Before proceeding to the description of the misadventures of the "Varyag" crew with the ship's mechanisms of the cruiser, let us pay a little attention to some features of the construction of the cruiser. The thing is that in the two previous articles we considered the problems of boilers and cruiser machines outside the general context of its construction: thus, highlighting the most controversial elements of its design, we did not consider the processes of creating the ship as a whole at all.
Without a doubt, the Kramp plant was one of the most modern shipbuilding enterprises in the world, but I must say that the contractual 20-month construction period for the Varyag was too short even for him. Let us recall that just in 1898 the cruiser "Kasagi" for the Japanese fleet was being completed at the Crump plant. Laid down in February 1897, it was handed over to the customer in October 1898, that is, 20.5 months after the laying. At the same time, the Kasagi was significantly smaller than the Varyag (4,900 tons versus 6,500 tons), and its power plant included cylindrical (fire-tube) boilers, the production of which had been thoroughly mastered long ago.
And if Crump missed 20 months, who built it faster? Maybe England? Not at all - just in 1897-1898. The Royal Navy received another series of Eclipse Class II armored cruisers. These were ships, obviously of more modest characteristics than were expected for the Varyag - a displacement within 5,700 tons, a speed of 18.5 knots (19.5 knots was achieved only when forcing mechanisms) and weapons of 5 * 152-mm and 6 * 120mm cannons. However, all 9 cruisers of this type were under construction for much more than 20 months - so, the "Talbot" known to us, which witnessed the feat of the "Varyag", was laid down on March 5, 1894, and entered service on September 15, 1896, that is, after more than 30 months from the date of the bookmark. The French never differed in their high speed of construction: the same "D'Antrkasto", being somewhat larger than the "Varyag" (up to 8,150 tons), took about five years to build, and much smaller cruisers of the "Friant" type - 4-6 years. Russian shipbuilding also had nothing to brag about - we had been building Diana-class cruisers for four years or more. German shipyards? The same "Askold" was under construction (counting from the moment of laying and before delivery to the fleet) for 3 years and 2, 5 months, while, already being delivered, the ship had imperfections that had to be eliminated later. "Bogatyr" was built for 2 years and 8 months.
We see that the terms of construction of the cruiser set by Crump were at the limit (as it actually turned out - beyond) the possible. As a matter of fact, under these conditions, Charles Crump's proposal to build a cruiser for the Russian Imperial Navy according to the Kasagi project was uncontested, because it was possible to meet such a tight deadline only when building a serial ship, which was Kasagi for Crump. Of course, the Naval Ministry rejected this offer - it wanted to get a completely different ship. As a result, Ch. Crump set to work, which, if it was successfully completed, would set a record for the speed of construction, especially since the Americans had to apply many new technologies on the Varyag.
But why did MTC insist on such an urgent construction? Obviously, in addition to the desire to get a powerful warship as soon as possible, there was also a desire to force the foreign supplier to give all the best, similar to the one that forced the Maritime Department to lay down extremely high performance characteristics of the future cruiser in the competitive requirements. And here, in the author's opinion, was the root of the Varyag's problems. Let's remember an old anecdote. There is a sign on the front door of the office, it says: “Our company can serve you: a) quickly; b) qualitatively; c) cheap. Choose any two options. At the same time, the Naval Department, in fact, tried to force Charles Crump to serve him, choosing three options at once, and this could not lead to anything good.
While rightly accusing Crump of a number of imperfections and erroneous technical solutions, we must not forget that the Ministry of the Navy in many respects pushed him to this, because it was precisely the "assault" in terms of timing, combined with extremely stringent requirements for tactical and technical characteristics, (at an initially low price for a cruiser) apparently introduced Charles Crump to the temptation of adventurous decisions. Such an approach on the part of the Maritime Department was dangerous, and triple dangerous, if we remember that at the time of the contract, neither an agreed cruiser project nor detailed specifications existed in nature - all this had to be "settled" in the course of the contract. And the vagueness of the wording gave Ch. Crump additional opportunities "for maneuver."
The author would venture to assert that if the Maritime Department, instead of “rushing the horses,” would postpone the signing of the contract until the cruiser project was agreed with Ch. Crump, and then, in the contract, would indicate a more or less realistic deadline for its execution (say, 26-28 months), then, in the end, it would have gone to the "Varyag" for the benefit and the Russian imperial fleet would have been replenished with a first-class and absolutely battle-worthy cruiser.
