In this article, we systematize information about the breakdowns of the Varyag cruiser power plant from the moment the cruiser left the Crump plant and until its appearance in Port Arthur.
Let's start with tests. For the first time, the cruiser sailed on them on May 16, 1900, still unfinished, the first day they went at a speed of 16-17 knots and there were no problems. However, the next morning, when the steam pressure was brought to 16-16, 5 atm. and runs were started at a speed of 21-22, 5 knots, after an hour, heating of the bearing of the connecting rod of the high-pressure cylinder (HPC) of the left car was revealed. They cooled it down and tried to continue testing at the same speed, but now the molten white metal "got out" from the crank bearing of the HPC of the right machine. As a result, the tests had to be interrupted and returned to troubleshoot. A day later (May 19, 1900) we again went out into the ocean, where they walked for two hours - there were no problems, except for the red-hot furnace doors of the boilers.
Then came the time for official trials, and on July 9, 1900, the cruiser made the first 400-mile transition to the Boston roadstead, 50 miles from which was a 10-mile long measured mile. The launch took place on July 12, the cruiser made three runs at a speed of 16 knots, and then two runs at a speed of 18, 21 and 23 knots. respectively. It was then, on the last run, the cruiser showed its record 24, 59 knots, despite the fact that the weather had deteriorated badly by that time, there was a heavy downpour, and the excitement reached 4-5 points.
The results of these tests could be regarded as a great success, especially since on July 9 and 12 the Varyag machines and boilers performed excellently. But alas, on July 15, during a 12-hour run at a speed of 23 knots, at the eighth hour the cover of the HPC was knocked out, which, of course, completely disabled one of the cars (the left one). Naturally, the tests were interrupted.
The cylinder had to be made new, so the cruiser was able to enter the next tests only two months later, on September 16, 1900. The first 24-hour run at a speed of 10 knots ended without incident, and therefore, having made the necessary preparations and waiting out a two-day storm, September 21 Varyag”Re-entered the main tests - 12-hour run at a speed of 23 knots. On it, the cruiser demonstrated an average speed of 23, 18 knots, so it could be said that the ship was successfully tested. But there was one nuance - during the run, one of the boilers burst a tube, which forced the boiler out of service for 3.5 hours. And after some five hours after the completion of the tests, the right refrigerator leaked.
But all this was still half the trouble - the problem was that after the tests, it was necessary to conduct a complete revision of the power plant. And then she showed a very unsightly picture of the state of the ship:
1. A layer of scale and other "sediments" was found in the pipes;
2. The tubes located in the lower rows and, accordingly, the most susceptible to heating, sagged en masse;
3. There was "tearfulness" - the places of contacts of the tubes with the junction boxes lost their tightness and leaked;
4. Conversely, the nuts that held the clamping brackets (that is, the mechanism for attaching the tubes to the boiler) were sealed en masse;
5. In one boiler, the junction box cracked - as it turned out, it was formed at the manufacturing plant, but it was coined so successfully that the supervising commission did not find it. However, now that the boilers had to run at full capacity, the crack has spread further.
Of course, the tests are there to reveal the various shortcomings of the ship. But it is noteworthy that in both cases of long twelve-hour runs at full speed, breakdowns occurred on the cruiser, despite the fact that after the completion of the second run, the condition of the boilers turned out to be such that they needed to be disassembled, cleaned and assembled, which could only be dealt with by the end October, that is, more than a month after sea trials.
As you know, the cruiser "Varyag" left Philadelphia on March 10, 1901, but already at noon on March 11 stopped at the entrance to Delaware Bay near Lewis, where they waited until March 14 in order to test the steering drive in the bay. Then the cruiser made the transition to the Hampton roadstead - a full supply of coal was taken, and finally, on March 25, the cruiser went out into the ocean. Already on the first day of the journey, a storm began, wind gusts reached 11 points. The cruiser's cars did not have any breakdowns, but an increased consumption of coal was revealed, which forced the cruiser to enter the Azores on April 3, which was not originally supposed to be done. Here they waited out the storm at anchor, having both cruiser vehicles in constant readiness, and on April 8, the Varyag went to sea again.
