by Mikhail Kucherov
[Regnum] On October 20, 1916, at the height of World War I, Russia lost one of its most modern and well-equipped ships. And it wasn't lost in combat. The flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the battleship Empress Mariya, anchored in the Sevastopol roadstead, was literally torn apart by multiple explosions in a matter of minutes—and sank. The cause of the disaster remains a mystery to this day. There are only theories of varying credibility.
The sinking of the Empress Maria was a familiar memory for several Soviet generations—unlike many other heroic or tragic episodes of the "imperialist war." Thanks go to Anatoly Rybakov, author of "The Dagger," an adventure story for young adults published in 1948. In the story, pioneers of the 1920s come into possession of a mysterious dagger belonging to an officer of a sunken Tsarist battleship.
And while the secret of the dagger and the code hidden in its sheath is revealed in the finale, the actual explosion of the Empress Maria remains a mystery to the reader:
"It's a dark story," Polevoy said. "It didn't explode on a mine, or a torpedo, but on its own. The powder magazine in the first turret exploded first, and there were three thousand pounds of gunpowder in there. And then it all started... An hour later, the ship was underwater. Less than half the crew survived, and even those were burned and crippled."
In fact, out of 1,220 officers and sailors, 225 were killed (which, incidentally, makes this one of the Black Sea Fleet's heaviest non-combat losses during the war). But in other respects, the former sailor, and later commissar during the Civil War, Polevoy, was right. The flagship exploded from within, due to the detonation of gunpowder.
Both immediately following the disaster and still "on the surface," the theory of sabotage—most likely German—seems obvious. The Kaiser's navy did indeed take advantage of the disaster to turn the tide in its favor.
But Alexander Kolchak, who commanded the Black Sea Fleet in 1916 and was counting heavily on the battleship in planning the landing operation in Constantinople (which was thwarted by the revolution), flatly refused to see the German trace.
THE EMPRESS VERSUS THE KAISER AND SULTAN
Since 1911, Russia, learning from the defeats of the Russo-Japanese War, has been rearming its fleet.
Large battleships were built - dreadnoughts ("fearless"), named after the English ship of the same name.
These giants were maneuverable, reached speeds of up to 21 knots, and carried at least ten armor-piercing 305-millimeter guns.
Russia laid down eight dreadnoughts. Four of these joined the Baltic Fleet before the First World War. The second four were built at the Nikolaev shipyards to strengthen the Black Sea Fleet. Each ship cost the treasury 27–28 million gold rubles (approximately 15 billion rubles in today's money).
But the war began before the dreadnoughts entered service.
On October 29, 1914, two German ships flying the Turkish flag—the battleship Goeben and the cruiser Breslau—attacked Sevastopol, Odessa, Feodosia, and Novorossiysk, tying down the Russian flotilla. Their power and speed allowed them to control military and trade traffic.
The situation changed in 1915, when the battleships Empress Mariya and Ekaterina Velikaya arrived in Sevastopol after completing sea trials. They outperformed the German ships in firepower, with 12 heavy guns each instead of 10.
On January 8, 1916, the Goeben was seriously damaged by the Catherine the Great and was forced to "heal its wounds" in the Bosphorus.
Four months later, a Russian landing force captured the Turkish port of Trebizond. Fire from both Russian battleships finally suppressed the resistance on the shore, forcing the Turks to flee into mountains. By October 1916, each of the new Russian ships had completed 24 combat missions.
Then Vice-Admiral Kolchak included the Maria, the Ekaterina, and the recently commissioned battleship Alexander III in the plan for the Constantinople landing.
THE FATAL MORNING
On October 20, 1916, at 6:20 a.m., sailors on the Empress Maria heard a strange hissing sound coming from the bow. Smoke began billowing from hatches and ventilators. The crew began pouring water from buckets, but this did not help: a few minutes later, a powerful explosion occurred, followed by approximately 15 more waves of varying sizes.
During the disaster, the multi-ton turrets of the 305-mm guns were torn from their moorings by the capsized battleship and sank separately from the ship.
Less than an hour later, the battleship's bow fell off, and the ship began to list on its starboard side. The gigantic, capsizing ship was ripping off its multi-ton 305-millimeter gun turrets. Recovering them later significantly complicated the divers' task.