Here, of course, one can argue that Charles Crump was himself to blame for setting such a deadline - after all, it was he who initially initiated the "superfast" construction of the cruiser, which (among other arguments) allowed the American to avoid participation in the competition. This is true - but the fact is that Ch. Crump originally proposed to build the Varyag according to the Kasagi project, and he could easily cope with this in 20 months, and then the Naval Department insisted on a ship of a completely new project. However, the fact that Ch. Crump nevertheless agreed without adjusting the terms upward shows his adventurous nature.
Let's remember how the construction of the Varyag cruiser was organized. For this, a supervising commission was sent to the United States, which was supposed to:
1. Drawing up the final specifications, where it was necessary "to enter everything that is recognized as necessary for the battleship and cruiser in all their official positions";
2. "It is final to resolve all issues related to the construction, supply and armament of ordered vessels," but, of course, within the limits approved by the head of the Marine Ministry of programs for the design of the ITC. Here, in fact, was a serious limitation in the work of the commission - a lot of issues that required an early decision, it could not take on its own, without the approval of the Ministry of Transport. As we will see later, this (theoretically correct) requirement did have negative consequences.
In addition, the supervising commission could not, by its own authority, resolve the issues of over-contract payments and was obliged to send reports on the work done to the MOTC every two weeks. The composition of the commission:
1. Captain 1st rank M. A. Danilevsky - chairman of the commission, a participant in the war for the liberation of the Balkan peoples from the Turkish yoke in 1877-1878, served as a senior officer on the battleship "Chesma", and for the last three years commanded the gunboat "Zaporozhets";
2. Junior shipbuilder P. Ye. Chernigovsky is an observing ship engineer. Prior to his appointment, he built gunboats "Gilyak", "Donets" and "Manjur";
3. Senior mechanical engineer A. I. Fronskevich - mechanic;
4. Lieutenant P. P. Macedonian. - miner.
Captains V. I. were responsible for the artillery. Petrov and V. A. Alekseev (in electrical engineering of tower installations) - both graduates of the Mikhailovsky Artillery Academy. Later, the commission was replenished by an artilleryman, Lieutenant Colonel M. I. Barkhotkin and mechanical engineer M. K. Borovsky. In addition, two “pointers” were included in the commission. These were the first assistants to civil engineers, usually recruited from literate workers. "Pointers" were able to independently read the drawings and directly controlled the progress of the work. Interestingly, the purpose of their arrival was not only control functions, but also the desire to learn from foreign experience - they were charged with the obligation to study the work of American shipyards and, subsequently, upon returning to Russia, to teach others and establish the like.
The supervisory commission arrived at the plant on June 13, 1898 and … Charles Crump immediately brought down on her a lot of claims and "rationalization proposals". The American industrialist said that it was impossible to build a cruiser of the required parameters, and that it was necessary:
1. Reduce coal reserves;
2. Remove two 152mm guns;
3. To reduce the size of the team, while reducing the machine team to a size that allows only economic progress (!);
4. Allow additional steam to be supplied to the medium and low pressure cylinders during ship tests.
In other words, Ch. Crump's tactics are absolutely clear - having received a contract under promises to build a super-cruiser, super-fast and cheap, he immediately "forgot" about his promises and began (quite reasonably, by the way!) To prove that such a cruiser cannot be built. M. A. Danilevsky quite reasonably went to meet him - refusing all the requirements, he agreed to increase the displacement from 6,000 tons to 6,400 - 6,500 tons, as for forcing boilers during testing, a compromise was reached - the cruiser was to be tested without forcing machines, but it was allowed to open the hatches of the stoker's compartments and pump air there, but with an excess of pressure not exceeding 25 mm of mercury.
Thus, despite the existing disagreements, we can say that the beginning of the work of the supervising commission with Ch. Crump was quite fruitful. Alas, in the future everything went awry.