On April 14, the cruiser arrived at Cherbourg. As we can see, the transition did not take much time - less than a day from the parking lot to the city of Lewis, then a day to the Hampton roadstead, from which the Varyag left only on March 25, and on April 3, 9 days later, it dropped anchor at the Azores islands. The road from them to Cherbourg took another 6 days, and in total, it turns out that the cruiser was in motion for 17 days.
However, by the end of these 17 days, the Varyag's power plant had reached such a state that the commander of the cruiser V. I. Baer was forced to leave the ship entrusted to him for a very long repair in Cherbourg - the mechanisms were sorted out, the cylinders of the main machines were opened. It was assumed that the team will cope with this in two weeks, but finished in 11 days, and on April 25, the cruiser went to sea again. After 5 days, the "Varyag" arrived at the Revel raid, and from there on May 2 went to Kronstadt, where he arrived the next day without incident.
As a matter of fact, the "Varyag" (except, probably, the only short-term exit to the sea) was in Kronstadt until the very departure to the Far East. At this time, the cruiser underwent various modifications and corrections, as well as fine-tuning of artillery. But it is of interest that it was in Kronstadt that damage to the hull - flora in regions 30-37 was revealed; 43-49 and 55-56 frames had a deflection arrow from 1, 6 to 19 mm. The reasons for this were not identified, but the cruiser “survived” being docked without additional deformations, and it was decided that all this was not dangerous. Perhaps this was indeed the case, and the hull was deformed, for example, during the launch of the ship.
"Varyag" left Kronstadt only on August 5, 1901, and reached without breakdowns … exactly to the Tolbukhin lighthouse (2, 8 miles from the island of Kotlin, where, in fact, Kronstadt is located), and there the cruiser had a broken valve stem for the HPC of the left car, which caused the ship went further under one car. A day later (August 7), a spare stock was installed, but alas, as soon as the move was given, the last one immediately broke down again. So the cruiser came to Denmark in one car (it happened on August 9) and there they found out and tried to eliminate the cause of the breakdown, while spare parts had to be ordered from the Burmeister and Vine plant.
In principle, all this was not something supernatural, the repair could have been completed quickly enough, but the Varyag set out to sea only on August 28 for protocol reasons - they were waiting for the visit of the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, then for the arrival of the royal yacht Shtandart and the armored cruiser "Svetlana" walking with him. The next day we met the "Hohenzollern" and went to Danzig, where the meeting of the two emperors took place, and then the "Standart" and "Svetlana" left. But the "Varyag" could not follow them, and was forced to spend an extra two hours on the German roadstead. The reason is the breakdown of the barring machine, as a result of which the cruiser could not un-anchor.
Without a doubt, this breakdown lies entirely on the conscience of the Russian sailors - the investigation showed that it was due to the erroneous actions of the watch mechanical engineer. But why was he wrong? The fact is that the preparation for the tsarist reviews is undoubtedly a tedious and nervous business, and the crew of the Varyag did just that. But the problem was also that already in Danzig (if not earlier) the cruiser's mechanical engineers were faced with the need for another bulkhead of the mechanisms, more precisely, the bearings of the right machine, and they were still doing repairs when the cruiser should have been removed from the anchor and left the roadstead. …
By the way, one should not think that problems with the power plant were the only difficulties that the crew faced - electrical equipment, including dynamos, were constantly failing. As it turned out later, the reason was that the shafts of the latter, according to the technical conditions, had to be forged, but were cast. Subsequently, MTC presented a demand to Ch. Crump to replace them.
The Varyag continued to accompany the Shtandart and Svetlana - on September 2, the cruiser was in Kiel, the next day - in Elba, on September 5 - in Dunkirk. Here the ship once again began preparations for the transition to the Far East. Among other things, the consequences of the "Danzig mistake" were corrected, machines and boilers were checked again.
The cruiser left Dunkirk on September 16, 1901 for Cadiz, where she stayed for 5 days, and then came to Algeria on September 27. The ship stayed at sea for only 6 days after leaving Dunkirk, where the power plant was being repaired and inspected, but in Algeria it stopped again for a complete bulkhead of machines, including low and medium pressure cylinders.
