Shipyard named after 61 communard. Empire builds fleet
Catherine motivated her refusal by the fact that the prince, in her opinion, is wishful thinking. At the shipyard, attracting his close attention, not a single ship has been laid yet, and the “city” itself was only a conglomerate of dugouts and structures far from capital. Potemkin clearly hinted that until Nikolaev started something for which they actually founded it: building ships, he would not receive city status. Therefore, the prince was forced in every way to customize and stimulate his closest assistant, Colonel Faleyev, and the first warship on the banks of the Ingul began to be built almost in an assault pace.
“God beats, not Turks”
Due to limited capacities, the navy of Russia on the Black Sea was very far from the states that were relied upon by the beginning of the war. Nevertheless, already at the beginning of September 1787, the Sevastopol squadron went to sea with the aim of making a voyage to Varna, where, according to available information, a lot of Turkish transport ships were concentrated.
The first combat campaign was marked by a meeting not with the enemy, but with the elements, which caused great damage. On the approach to Cape Kaliakra the squadron, which included three battleships and seven frigates, fell into a violent storm. She spent the night with 8 on 9 in September of 1787, in a drift. The next day, the storm only intensified - it was accompanied by a piercing wind and rain. In total, the squadron of Admiral Voinovich was under the pressure of the elements for five days.
The battleship "Glory of Catherine" lost all the masts, the water in the hold rose strongly. For its pumping were used, except for regular pumps, all available tools, including buckets and tubs. Thanks to the efforts of the team, the flagship "Glory of Catherine" was able to defend, and on a hastily set up false sail arms, he returned to Sevastopol. One-type "St. Paul", commanded by the brigadier rank captain Fedor Fedorovich Ushakov, was classified by storm to the Caucasian coast. In Sevastopol, he returned with only one surviving foremast.
The last thing was lucky for the third battleship Mary Magdalene. Heavily damaged, having lost all masts and bowsprit, this ship was carried to the Bosphorus, where the Turks soon noticed it. “Mary Magdalene,” which also took a lot of water, was in a critical condition. There are two versions of the events that took place later. According to the first, the battleship commander, an Englishman in the Russian service, captain of the 1 rank, Benjamin Tizdel, gave the order to lower the flag. According to another version, Tizdel wanted to give the enemy the last battle, but was actually removed from the command by his own officers.
With great fanfare, the Turks entered their trophy in the Bosphorus and anchored in front of the Sultan's palace, obviously wanting to get the most out of the propaganda propaganda. Under the new name "Huda Verde" (God-given) ship, it was decided to commission the Ottoman fleet. Repair work was entrusted to French ship engineers located in Istanbul.
Another irretrievable loss was the disappearance of the frigate “Crimea” during the storm, the circumstances of whose death are unknown to this day. Of the entire squadron of Count Voinovich, only the frigate Light was returned to Sevastopol with all the masts.
From such News The Most Serene fell into deep hypochondria, writing to Catherine the famous letter "God hits, not the Turks." The emotional torment of the prince is quite understandable, given the role that his many endeavors in the Northern Black Sea region played for him. And the emerging Black Sea Fleet was for Potemkin almost the most favorite project. In response to a pessimistic report to St. Petersburg, Catherine quite deliberately wrote to her already dimmed favorite about the need to take a set of measures to restore the power of the Black Sea Fleet as soon as possible. Longing, longing, and the war continued. To begin with, the empress proposed building a dozen frigates in Don shipyards. The construction of these ships, wartime frigates, began already in 1788.
Meanwhile, the main management body of the fleet and shipyards - the Black Sea Board - began a financial crisis caused by a shortage of means of payment. Lack of cash forced management to enter into contracts with contractors and suppliers in debt at high interest rates. The cost of materials and their delivery have multiplied in price and in time. Potemkin decided to personally manage the Black Sea rule, but only aggravated the situation.
The war continued, the situation worsened, debts grew. Relationships between Potemkin and Admiral Nikolai Semenovich Mordvinov deteriorated, and in December 1788, the admiral was forced to ask for resignation. 12 December 1788, the Potemkin signed a decree transferring the Admiralty rule and the Black Sea Fleet under the command of Rear Admiral Count Voinovich.
The count went to Kherson, and the command over the Sevastopol squadron was transferred to the captain of the brigadier rank Fedor Fedorovich Ushakov. The battle of Fidonisi in the summer of 1788 of the year revealed the inadequate firepower of the 40-gun frigates of the Azov building that were available. They needed ships equipped with more artillery. And with the large ships because of the financial crisis, the situation was very unfavorable.
For the speedy strengthening of the Liman flotilla in Kremenchug, construction of gunboats was launched, and for this purpose the forest prepared for the 66-gun battleship in Kherson was widely used. In the summer of 1788, the shipbuilding works stopped there altogether. Potemkin had long realized that there was an acute need for a large shipyard that could build ships of all ranks and in one place - without design restrictions, as in the Azov shipyards, and avoiding serious problems with transportation and rigging, as in Kherson. Especially since the site for the future shipyard was looked after by Colonel Faleyev in the fall of 1787.
The base of the shipyard on the Ingul
In June, 1788, the army under the command of Prince Potemkin began a systematic siege of the fortress of Ochak-Kale. Since Svetlani rejected the idea of Suvorov to take a fortress with a decisive assault in close cooperation with the Liman flotilla, the “Ochakov seat” began. Concerns about siege batteries and laying trenches did not prevent Potemkin with an order from 27 June 1788 to order the navigator Nikita Mikhailovich Guryev to measure the depths of the Ingul river in its mouth with the task of choosing the best place for slipways. With an order from 21 July, written in a camp near Ochakov, the prince orders Colonel Faleyev to begin work on arranging the slings with the aim of building two 50-gun ships in the very near future.
In fairness it should be noted that both Faleyev and the master in charge of the construction of ships in Kherson, the master Semyon Afanasyev, were not initially enthusiastic about the idea of building ships on the Ingul. It was believed that this river is as shallow in summer as the Dnieper at Kherson, and here you can’t do without Camellas. All the skepticism of the comrades-in-arms was swept away by a resolution of Potemkin, who believed that "progeny would find the means to destroy this obstacle." Subsequently, the opinion about the choice of the prince changed significantly for the better - in the later correspondence, Faleyev recognized the choice of the prince as very successful.
In the first days of August, 1788, a lieutenant engineer I. Sokolov, made a breakdown of the terrain for the construction of two sheds and a forge attached to them. The cost estimate and working drawings were compiled. The construction engineer was appointed all the same lieutenant engineer I. Sokolov.
First of all, the accumulation of the necessary materials began - wood and charcoal. To the mouth of Ingul stretched long oxen carts. There was a lot of wood needed: only the construction of one slipway took 4606 pine logs and 1860 bars, not counting other lumber. The wood was delivered to these steppe lands from the northern regions - Ukraine and Belarus.
90 carpenters, 28 masons, 140 workers and 129 Turks were assigned to Sokolov for the initial work. The progress of work was hampered by the prolonged siege of Ochakov. First of all, the dedicated labor and forest were sent to Kherson, where floating batteries were built, which were planned to be used during the assault of Ochakov.
By order of Potemkin, a field hospital was deployed on the bank of the Bugsky estuary, known as Vitovskiy, after the nearby village of Vitovka. The prince liked this area so much that he ordered to disassociate himself and his niece, Alexandra Vasilievna of the Branitsk land, in order to build an estate there. In the autumn of 1788, the contractor Postoev equipped a forge at the Ingul estuary, and the construction of the first dugouts began.
The siege of Ochakov was still going on, but Potemkin was confident of success. Inspired by his undertakings, he optimistically reports to General-Admiral Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich about the "already laid down" two 50-gun ships and being in readiness of the five boathouses. In fact, the picture of what is happening on the banks of the Ingul appeared in much more restrained colors. For the alleged "pledged" ships were not only the necessary materials, but even the drawings. But the sheds already stood in readiness, but only on the working drawings.
The capture of Ochakov 6 December 1788 gave a new impetus to the development of the shipyard. Potemkin does not want to have another temporary place where ships will be built. In his designs - the foundation of the “future grand Admiralty - the nest of the new Russian Black Sea Fleet”. The shipbuilding program adopted by the prince began to be implemented, albeit at a not so fast pace.
In the spring of 1789, the battleship "The Epiphany of the Lord" was laid in Kherson, and later - the 44-gun frigate "Navarhiya". In May, 1789, Potemkin obliged master Semen Ivanovich Afanasyev, who was granted a military rank by decree of Catherine II, to create a project for the 46-gun frigate in "the best proportions." And in the Order of Afanasyev, the prince calls him a ship. The fact is that because of the lack of full-fledged battleships on the Black Sea, Potemkin 19 July 1788 ordered the Black Sea Admiralty Board 50 and 40 gun frigates equipped with large-caliber guns to be called ships. This order was valid until the end of 1793, when the Empress ordered to return to the original classification, and ships with fifty or less guns, called frigates.
