot be explained. When, 25 kilometers from Helsinfors, Ienish gave the order to return, the ship was covered with a wave, and it instantly sank to the bottom, with its nose about a third buried in the silt. 177 people died. There were no rescued people.
After that there will be a lot of lies about what happened
In the fall of 1893, a large-scale search was organized, even a balloon was used. Wasted. In 1894, the search continued with the same result. Again, nothing. But there was a conclusion.
“Finding this battleship at sea is extremely difficult, just as it is difficult to find a needle in a large room or the head of a pin lost somewhere on the road. It is unthinkable to find the "mermaid" if supernatural happiness does not come to the rescue."
He put an end to the search.
We must pay tribute - the families were taken care of, pensions were appointed. Donations were collected in the country, a memorial service was served. And 9 years later, a beautiful monument was erected in Reval. There was an investigation, and there was a trial. True, the punishments are surprising, to put it mildly. The admiral received a reprimand for clearly expressed negligence, which never once interfered with his career:
In 1894, Rear Admiral Burachek was elected chairman of the commission for the production of naval artillery experiments. In 1898 he was dismissed and promoted to the rank of vice admiral. After his resignation, Pavel Stepanovich lived with his family in St. Petersburg, was a member of the board of the Imperial Society for Rescue on Waters. In 1910 his book Notes on the Fleet was published, summarizing his thoughts and experience accumulated over the long years of service in the Navy. Pavel Stepanovich Burachek died in 1916 in St. Petersburg and was buried at the Smolensk cemetery.
And the commander of "Clouds" was made the last for everything and suspended from service for three years. Lushkov became the head of the Rostov port. But he had a sense of guilt. And he ended his life in the psychiatric ward of the naval hospital.
The Rusalka was gradually forgotten. Moreover, the Russo-Japanese, World War I and the Civil War overshadowed the old monitor and the old catastrophe. Again the topic surfaced in the 30s, but rather in the context of criticism of "rotten tsarism." It was alleged that the Soviet divers had found the ship. But there are no documents, there are memories.
And only in 2003, the ship was found by Estonians where it had lain for 110 years. Then everything that was suspected of the abyss of time was confirmed. And the picture of death became complete and complete. That for the remoteness of the years is of interest only to historians.
Summing up, it was the carelessness and violation of written and unwritten rules that led to the death of the ship.
And the inability to learn lessons led to the fact that this kind of disaster was not the last.
"Mermaid" was still lucky - the bad circus with the search for "English saboteurs" was turned off. But the spies who blew up "Empress Maria" and "Novorossiysk" are still looking for. Just like the traces of some American nuclear submarine that sank the Kursk. Conspiracy studies are more interesting than searching for their mistakes and realizing the fact that the technique of deviations from the rules does not forgive.