The Varyag left Algeria on October 9, and on October 23 entered the Salamis Bay, spending a total of 9 days at sea (four days in Palermo, and one day in Souda Bay, where she was supposed to undergo combat training for a month, however, the next day after the arrival, the cruiser was recalled). The commander of the ship received an encrypted message, from which it followed that the plans had changed and the cruiser, instead of training in the Gulf of Souda, would have to go to the Persian Gulf for three weeks to demonstrate the Russian flag. A very funny incident is connected with this episode. The encryption was top secret, only two people knew about its contents on the cruiser: the commander of the Varyag V. I. Baer and senior officer E. K. Craft. The latter, with great surprise, informed V. I. Beru, that the supply suppliers know perfectly well who the cruiser will go to the Persian Gulf …
So V. I. Baer faced a rather serious transition, and then he had to represent Russian interests in the low-income ports of the Persian Gulf for a long time. So, the commander is so not sure about the power plant of his ship that he asked to delay the exit until November 6. Permission was obtained, and within two weeks the mechanical engineers were again sorting out the main and auxiliary mechanisms of the cruiser, including refrigerators, since in addition to other problems of machines and boilers, salt water was added, the use of which led to the rapid withdrawal of boilers out of service.
It seems that after such a repair everything should have been in order, but somewhere there - on the second day of leaving the Salaminskaya Bay (held on November 6), salinity again appeared in 7 boilers. And the next day (November 8), pipes in three boilers began to flow, which had to be urgently taken out of operation. We tried to completely change the boiler water, for which we had to stay at Suez for two days - but an hour after the Varyag entered the Suez Canal, salinity reappeared. I had to stop the hike again for a day and "gut" the left refrigerator. It turned out that at least 400 of his pipes (after a two-week repair in Salaminskaya Bay!) Were unreliable and had to be drowned out.
Now V. I. Baer had to disassemble 9 boilers of the stern group, powered by the left refrigerator, and it was not possible to do this by the forces of the machine team alone, and he also had to use combatants in these works. While the Varyag was following the Red Sea, 5,000 boiler rooms, evaporator and circulation pipes were moved and cleaned, inside and out.
Did these measures help? Yes, not at all - on the contrary, the first, really serious accidents followed. So, on November 14, pipes burst in one cauldron, on November 15 - in two at once, and on November 17 - in another one. Eight people were scalded, one very seriously. The most unpleasant thing was that the ruptured tubes were neither burned out nor clogged - there were no defects or traces of deposits on them. As a result, they had to stop in Aden for four days - in addition to loading coal and supplies, boilers were again sorted out.
All these, let's not be afraid of this word, unprecedented efforts were crowned with "success" - for 13 running days the cruiser "Varyag" did not have major accidents of its power plant and refrigerators. For five days, from November 22 to November 27, the cruiser sailed along the Gulf of Aden to Muscat, then a three-day crossing to Bushehr, a day to Kuwait and two to Ling … in each of the above ports the Varyag stopped for several days, receiving guests from local sheikhs and other the public. But nothing good will last long, and in Ling two days (December 13-14) were again spent on car repairs. One day trek to Bandar Abbas, a three-day stay there and a three-day trek to Karachi. There "Varyag" spent four days, taking 750 tons of coal and, of course, carrying out preventive maintenance of machines and boilers.
On December 25, the cruiser left Karachi and 6 days later, on December 31, arrived in Colombo. The Port Arthur squadron was just a stone's throw away, and Petersburg demanded as soon as possible reunification with the squadron, but V. I. Ber categorically does not want to attach an incapacitated cruiser to the squadron, and requires a two-week stop to repair mechanisms, including: opening and bulkheading the cylinders of the main machines, circulation and air pumps, slide boxes, inspection of bearings, packings and valves. In addition, many pipes in refrigerators had to be changed again, and they themselves had to be boiled in soda.
The time was given, but the cruiser was not "brought up" in order - leaving Colombo on January 15, 1902 in the morning, in the evening it was necessary to reduce the speed due to warming up of the bearings of the high-pressure cylinder eccentrics. A week later, on December 22, the Varyag arrived in Singapore, loaded with coal during the day and carried out maintenance work for another three days. From December 26 - a week at sea, February 2 came to Hong Kong and again stood up for a week, engaged in a complete bulkhead of mechanisms. By this time, the number of replaced tubes in boilers and refrigerators had already reached 1,500 pieces! The ship had 2 more transitions to Port Arthur - four days from Hong Kong to Nagasaki, and from there - three days to Port Arthur, but taking into account the parking in Nagasaki, Arthur arrived only on February 25.
