Qualla: Russian Battleship Slava

Russian Battleship Slava: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Glory - that is what Slava means in Russian. The word looks bitter in hindsight. The battleship was the youngest of the five Borodino-class pre-dreadnoughts the Imperial Russian Navy built in the 1900s, and the only one that did not steam east to be slaughtered at Tsushima in 1905. She missed that catastrophe because she was finished too late to make the voyage. For twelve more years she carried the name of an outcome her four sisters had been denied. Then, in October 1917, sinking in the Moon Sound channel between Estonia and the small island of Muhu, she became one more of the war's mechanical casualties - except that her dying was not done by the Germans alone. Her own sailors helped.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Russian Battleship Slava: Late to Tsushima, Late to Everything

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Laid down at the Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg in 1902, launched in August 1903, completed only in October 1905, Slava was 389 feet at the waterline, displaced about 14,400 tons, and carried four 12-inch guns in twin turrets fore and aft, with twelve 6-inch guns in side casema...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Russian Battleship Slava: Holding the Gulf

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pline, Public domain. Through the summer of 1915 and most of 1916, Slava was the spine of the small Russian squadron defending the Gulf of Riga against the German High Seas Fleet. She held off the first German push through the Irbe Strait in August 1915, took three 283mm shells from German dreadnought...

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Image: Pline | Public domain

Russian Battleship Slava: The February Revolution at Sea

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. When the Tsar abdicated in March 1917, the Russian Baltic Fleet did not abdicate quietly. Sailors at the great naval bases of Kronstadt and Helsinki murdered some of their officers, refused to follow orders, formed soviets, and turned themselves into a political force. Slava, sma...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Russian Battleship Slava: Moon Sound, October 1917

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ave Maria Mõistlik, CC BY-SA 2.5. On October 17, 1917 - by then a week before the Bolshevik Revolution would seize Petrograd - the Germans pushed into Moon Sound with battleships, dreadnoughts, and minesweepers, the next step in Operation Albion. Slava sortied south at dawn, fired at maximum elevation on the Germ...

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Image: Ave Maria Mõistlik | CC BY-SA 2.5

Russian Battleship Slava: After the Glory

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Three torpedoes were fired into the wreck for good measure - only one worked. Slava settled on the shallow bottom in October 1917, broken-backed, with a hole in her starboard hull near the funnel. The Soviets struck her from the navy list on May 29, 1918. Through the 1920s and in...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain