Russian cruiser Dmitrii Donskoi
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''Dmitrii Donskoi'' (russian: Дмитрий Донской) was an
armoured cruiser The armored cruiser was a type of warship of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was designed like other types of cruisers to operate as a long-range, independent warship, capable of defeating any ship apart from a battleship and fast eno ...
built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the early 1880s. She was designed as a commerce raider and equipped with a full suite of sails to economize on coal consumption. The ship spent the bulk of her career abroad, either in the Far East or in the Mediterranean. ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' was assigned to the Second Pacific Squadron after the Japanese destroyed Russian ships deployed in the Far East during the early stages of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905. The squadron was intercepted by the Japanese fleet in May 1905 in the
Battle of Tsushima The Battle of Tsushima (Japanese:対馬沖海戦, Tsushimaoki''-Kaisen'', russian: Цусимское сражение, ''Tsusimskoye srazheniye''), also known as the Battle of Tsushima Strait and the Naval Battle of Sea of Japan (Japanese: 日 ...
after a lengthy voyage from the
Baltic Baltic may refer to: Peoples and languages * Baltic languages, a subfamily of Indo-European languages, including Lithuanian, Latvian and extinct Old Prussian *Balts (or Baltic peoples), ethnic groups speaking the Baltic languages and/or originati ...
. The cruiser was not seriously damaged during the initial fighting and tried to continue on to Vladivostok after the first day's fighting. She was spotted by several groups of Japanese warships the following day and was badly damaged in the resulting combat. Her captain ordered the crew ashore near Ulleungdo and had ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' scuttled offshore.


Design and description

''Dmitrii Donskoi'' was classified as a semi-
armoured frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and ...
and was an improved version of her half-sister . The ship was designed with long endurance and high speed to facilitate her role as a commerce raider. She was laid out as a
central-battery ironclad The central battery ship, also known as a centre battery ship in the United Kingdom and as a casemate ship in European continental navies, was a development of the (high-freeboard) broadside ironclad of the 1860s, given a substantial boost due t ...
with her armament concentrated amidships. The iron-hulled ship was fitted with a ram and was sheathed in wood and copper to reduce fouling. Her crew numbered approximately 550 officers and men. The ship was
long overall __NOTOC__ Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, and ...
. She had a
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of and a draught of .Wright, p. 127 The ship displaced at deep load. ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' had a pair of three-cylinder compound steam engines driving a single propeller shaft. Steam was provided by eight cylindrical boilers.Watts, p. 79 The engines were designed to produce , but produced during sea trials which gave the ship a maximum speed around . The ship normally carried of coal which gave her an economical range of at a speed of , but she is known to have loaded in May 1889.Wright, pp. 127–128 She was
ship rig A full-rigged ship or fully rigged ship is a sailing vessel's sail plan with three or more masts, all of them square-rigged. A full-rigged ship is said to have a ship rig or be ship-rigged. Such vessels also have each mast stepped in three seg ...
ged with three mastsSilverstone, p. 362 and had a total sail area of . To reduce
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while under sail, her funnels were retractable. The highest speed that she made solely under sail was . ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' was armed with two 30- calibre Model 1877 guns, on sponsons on the upper deck between the funnels. The fourteen 28-calibre Model 1877 guns were mounted in casemates on the main deck. Anti- torpedo boat defence was provided by a number of nine-pounder (), four-pounder () and five-barreled revolver
Hotchkiss gun The Hotchkiss gun can refer to different products of the Hotchkiss arms company starting in the late 19th century. It usually refers to the 1.65-inch (42 mm) light mountain gun; there were also a navy (47 mm) and a 3-inch (76&nbs ...
s.Sources disagree on the numbers of each weapon at any time. The ship was also equipped with four above-water torpedo tubes.Campbell, p. 187 The ship's waterline
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was composed of compound armour and extended the full length of the ship. It was six inches thick amidships, but reduced to at the ship's ends. It extended above the waterline and below. Transverse bulkheads thick protected the guns in the
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from raking fire. The sponsons of the 8-inch guns were equally thick. The protective deck was thick.


Service

Construction began on ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' on 22 September 1880,All dates used in this article are New Style at the New Admiralty Shipyard in St. Petersburg, and the keel-laying ceremony was held on 21 May 1881. She was launched on 30 August 1882 and completed in early 1885. The ship's total cost was 3,421,468 rubles. She was named after Dmitry Donskoy, Grand Duke of Moscow. She sailed to the Mediterranean on 8 August 1885 and remained there until she arrived at Port Said on 6 March 1887 en route to the Far East. ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' reached Nagasaki, Japan, on 19 May and remained in Japanese waters for several months. The ship arrived at Vladivostok on 20 July and accidentally grounded on 12 October whilst conducting torpedo practice. Only lightly damaged, she was refloated the following day. ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' wintered in Japan that year and made port visits to Chefoo and Shanghai in February 1888. She was refitted in Yokohama before she began her return to the Baltic on 20 January 1889. The ship was inspected by Tsar Alexander III after her arrival at Kronstadt on 12 June. She began a lengthy overhaul in preparation for her next foreign cruise shortly afterwards.Wright, p. 139 ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' began her second foreign cruise on 3 October 1891 when she sailed for the Mediterranean, visiting Brest, France en route. She was reclassified as a cruiser of the first rank on 13 February 1892 and remained in the Mediterranean for another month or so. The ship reached Vladivostok on 29 June, stopping at
Aden Aden ( ar, عدن ' Yemeni: ) is a city, and since 2015, the temporary capital of Yemen, near the eastern approach to the Red Sea (the Gulf of Aden), some east of the strait Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000 people. ...
, Singapore, and Hong Kong en route. ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' served as the
flagship A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically the fi ...
of
Rear Admiral Rear admiral is a senior naval flag officer rank, equivalent to a major general and air vice marshal and above that of a commodore and captain, but below that of a vice admiral. It is regarded as a two star "admiral" rank. It is often regarde ...
Tirtov several times during the year. She spent the winter in Yokosuka and Nagasaki before she sailed in early 1893 to America for a goodwill visit to mark the 400th anniversary of America's discovery. In Algiers in March, the ship picked up Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich of Russia and became flagship of Rear Admiral Kaznakov who commanded all the Russian ships at the exhibition. ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' reached New York City on 25 April and participated in the
Presidential Review A fleet review or naval review is an event where a gathering of ships from a particular navy is paraded and reviewed by an incumbent head of state and/or other official civilian and military dignitaries. A number of national navies continue to ...
two days later. She made port visits to Philadelphia, Boston and Newport, Rhode Island before she arrived back at Kronstadt in early September. During the ship's lengthy 1893–95 refit, she was rearmed with six 45-calibre six-inch guns, ten 45-calibre guns, and six guns. Her boilers may have been replaced at this time and her sailing rig was replaced by three pole masts. Wilgelm Vitgeft was appointed as the ship's captain in late 1895 and ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' began her voyage to the Far East on 10 November. She was one of the Russian ships that occupied Port Arthur in March 1898 and participated in suppressing the
Boxer Rebellion The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...
in mid-1900. The ship was ordered home in late 1901. ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' was refitted again upon her arrival and six of her 4.7-inch guns were replaced by six guns and two additional 47 mm guns. After the completion of her refit, she escorted a group of seven destroyers and five torpedo boats to the Mediterranean in October 1903 where they were assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron under the command of Rear Admiral Virenius. The Naval Staff decided to reinforce the Pacific Squadron with the Mediterranean Squadron in December, but its departure was delayed by repairs to the
battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...
after it had grounded. When the Russo-Japanese War began in February 1904, the squadron was in the Red Sea and was recalled to the Baltic lest it be caught and destroyed en route by the Japanese.Wright, p. 142