What can we say about the Varyag power plant based on the above? Sometimes on the Internet you have to read the version that while the commander of the cruiser was commanded by V. I. Ber, then everything was more or less in order with the machines and boilers, but then V. F. Rudnev - and everything collapsed … Meanwhile, the facts testify to the opposite.
Without a doubt, the cruiser "Varyag" reached and even exceeded the contract speed on tests. But in both cases, they were carried out by a 12-hour run at full speed, the Varyag's power plant was damaged: in the first case, the cylinder cover was ripped off, and in the second one of the boilers was out of order, and upon completion of the tests, the cruiser's boilers became very upset requiring factory repair. Then the cruiser made the transition first from Philadelphia to Kronstadt, and from there, passing through the Baltic Sea and escorting the royal yacht to Port Arthur, with a long stay in the Persian Gulf.
So, from the moment of leaving Philadelphia to the moment when the cruiser dropped anchor in Port Arthur, the Varyag spent 102 days on the move at sea. But in order to provide him with these 102 days of travel, V. I. Baer had to repair the ship for more than 73 days at various stops and ports! We cannot indicate the exact figure, because we do not know how long the Varyag was repaired in Denmark, and how long it took to prevent the vehicles in Dunkirk - accordingly, the author was forced to exclude the repair time in these ports altogether. In addition, the aforementioned 73 days did not take into account the repair work that the cruiser carried out on the move, as was done, for example, in the Red Sea. Again, when we talk about 102 sailing days, we mean the total time that the cruiser was at sea, but not the time in which it was at least relatively serviceable: so, for example, the indicated 102 days include those 4 days when the Varyag was sailing from Kronstadt to Denmark in one car, and the days of its boiler accidents when the cruiser moved to Aden. If we introduce the indicated amendments, we will get an absolutely terrifying picture, impossible for a warship - in order to provide the newest ship with 24 hours of sailing at sea, it took almost the same amount of time to repair its power plant while at anchor! And you need to understand that during the transitions the cruiser almost always went not at a combat speed, but at an economic speed of 10 knots.
Nothing of the kind has happened on other foreign-built ships. Take, for example, the armored cruiser "Bayan" - that, after surrendering to the fleet, sailed the Mediterranean to Piraeus and Algeria, and then returned to Toulon three months after his departure. At the same time, all the shortcomings (practically not related to boilers and machines) were presented to the manufacturer, which were eliminated within a week. From there the cruiser went to Kronstadt, and after spending some time there - to Port Arthur. Of course, during this time, some kind of prophylaxis was carried out on its power plant, but we know only one case when the ship had to spend 3 days in Cadiz on the bulkhead of suddenly knocking bearings. Otherwise, everything was fine!
But the situation with machines, boilers and refrigerators "Varyag" was infinitely far from normal. And, having understood the repair schedule, it is very difficult to blame the crew for the poor maintenance of the ship. Suppose the Russian machine team turned out to be made up of laymen, but how, in this case, to explain the output of the material part during test runs, where everything was carried out by forces and under the control of the plant's specialists? But during the acceptance of the Varyag, there was never a case when it passed a 12-hour run at a maximum speed of 23 knots and nothing went out of order. On the way to Russia, the cruiser had to be delayed for 11 days due to the need to enumerate machines and boilers - this was not required by any transport, or, especially, passenger steamer, and the latter often sailed in the Atlantic even faster than the Varyag. It seems that at the time of entering Kronstadt, the cruiser was in order, but as soon as it left, the breakdown followed one after another, the cars and boilers were constantly in need of repair. It is hard to imagine that the Russians in a matter of days at sea managed to break American equipment so hard! But the version that the machines, boilers and refrigerators of the Varyag were simply not brought up to standard by Ch. Crump fits into the above operating history very well.