In June, 1789 of the year, Afanasyev reported to the prince that the ship’s design was in full swing, and the Ingul slipway’s plan had already been handed over to Colonel Faleyev, who now supervised the construction of the shipyard. The 46-gun ship project was the first to be developed by Afanasyev specifically for the needs and specifics of the Black Sea, and differed from similar projects of the Baltic and White Sea shipyards. Due to the limited size of the theater, there was a relative short duration of stay in the voyage. Underwater contours were made sharper, which gave the ship, at the then technical thought, fleet. The Baltic frigates were built on the basis of placing the 6-month supply of water and provisions on them due to their lengthy sailing, the underwater parts of their hulls were more voluminous.
16 August 1789. Potemkin approved the plan for transforming the shipyard into the Admiralty, and 27 of August, in a letter to Faleyev, ordered the shipyard and everything related to it, called the city Nikolayev. The name was chosen on the occasion of the successful assault of Ochakov, which occurred on the day of St. Nicholas.
The “city” itself then appeared to all the new arrivals in the form of a gathering of dugouts and huts located on the left bank of the Ingul. In an effort to support his offspring, Potemkin tried to obtain for him the status of a city from Catherine II. Obviously, the empress was well aware of the "already laid down" two 50-gun ships, and the five "already built" sheds. Therefore, the prince was told that until the first real ship came down to the water, and not the “clerical” ship, the matter would not move.
Striving to "move" him as soon as possible, Potemkin begins to bombard Faleev with orders: "Lay, calling upon God, the ship ..." and "continue to work in haste." Faleev was in a hurry - in conditions of war and limited resources, work on the banks of the Ingul was boiling. By December 1789, the first elling was finally erected, and on January 5, the 1790-gunship Saint Nicholas was laid on it.
His bookmark was originally planned for 6 December 1788 of the year, on the anniversary of the victory in Ochakov, but Potemkin could not come to such a significant event. The ceremony was postponed for almost a month, until finally it was decided to bookmark without a prince.
The displacement of the "St. Nicholas" was 1840 tons, length - 45,7 meters, 13 meters - the width and draft 4,6 meters. His crew was supposed to be equipped with 437 people. Construction of the first Nikolaev ship was carried out under the direction of ship apprentice Alexander Petrovich Sokolov. Faleev, fearing for the deadlines, summoned from Taganrog an experienced shipwright prime minister, Ivan Dolzhnikov, who promised to launch the ship into the water by May 1790.
However, in May, "St. Nicholas" was still in the boathouse, despite the desperate assault measures taken to put it into operation as soon as possible. There were two main problems besides a heap of minor ones: people and the forest. In the early years of its existence, the Nikolaev shipyard was in dire need of working hands, and above all qualified ones. And they did not have enough.
Russia waged two wars at that time. Good neighborly relations with Sweden have reached their natural climax, and hostilities began in the Baltic. The capital shipyards themselves were now loaded, and it was extremely difficult to get some resources from there. The forest had to be imported from afar, and it was often not of very good quality.
Stacking work on the "Saint Nicholas" were about eight months. Finally 25 August 1790, in a solemn atmosphere, he was launched. Two weeks later, setting the masts and bowsprit, the ship was transported to Ochakov. Initially, we decided not to risk it, but to use the Kherson method - camels. On Ochakov’s raid, “Saint Nicholas” completed the rigging and armament, and at the end of November 1790 of the year arrived in Sevastopol on its own.
The ship actively participated in the Russian-Turkish war of 1787 – 1791, in particular, in the battle of Kaliakria. In 1793, it is reclassified again into a frigate. As part of the squadron of Vice-Admiral Fedor Fedorovich Ushakov, "St. Nicholas" went to the Mediterranean Sea, where he had the opportunity to participate in the storming of Corfu and other operations.
At the highest order, “Saint Nicholas” together with a detachment of the ships of the captain 2 of the rank of Sorokin was left in Naples. The assault methods of construction and the poor quality of the forest made themselves felt - the frigate's hull began to rot, and 12 on April 1801 was withdrawn from the fleet. In July of the following, 1802, “Saint Nicholas” was sold for 11 thousand ducats. All these and many other events were still in the future at the new city on the coast of Ingul - the city where the empire will build its fleet.
To be continued ...
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