Sinking

''Dmitrii Donskoi'' was assigned to the cruiser force of the Second Pacific Squadron and departed Libau on 15 October 1904 bound for Vladivostok with Captain 1st Rank Lebedev in command. En route in the North Sea, she was damaged by friendly fire from seven sister ships in mistake for a Japanese vessel during the Dogger Bank Incident of 21/22 October. The ship passed the
Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( af, Kaap die Goeie Hoop ) ;''Kaap'' in isolation: pt, Cabo da Boa Esperança is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is t ...
on 20 December. Whilst approaching the Strait of Tsushima on 27 May 1905, the Russian force was intercepted by the Japanese in the
Battle of Tsushima The Battle of Tsushima (Japanese:対馬沖海戦, Tsushimaoki''-Kaisen'', russian: Цусимское сражение, ''Tsusimskoye srazheniye''), also known as the Battle of Tsushima Strait and the Naval Battle of Sea of Japan (Japanese: 日 ...
. The cruiser was assigned to defend the transport ships at the rear of the Russian formation and was not seriously engaged during the day. She became separated from the rest of the fleet during the early evening and attempted to steam north to Vladivostok through the Japanese fleet. ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' was unsuccessfully attacked by Japanese destroyers and torpedo boats during the night. The following morning, she helped to transfer the badly wounded squadron commander, Vice Admiral
Zinovy Rozhestvensky Zinovy Petrovich Rozhestvensky (russian: Зиновий Петрович Рожественский, tr. ; – January 14, 1909) was an admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy. He was in command of the Second Pacific Squadron in the Battle of Tsu ...
, from the
destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...
to the destroyer ''Biedovi'' and then was forced to scuttle ''Buinyi'' when the destroyer's machinery broke down. The destroyer's crew as well as some 205 survivors from ''Oslyabya'' were transferred to the cruiser before ''Buinyi'' was scuttled. As the ship sailed northward, she was spotted late in the day by several groups of Japanese ships and badly damaged in the ensuing combat. Captain Lebedev decided to run his ship aground on Ulleungdo, but the ship anchored instead and all of the men aboard were taken to the island. Roughly 60 men of the ship's crew had been killed and another 120 wounded during the fighting. The next morning, 29 May, ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' was scuttled about a mile and a half (2.4 km) offshore at approximately . The survivors were taken prisoner that afternoon by landing parties from the destroyer and the
armed merchant cruiser An armed merchantman is a merchant ship equipped with guns, usually for defensive purposes, either by design or after the fact. In the days of sail, piracy and privateers, many merchantmen would be routinely armed, especially those engaging in lo ...
''Kasugu Maru''.


Shipwreck

In 2000, the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, contracted in 1999 by Dong Ah Construction Industrial Co., South Korea's fifth-largest construction company, was rumoured to have found the shipwreck of ''Dmitrii Donskoi''. A month beforehand, the company had gone into receivership, but was allowed to continue trading shares. Its share price rose by 41% in one week on media reports that 14,000 tons of gold (10% of all the gold ever mined on Earth) were on board the ship, but they never raised anything from the sea, and the company went bankrupt. South Korea's Institute of Ocean Science and Technology claims to have discovered the wreck in 2003 and has photographs dating from 2007 on its website.


Shinil Group

In July 2018, the Shinil Group, a South Korean treasure hunting company, announced it had found ''Dmitrii Donskoi'' below the surface, off the South Korean island of Ulleungdo. Under the group's plan, a Chinese salvage company would attempt to retrieve the 5,500 boxes of
gold bullion A gold bar, also called gold bullion or gold ingot, is a quantity of refined metallic gold of any shape that is made by a bar producer meeting standard conditions of manufacture, labeling, and record keeping. Larger gold bars that are produced ...
and 200 tons of gold coins, altogether worth £101.3 billion (c. US$133 billion), which they believed to be inside the wreck. Half of the gold would be given back to Russia. The company, founded in June 2018, had not applied to South Korea's Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries for the salvage rights. No evidence was offered by Shinil Group for the ship carrying any gold when it sank. South Korea's financial regulator warned the public against investing money in treasure hunting ventures. Park Sung-jin, a spokesman for Shinil Group, said that a
cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...
exchange website purporting to be theirs was fake. A representative of the Central Naval Museum in Saint Petersburg said there was no evidence to support the claim of gold in the ''Dmitrii Donskoi''s wreck. On 26 July, the group changed its name to Shinil Marine Technology and publicly withdrew its claims about ''Dmitrii Donskoi'', having raised an estimated US$53 million in funds. A Singapore-based cryptocurrency exchange, Shinil Group PTE, from which Shinil Marine Technology had tried to distance itself, said that 124,000 pre-sale investors were signed up and the value of a coin was expected to rise by 25,000%. South Korean police launched a fraud investigation and imposed travel bans on heads of the Korean firm. A South Korean court found the vice chairman of the group guilty of fraud and sentenced him to a five-year prison term, along with a key accomplice. The former chairman of the group received a two-year prison sentence.


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References

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Further reading

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Dmitrii Donskoii Ships built at Admiralty Shipyard 1882 ships Naval ships of Russia Cruisers of the Imperial Russian Navy Russo-Japanese War cruisers of Russia Shipwrecks of the Russo-Japanese War Shipwrecks in the Tsushima Strait 2018 archaeological discoveries Maritime incidents in 1905