But back to V. I. Ber - in his personal opinion, everything was completely wrong with the Varyag's power plant, and he regularly sent reports “upward”. One of his reports on the problems of the "Varyag" with boilers in the Red Sea, Admiral P. P. Tyrtov forwarded V. P. Verkhovsky with a very malicious resolution: "to form an opinion about the properties of Nikloss's boilers." However, this could not help the Varyag team.
Having made a truly titanic effort, constantly repairing the Varyag, V. I. Baer nevertheless led the cruiser where ordered. But in what condition? When the Varyag left Nagasaki for Port Arthur, the junior flagship of the squadron Rear Admiral K. P. Kuzmich. He, of course, wanted to test the new ship, and arranged a series of checks on various systems of the ship, including its power plant. But when the cruiser tried to develop full speed, then at a speed of 20.5 knots, the bearings rattled, and the speed had to be reduced to 10 knots.
Further checks were also not encouraging. As we said earlier, "Varyag" arrived in Port Arthur on February 25, 1902, and on February 28, went to sea and, after a shooting practice, again tried to give full speed. The result is a catastrophic one, rupture of several tubes, knocking and heating of many bearings, despite the fact that the speed never exceeded 20 knots. These two tests allow us to confidently assert that, despite all the efforts of the crew, the cruiser arrived in Port Arthur completely incapacitated and required immediate repair.
The list of works on mechanisms, compiled on February 28, included:
1. Inspection and repair of all bearings - 21 days;
2. Bulkhead of spool actuators and spools and their check - 21 days;
3. Inspection of the pistons of the cylinders and checking their movement - 14 days;
4. Leaching of refrigerators, replacement of tubes with new ones, breaking of oil seals and hydraulic tests - 40 days;
5. Replacement of the top blowing valves of boilers and bottom blowing valves - 68 days.
Some of these works could be done simultaneously, and some (according to the fifth point) generally postponed, producing parts according to their ability when there was time for this: nevertheless, the cruiser immediately needed two months of repair, which could only be done with the full tension of the engine command.
Nothing of the kind happened with the other ships that arrived to replenish our Pacific forces. Take the same "battleship-cruiser" "Peresvet". An interesting opinion about him was expressed by the commander of the Pacific Ocean squadron, Vice Admiral N. I. The officers of the "battleship-cruiser" N. I. Skrydlov scolded in the presence of the sailors (which, obviously, should not have been done). Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich described it this way: “In his opinion, which he laid out in the most non-parliamentary terms, neither we nor our ship were good for anywhere. We were the most notorious and hopeless laymen who ever stepped on board a ship, and the commander was the worst! " But despite such a derogatory assessment, the Peresvet's power plant was in relative order, and the ship, upon arrival, was not sent to reserve or for repairs, but remained in the active squadron to make up for gaps in "combat and political" training. In addition to Peresvet, there were also minelayers Amur and Yenisei - their machines and boilers also worked perfectly and did not require repair. At the same time, the Varyag had to be immediately repaired, nevertheless, the officers of this cruiser did not call N. I. Skrydlov no reproach.
I must say that according to the results of the inspection of "Varyag" and "Peresvet", oddly enough, N. I. Skrydlov spoke about the advantage of domestically built ships. Of course, he noted that the "Varyag" is not bad in everything, and a number of its decisions would be nice to adopt for their own ships. This concerned, for example, the placement of a dressing station under the armored deck, an extensive "network" of communication pipes, magnificent steam boats, which were considered the best in the entire squadron, etc. But at the same time, NI Skrydlov noted that the construction of the cruiser "was of a market nature, and the desire of a private plant to save money had a disadvantageous effect on the solidity of the hull and the finishing of parts."
But the admiral's comment about the Varyag vehicles was especially interesting:
"The mechanisms of the cruiser, designed successfully, were assembled, obviously, without due care and reconciliation, and upon arrival in the East, they were so developed that they required a lengthy bulkhead and reconciliation."
In this regard, the opinion of N. I. Skrydlova obviously echoes the results of studies of the Varyag mechanisms undertaken by engineer I. I. Gippius. Thus, we see that the thesis that “Under V. I. Bare with boilers "Varyag" everything was fine ", is not confirmed at all. Serious problems with the mechanisms haunted the cruiser from the very beginning of her service.