The flagship was doomed. The commander, Captain First Rank Ivan Kuznetsov, gave the order: " Open the Kingstons! Crew, save yourselves! Sink the ship!"
The Goeben and Breslau gained room to maneuver and, freely passing through the Black Sea straits, again blockaded Russian ports.
COMMANDANT VORONOV'S MISTAKE
The first thing that the investigative commission sent from Petrograd and interviewed the surviving crew members revealed was that the hatches leading to the powder magazines were open.
This meant that anyone on board had the opportunity to go below and start a fire. The question immediately arose: was this an accident (like a spark from a cigarette, in which case it would be considered criminal negligence) or was it intentional, and therefore an act of terrorism.
The matter was complicated by the fact that the circle of suspects included not only sailors and officers.
On board the ship that day were workers and engineers from the Nikolaev shipbuilding plant, which was the norm during the period between cruises.
Witness testimony revealed the following: the fire started in one of the powder magazines, but spread to all the others so quickly that it was impossible to extinguish. The molten metal quickly ignited the wooden deck, causing almost the entire ship to blaze within minutes.
One witness, Captain Second Rank Anatoly Gorodysky, claimed that the ignition was triggered by a charge from one of the 305mm guns. According to the captain, his subordinate, Senior Gunner Voronov, while in the main turret's powder magazine, inadvertently dropped the charge at his feet, causing the fatal initial explosion.
Voronov's body was never found. The sailor was considered missing.
Kolchak, then a vice admiral, insisted that the cause of the tragedy was a combination of technical flaws and criminal negligence.
Indeed, the ship's hasty delivery resulted in technical flaws: for example, the ventilation system for the artillery storage facilities was insufficiently designed. This explains the reason the hatches were left open—they were ventilated to ensure proper storage conditions for the explosives.
WAS THERE CHARLES?
The theory of German intelligence involvement arose (and still holds water) because, at the same time as the Empress Maria, British and Italian ships were blown up in the roadstead. It was proven that German saboteurs were behind the explosions.
In the 1990s, the journal "Morskoy Sbornik " published articles by FSB officer and intelligence historian Alexander Zdanovich and Alexander Cherepkov, a researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Drawing on archival data, the researchers presented a theory involving interference by foreign intelligence.
In his extensive study, Zdanovich cites reports from Russian agents in Paris: in 1915, they reported to Petrograd about German intelligence plans to blow up Russian factories servicing the navy. A police agent, Charles, recruited by the Germans, was mentioned as being to sabotage the Empress Maria.
In 1916, the investigation into the explosion on the Black Sea Fleet's flagship was never completed. The investigative commission never reached a decision, concluding that "it was impossible to reach a precise and conclusive conclusion."
Work to raise the wreckage of the battleship, sunken in shallow water, began as early as 1916. The plan was for divers to seal the ship's compartments with compressed air, causing the battleship to float. Even the Japanese, former enemies (and later allies in World War I), were prepared to assist, intending to send their own divers. But the plan never came to fruition, and in November 1917, after a severe storm, the ship floated on its own, and then, in the spring of 1918, rose entirely above water.
The Civil War was raging, and the only thing that could be determined was that the ship sank due to an internal explosion, not a torpedo strike. In 1927, the Empress Maria was cut up for scrap.
In their article, Zdanovich and Cherepkov mention the testimony given to the OGPU in 1932 by the arrested engineer Viktor Eduardovich Verman, the head of the German intelligence network uncovered in Nikolaev in the 1930s.
According to interrogation records, Verman confessed: he was recruited by the Germans in 1908 and engaged in sabotage, disruption of supplies, and intelligence gathering, and eight years later, he plotted to sabotage a battleship. However, it is unclear from the testimony whether his group succeeded in carrying out their plan.
After the Revolution and the Civil War, the incident was long forgotten. The circumstances of the arrest of Verman's group only became known in modern times, and this archival data provided no definitive answer.
This uncertainty has given rise to numerous new conspiracy theories in the post-Soviet era—in particular, the idea that not only German but also British intelligence was involved in the sabotage. But in these versions, pure fiction prevails over any scraps of fact. The sinking of the Empress Maria remains a "dark story."