It is well known that the creation of armored cruisers of the 2nd rank "for the needs of the Far East" was not at all limited to an order at the foreign shipyards "Novik" and "Boyarina". Subsequently, the Russian Imperial Navy was replenished with two more cruisers of the same class, already built at domestic shipyards. They received the names "Pearls" and "Izumrud", which is why they are often called "pebbles" on the Russian-language Internet. Although, strictly speaking, this is not true, because pearls are a biogenic substance and therefore are not a stone.
Both cruisers were built by the Nevsky plant, and in order to better understand the vicissitudes of their creation, the history of this industrial enterprise should be refreshed.
The Nevsky Plant grew out of a small iron foundry, created somewhere in the middle of the 19th century by an Englishman named Thomson, and it was engaged, among other things, in the manufacture of cast iron cores. In 1857, this production, small for that time, was bought out by Major General P. F. Semyannikov and Lieutenant Colonel V. A. Poletika, who, apparently, had friendly relations since the time of the Mining Institute, in which they were fellow students. Their acquisition was named "Semyannikov and Poletika Nevsky Foundry and Mechanical Plant" (often referred to simply as "Semyannikov Plant") and began to flourish immediately: construction of two small steamers began almost immediately, the plant began to expand, building new production facilities.
Undoubtedly P. F. Semyannikov and V. A. Poletika had a commercial streak: the fact is that in the 60s of the 19th century Russia started building a steam armored fleet, and here the new plant came in handy. The period of the 60s of that century turned into a real shipbuilding boom for Nevsky Zavod: an armored battery "Kremlin", monitors "Perun" and "Lava", armored frigates "Admiral Chichagov" and "Admiral Spiridov", as well as "Minin ".
But in the next decade, orders dropped sharply: however, in 1870 the armored frigate General-Admiral was laid down, but then there was a considerable break. Later, from more or less large warships, the construction of the clippers "Vestnik" and "Robber" was started, but this happened only in 1877-78. And the Nevsky Zavod did not receive any more orders for ships larger than destroyers until the end of the century.
There were two reasons for this: scientific and technological progress and the unfortunate location of the plant. It stood on the Neva River, and its bridges at that time, although they were already movable, did not allow the passage of ships over 8,000 tons of displacement. At the same time, warships grew very quickly in size, so that the Nevsky Plant could not build modern battleships and ocean cruisers. However, the plant did not die from this and did not decay, but was redesigned for the construction of steam locomotives, of which by 1899 it had built more than 1,600 units. However, military and civil shipbuilding was not forgotten either - the plant built large series of destroyers, as well as steam engines and boilers.
During this time, the plant changed owners twice - first it passed to the "Russian Society of Mechanical and Mining Plants", and then, in 1899, it was bought out by the partnership of the Nevsky Shipbuilding and Mechanical Plants.
How well did the Nevsky Shipyard build warships? It is very difficult to answer this question. At the dawn of its "naval career", the speed of construction was not too different from other enterprises of the same profile. For example, the Perun and Lava monitors were built in 2 years and 2 months, while other factories (Carr and MacPherson, New Admiralty) coped with ships of the same type in 1 year and 11 months. - 2 years 1 month However, the Belgian shipyard managed in 1 year and 8 months. But the plant managed to build the armored frigate "Minin" for 13 years: however, in fairness, we note that it was rather the fault of the admirals, who first wanted to get a casemate battleship, then - also a battleship, but a tower one, and after the tragic death of the British "Captain" for a long time they wanted different things, but in the end they returned to the casemate scheme. As for the quality, here it also happened in different ways. For example, the Nevsky Zavod successfully completed the construction of the hull of the armored frigate General-Admiral, whose weight was only 30% of its displacement, but at the same time was very strong. For comparison - the hull of the British cruiser "Inconstant" had a weight of 50% of the ship's displacement. However, history has also preserved the MTK verdict, made by him during construction:
“The faults noticed by Adjutant General Popov in the structure of the“General-Admiral”corvette, which are the main ones in the poor processing of the iron used on the damaged parts of the hull. The ship department of the Marine Technical Committee recognizes it as quite solid and attributes all this to the inattention and negligence of the plant in the manufacture of angular and sheet iron by itself. Such malfunctions cannot be justified …”.
As for the construction of the destroyers, things did not go very smoothly with them either. The first large series of ships of this class, built by the Nevsky Plant, consisted of 10 numbered destroyers of the Pernov type with a displacement of 120-130 tons (No. 133-142), alas, did not differ in the quality of construction, and were significantly inferior in performance characteristics to the prototype built in France.