The fault was mutual. Often Ch. Crump, for unclear reasons, detained materials requested from him - this was, for example, with torpedo tubes. The fact is that, according to the terms of the contract, they were supposed to be produced in Russia, but this required drawings of the side and decks in the locations, but the Americans did not want to provide them in any way. M. A. Danilevsky had to “shake out” these drawings from Ch. Crump's specialists for a whole month. But the opposite is also true - often questions arose that the supervising commission did not have the right to decide on its own, but had to agree with the MTC. MTC, however, often and completely unreasonably delayed its decision. It is clear that Charles Crump, being put by the contract in the most severe time frame, could not wait for months for the MTK's response and continued construction, but to stop it (and thereby cause additional costs associated with such a delay without obvious reason), the supervising commission could not stop it … And how was M. A. Danilevsky to guess what decision MTC will take in the end?
The story about the ordering of armor for the "Varyag" became canonical. When it came time to place an order for the supply of armor (and delay in this matter could not be allowed, since it would have delayed construction), it turned out that Ch. Crump was not at all going to order its production from extra soft nickel steel, because, although she was was the best option for an armored cruiser, but has not yet been used on US ships. Accordingly, a loophole in the contract (the Russian text said that armor should correspond to the best world standards, and what was considered basic English - that the best samples used by the US Navy) allowed Crump to avoid using better, but also more expensive armor.
Naturally, M. A. Danilevsky could not allow this, but with his power to coordinate Ch. Crump couldn't pay extra for extra-soft nickel steel armor either - it was beyond his powers. Therefore, he needed to get approval from "above" and this, of course, took time. Accordingly, the deadlines begin to tighten even more, and then a new question arises - Ch. Crump proposes to rivet the armored deck of the ship from two layers of slabs.
Such a solution significantly weakens the protection of the ship, since two plates, even riveted ones, are inferior in armor resistance to one plate of the same thickness. But Ch. Crump appeals to the fact that the two-layer fastening of the armor and its rigid ligation with the set of the hull will allow it to participate in ensuring the overall strength of the hull, which cannot be achieved using single-layer armor. The question is serious and M. A. Danilevsky requests the ITC. But MTK (and they have about 70 ships in addition to "Varyag" under construction, both in Russia and abroad) seem to be making an absolutely logical decision - to wait for the drawings of the cruiser from Ch. Crump in order to make a competent conclusion. And no one is going to provide the drawings on time, but the decision on the armor must be taken immediately!
Result - M. A. Danilevsky, not having a direct ban from the ITC, eventually accepts the proposal of Ch. Crump. Well, later, MTK, having understood the arguments of Ch. Crump, makes an unconditional conclusion that the only real reason why this shipbuilder insisted on double-layer armor is “Crump's desire to simplify and reduce the cost of work on the manufacture of an armored deck, bearing in mind punching holes where they need to be drilled. Now the ITC prohibits making an armored deck of two layers and … nevertheless, it is forced to approve Ch. Crump's decision, since he has already placed all the necessary orders.
Without a doubt, Ch. Crump demonstrated agility on the verge of swindling in this matter. However, he got away with it only thanks to the clumsy organization of control of his activities, and here the blame lies with the Naval Department. We see that MTC did not want to make decisions before receiving the corresponding blueprints for the cruiser, but they were not submitted on time - and why? It is possible, of course, that Ch. Crump was well aware of the consequences of their transfer and that MTC, seeing that all American argumentation is the essence of an excuse, does not sanction a two-layer armored deck, which will lead Ch. Crump to the need to incur additional costs. But that was only part of the problem.
The second part was that Vice Admiral V. P. Verkhovsky (the one who pushed through the installation of Nikloss boilers bypassing the MTK and who signed a contract with Ch. Crump). This time V. P. Verkhovsky … instructed the Russian naval attaché in the United States D. F. It’s dead to negotiate and work with Ch. Crump on the supply of armor from agreeing on technical specifications to concluding contracts with Carnegie factories. Everything would be fine, but D. F. Mertvago had to do this bypassing the supervisory commission and M. A. Danilevsky!
We will not speculate about the reasons that prompted the vice admiral to such a decision - there could be anything, including good intentions, bribes or protection of the honor of the uniform, so there is no need to guess. But it was difficult to come up with a way that could further undermine the authority of M. A. Danilevsky in the eyes of Ch. Crump. Of course, this could not but affect the attitude of the latter to the requirements of the supervisory commission. Often, its members could not get answers to the simplest questions for many weeks ("up to a month of relentless reminders").
