Russian Monitor Novgorod (1873)

[Adler]

A monitor built for the Imperial Russian Navy in 1873. Considered to be one of the worst warships ever built, it played a small role in the Russo-Turkish War and remained in service untill 1903. It was sold for scrap a decade later.

 

[Dilandu]

A monitor built for the Imperial Russian Navy in 1873. Considered to be one of the worst warships ever built, it played a small role in the Russo-Turkish War and remained in service untill 1903. It was sold for scrap a decade later.

As usual, the repeat of myth about "worst warships".

The fact is, the idea of round warship was very popular in 1860-1870s, both from practical & industrial considerations. For Russian Emprie the industrial considerations were the most important; the Black Sea shipyards were in poor conditions (they weren't in much use after Crimean War), and they could not handle the construction of traditional ironclad.

Popovka's, on the other hand, were very simple to assemble - their hulls were all build from nearly identical sections, the number of part types was very small. So Russian Empire went for the ships, that could be build on existing infrastructure first and foremost.

As coastal defense warships, they were perfectly adequate. Their thick armor and heavy guns in very small displacement made them a really dangerous enemy against even ocean-going ironclads several time their size. They have disadvantages, true; their rudders were near-useless, and they could only be steered by their machines. That's why this type (despire Popov's insistence) wasn't developed further. But in their intended role - defenders of Russian Black Sea ports against numerically superior Ottoman ironclads - they worked well.

 

[Archibald]

Not much worse than the collection of horrors produced by the Jeune Ecole, the "baroque" french pre-dreads of the 1890s.