But it must be said that destroyers of this type were also ordered by other domestic shipbuilding enterprises, and then not a single Russian plant was able to cope with their construction. Later, at the Nevsky Plant, 5 Cyclone-type destroyers with a displacement of 150 tons were built, however, according to the Naval Ministry, the company coped with this order very badly. It was so bad that they did not want to give the next order for destroyers: but alas, there was no particular choice, and the plant's management did everything possible to assure the customer that this time everything would be done at the highest technical level and right on time. An inspection was carried out, representatives of the GUKiS arrived at the Nevsky plant, and they found that the general technical level of the shipyards and workshops would allow the plant to fulfill its promises.
As a result, the Nevsky Plant was ordered 13 destroyers of the "Falcon" type with a displacement of 240 tons, one of them was the famous "Guarding". Nevertheless, the Nevsky Zavod also failed miserably in the construction program for this series. So, out of 13 destroyers, 4 were intended for the Baltic Sea and, according to the signed contract, they should have been submitted for state tests in 1899. However, in fact, they managed to be submitted for acceptance tests only in 1901. As a result, the lead "Discerning", founded in 1898, entered service only in 1902! In England, some battleships were built faster. In favor of the Nevsky Plant, perhaps, only the fact that destroyers of this type even exceeded the contract speed of 26.5 knots, most of them developed 27-27.5 knots during trials.
And so it happened that the plant, which in the 60s of the 19th century was at the forefront of technological progress and created the most powerful ships of the Russian Imperial Navy, by the end of the century, with great difficulty, was able to cope with the construction of destroyers with a displacement of 120-258 tons. And, nevertheless, having already largely lost the skills of military shipbuilding, Nevsky Zavod took part in 1898 in the competition for the creation of a high-speed armored cruiser of the 2nd rank. Fairly assessing its own forces (more precisely, their almost complete absence), Nevsky Zavod resorted to foreign help: the building was designed by the English engineer E. Reed, mechanical - Maudsley Field & Sons.
The resulting project on paper turned out to be quite interesting. Its length was 117.4 m, exceeding that of Novik (unfortunately, it is not clear how much, because it is not clear whether we are talking about the length between the perpendiculars, or the maximum, etc.) with a similar width of 12.2 m. The cruiser was distinguished by very strong armor, the thickness of the bevels of the armored deck had to reach 80 mm, the conning tower - up to 102 mm. The power plant was to consist of 2 steam engines and 16 Yarrow boilers, the speed was supposed to be 25 knots. The deck was covered with teak, not linoleum, and the armament corresponded to the technical specifications (6 * 120-mm and 6 * 47-mm with one Baranovsky landing cannon), with the exception of mine vehicles, the number of which was reduced from 6 to 4. At the same time, the leadership of Nevsky the plant turned to the head of the Marine Ministry, Vice Admiral P. P. Tyrtov with a request to issue the plant an order for 2 armored cruisers, in fact, out of competition. So to speak, to support domestic producers.
Interestingly, the Maritime Ministry was, in general, not against it, especially since the Nevsky Zavod promised to modernize its production, and the joint "Nevsky-English" project took 3rd place in the competition and was, in general, at first glance not so too bad. Thus, it could well have turned out that the Russian Imperial Navy would have replenished with armored cruisers of the 2nd rank of three different projects (Novik, Boyarin and the project of the Nevsky Plant). But, apparently, the initial merits of the joint "Anglo-Neva" creativity were "bought" at too high a price: a year and a half of fine-tuning the project did not lead to success, the cruiser still did not meet the requirements of the MTK. And so, on January 8, 1900, P. P. Tyrtov gives the order: “due to the impossibility to postpone further the construction of a 3000 t cruiser at the Nevsky Zavod … discuss and report whether it will be possible to build a hull according to the Novik cruiser drawings, and mechanisms and boilers - either according to Shikhau, or according to the already approved MTK drawings of the Models, Field and Sons plant.
MTC nevertheless convened a committee to consider the project of E. Reed and the Nevsky Plant for the last time, but found it unsatisfactory, and, in the end, it was decided to build a cruiser according to the Shikhau project. It would seem that there are all the possibilities for this, because the working drawings of Novik should have been available. Indeed, in the construction contract concluded with the Shikhau firm, it was directly written: “The firm must supply the supervising engineers with a set of documents and drawings on receipt. In addition, the firm is obliged to provide the MTK with a set of drawings in triplicate."
Alas, the story with the cruiser "Varyag" was repeated here - it turned out that the Russian text of the contract did not correspond at all to its German copy, while, as can be understood from the context, it was not the Russian text that was considered the main one. And the leadership of the GUKiS was surprised to find that the Germans did not consider themselves obligated to transfer working drawings to the Russians. Moreover, when representatives of the Maritime Ministry tried to discuss the conditions for the transfer of such drawings, the Shihau company refused to do this even for a fee. In general, the management of the German company notified our authorities that it was ready to hand over the documentation only a few months after Russia ordered a second Novik-class cruiser from it, or an equivalent number of destroyers.