Bottom line - Ch. Crump stopped reckoning with the supervising commission so much that he ordered Nikloss's boilers without her knowledge, not to mention presenting technical specifications to its members, which he had to do before ordering the boilers. The same story happened with the insurance company - work was going on with might and main, but there were no insurance policies. Such serious violations of the contract gave rise to M. A. Danilevsky to refuse Ch. Crump in the first tranche of payments for the ship - and then an open war began, a representative of Ch. Crump went to Russia to complain about the unbearable conditions that MA Danilevsky created for him. For example, the American categorically disliked M. A. Danilevsky to extend the contract term for the construction of the cruiser if the armor supplied for it by another American plant turns out to be rejected acceptance. On the one hand, it seems to be true - how could Ch. Crump be responsible for the marriage of another manufacturer, not subordinate to him? But if you look at it, it turns out that M. A. Danilevsky did not like the contract of Ch. Crump with the armor supplier, according to the terms of which it was possible to greatly delay the supply, which, of course, was wrong. Apparently, not being able to put pressure on Ch. Crump in any other way, M. A. Danilevsky refused to increase the construction period if the armor turns out to be of poor quality.
According to the findings, M. A. Danilevsky was recalled from America, and in his place in December 1898, E. N. Shchensnovich (later - the commander of the battleship Retvizan). And again - on the one hand, it is easy to blame Ch. Crump for everything, and to consider the chairman of the supervising commission "innocent for the cause of the victim." But this will be wrong, because with all the positive qualities of M. A. Danilevsky, he, apparently, could not organize the normal work of the commission. And the point here was not Ch. Crump, but the fact that he simply did not trust his subordinates and tried to control their every step, preventing them from working and making decisions on their own. As a result, the head of the Naval Department, Admiral Tyrtov, was forced to note:
“It is to be regretted that, with all his good qualities and knowledge, Captain Danilevsky has such a difficult and, I would say, suspicious character, the manifestation of which forced me to replace him with another chairman. But it is clear that Crump should not look him in the eye, but should be as careful and demanding as possible with him, which should be prescribed by my name to the captain of the first rank Schensnovich."
After the change of the chairman of the supervising commission, the situation as a whole stabilized: E. N. Shchensnovich was very demanding, no less than M. A. Danilevsky, but still could somehow find a common language with Ch. Crump. The "dual power" was terminated - the Maritime Department confirmed the powers of the supervising commission, and banned D. F. It's dead to interfere or replace her work. But new difficulties arose - E. N. Szczensnovich quickly found out that the commission members at his disposal were completely insufficient to carry out full-fledged supervision over the construction. This was especially true of the mechanical part.
At the Kramp plant, four steam engines were assembled at the same time (two for the Varyag and two for the battleship Retvizan), while, of course, all this happened in different places at the same time (the parts were processed in different workshops). In parallel to this, drawings were made (which needed to be checked), tests were carried out, which had to be present … And one and only person had to look after all this - A. I. Fronskevich, who, in addition, had to go to the factories of Ch. Crump's counterparties, and supervise the work on the ships' boilers. Moreover, the supervising commission conducted a very lively document circulation, the number of incoming and outgoing documents reached 200 per month, and this is not counting the need to translate from English into Russian specifications for the hull and mechanisms of both ships before sending them to St. Petersburg. So no one could remove the "scribble" from the only mechanic. It got to the point that artilleryman V. A. Alekseev! Of course, E. N. Shchensnovich asked to send him people, but alas, they were in no hurry in St. Petersburg, and the measures taken by the chairman of the supervising commission, who contrived to involve outsiders in its work (for example, a qualified emigrant worker P. the Crump plant) could not drastically improve the situation. Subsequently, the assistant to the senior mechanical engineer M. K. Borovsky, but this did not completely close the question.
Despite the extremely difficult working conditions, the commission nevertheless brought a lot of benefits: for example, mechanic A. I. Fronskevich identified a defect in the high-pressure cylinder and was able to achieve its replacement, while the experts of Ch. Crump assured that the cylinder was quite benign. M. K. Borovsky immediately upon arrival went to look at the manufacture of Nikloss's boilers - having arrived at the manufacturing plant, he rejected 600 pipes made in violation of technical conditions and which did not correspond to either the drawings or reference samples provided by Nikloss's company - fortunately, the prudent M. K. Borovsky was able to get them in France and bring them with him. The Americans tried to prove that they did everything right, and only after demonstrating the standard they were forced to admit they were wrong - only then it turned out that they had reference samples too …
The only miner of the supervising commission was overwhelmed with affairs "to the very top" - the fact is that the Varyag was electrified to a much greater extent than the ships that had previously been built by Ch. Crump, and many difficulties arose with the orders of electrical mechanisms, sometimes not obvious … So, for example, since Ch. Crump was able to articulate the use of fans when testing a cruiser (for pumping air into a stoker), he managed to distribute electricity in such a way that as much as 416 horsepower was allocated to the rotation of these fans. This could not have any practical significance, because in combat conditions the hatch covers would be closed, and the necessary pressure could be provided with less power - this "maneuver" was undertaken solely with the aim of achieving the contractual speed.