As a result of various disputes, and the participation of Lieutenant Polis, acting as Russia's naval agent in Germany, the price of working drawings was reduced to ordering only machines for the next Novik-class cruiser.
In parallel with this, the specialists of the Maritime Ministry had to struggle with the appetites of the Nevsky Plant. He was ready to take on the construction of two cruisers, with the construction period of the first at 28 months, and the second - 36 months, but on the condition that the countdown would begin only after the last drawing was transferred to the plant. GUKiS rightly saw this as an opportunity for Nevsky Zavod to postpone the delivery of the ships because of any trifle, and did not agree with such a condition.
Then the bargaining began on the construction price. Nevsky Zavod announced its readiness to build two cruisers with a displacement of 3,200 tons at a price of 3,300,000 rubles. each. This was a very expensive proposal, because it was about building the ship itself, with armor, but without artillery and ammunition. "Novik" in a similar configuration cost 2,900,000 rubles, and the Boyarin under construction in Denmark - 314,000 British pounds. Unfortunately, the author does not know exactly the rate that was used to convert pounds to rubles, but based on the known total cost of the cruiser and the cost of its weapons and ammunition, it turns out that the cost of its construction without them was 3,029,302 rubles.
Against this background, the 3.3 million rubles requested by the Nevsky Plant looked like a bad joke, so in response the Naval Department also decided to "joke". Its representatives proposed to reduce the cost of each cruiser to 2,707,942 rubles. Thus, the cost of two cruisers was to be reduced by 1,184,116 rubles, of which 100,000 rubles. deducted for ready-made drawings that did not need to be done by the plant, 481,416 rubles. - for the removal of responsibility for failure to reach the contractual course of 25 knots and another 602,700 rubles. were a discount for ordering two cruisers at once.
Obviously, the response "joke" of the Maritime Ministry brought the appetites of the Nevsky Plant in line with reality, so that their next proposal looked more or less reasonable - 3,095,000 rubles. for the cruiser, although they asked for another 75,000 rubles. from above to invite engineers to oversee the construction. This is somewhat more than the Ministry of the Navy paid for the Novik or Boyarin, but still within reason.
Meanwhile, "Shihau" continued to bargain for working drawings of "Novik". I must say that the copying of the drawings still took place, because the German shipbuilders were obliged to coordinate them with the ITC. So, after it became clear that Shikhau was not going to provide these drawings, as it was written in the Russian version of the contract, all documents submitted for approval began to be duplicated, and, as far as can be understood, no one notified the Germans about this. But they themselves realized that by continuing to submit the drawings for approval, they risked being left without profit, and therefore completely refused to provide them under the current contract. At the same time, if at some point the Germans showed their readiness to transfer them in the event of a contract for cars for one cruiser, now their appetites have again increased to "car sets" for two ships, for which they also demanded a 25% prepayment.
However, the scythe found on the stone. The fact is that just at this time, the junior shipbuilder Pushchin 1st, previously removed from office, returning to Russia … obviously, "out of forgetfulness" took with him a set of drawings that he received from Shikhau for temporary use. And it is very likely that as soon as these drawings got to the specialists of the Nevsky Plant, the management of the latter loudly announced the inadmissibility of the proposal of the German shipbuilders: "Transferring the order of machines abroad contradicts national interests - the development of national shipbuilding." And the leadership of the Maritime Department fully supported the "domestic manufacturer", as a result of which the Shikhau proposal was rejected. The Germans, realizing that they had miscalculated in something, tried to offer only 2 cars at the most reasonable price and without any advance payment, but this deal was also rejected.
On the one hand, Pushchin's act can be qualified as a banal theft with good reason. But, if we talk in this vein, then the discrepancies in the texts of the contract for the construction of "Novik" should be recognized as a fraud of the German side. As far as can be judged, the MTK did not know about Pushchin's actions in advance. It is quite possible that he received an offer from the Nevsky plant, although it is possible that this could also be his private initiative. Of course, the drawings were eventually returned to the Germans, but only after they had been in Russia for about a month. It can be assumed that in this case the resourcefulness of German and Russian private producers collided, moreover domestic … hmm … Jeff Peters from the economy prevailed. In any case, only one thing is reliably known - such "obscene" behavior of the junior shipbuilder did not in any way affect his future career and did not prevent him, over time, from reaching the rank of general.
So the detective story came to an end, and things went on as usual. In March 1901, the final decision was made to order 2 cruisers to the Nevsky Zavod, and on September 22 of the same year, the board of the "Partnership of the Nevsky Shipbuilding and Mechanical Plant", in accordance with the GUKiS order No. 11670 dated April 7, 1900, signed a contract for the construction of two cruisers of the type Novik.
To be continued!