It was revealed a complete discrepancy between the company's ideas about the required overall strength of the case: the stresses in it, instead of the 790 kgf / cm2 permissible according to Russian rules, exceeded 1100 kgf / cm2. Ch. Crump managed to include in the calculations of the strength of the hull even the wooden flooring of the upper deck …
But at the same time, one should not think that the monitoring commission had to "fight" exclusively with Charles Crump. It should be understood that during the construction of the Varyag, the well-oiled mechanism of American shipbuilding collided with domestic … let's say, slowness. E. N. Schensnovich noted that low prices from American industrialists are obtained if they are made a large order: we are talking about large batches of the same type of product, which made it possible to extract the benefits that large-scale production provides. But such orders were not at all combined with the favorite "entertainment" of MTK to make constant changes to the ship's design. In addition, if the supervising commission often could not get an answer from Ch. Crump, and this complicated the process of agreeing with the MOTC, then the opposite was also true: quite often the reasonable and important questions of Ch. Crump had to wait for weeks for the MOTC to answer. On another issue, the consideration was delayed so much that the supervising commission, in order not to cause delays in construction, was forced to give an answer itself, and then it turned out that the MTC decided differently. Some (and completely sensible) proposals of the supervising commission, (for example, the provision of armor shields for the openly standing guns) of the MTK were rejected. Sometimes the MTK made suboptimal decisions - for example, when it turned out that the gases of 152-mm guns located in the forecastle would affect the calculation of the bow pair of six-inch guns, there was a proposal to protect them with special screens along the bulwarks (although this limited the firing angles), but MTK demanded to move them closer to the center line of the ship, that is, move them closer to each other. The supervising commission quite reasonably objected to this that such a decision would complicate the work of the calculations and even more restrict the angles of fire of the guns than the bulwarks, but the MTC was convinced only by the fact that for such a change in the design C. Crump had canceled the orders made earlier.
Without a doubt, Ch. Crump has repeatedly proposed solutions that worsen the quality of the cruiser, but make it easier for the American industrialist to fulfill his contractual obligations. Admiral Tyrtov, head of the Naval Ministry, wrote:
"According to Crump, everything is exaggerated in our country, and I am afraid that now, having signed a contract, he will demand a weight reduction of one or the other, arguing that he cannot meet the requirements."
He was echoed by the naval attaché D. F. Dead, to whom, by the will of V. P. Verkhovsky had to take part in negotiations with Ch. Crump ("The Commission will have to work with subtle cunning"). But this does not mean that any proposal of the Americans is meaningless and should be taken with hostility. So, for example, it is known that Ch. Crump proposed to design and build Retvizan tower installations in the USA, citing the fact that American tower installations are better than Russian ones, since they were tested in battle "in the most crushing victories known in the chronicles of modern naval battles." … To this the head of the Naval Department replied: “The Spaniards did not have shells, and the guns of the last century were on the coastal batteries. It is not surprising to be the winner against such an enemy."
All this, of course, is correct, and this episode is usually viewed as another and harmful for the Russian Imperial Navy attempt of Ch. Crump to earn extra money on an additional order. But here is what M. A. Danilevsky, who can be suspected of anything, but not in bias towards an American businessman:
“The Yankees have at their fingertips vast electrical firms and a wide distribution of electrical engineering, far ahead of not only what we have in Russia, but throughout Western Europe in this respect, which serves as a guarantee of the dignity of those installations that Crump could have made."
In general, all of the above indicates that Charles Crump, no doubt, was primarily focused not on creating the most effective warship, but on the formal fulfillment of the contract. At the same time, alas, the Maritime Department, despite the measures taken, also failed to create a truly effective system of interaction with the American industrialist and control of his activities.
