Russian yacht Livadia (1880)

The Livadia was an imperial yacht of the House of Romanov built in 1879–1880 to replace a yacht of the same name that had sunk off the coast of Crimea in 1878. The new Livadia, intended for service on the Black Sea, was a radically novel ship conceived by Vice Admiral Andrey Popov, designed by naval architect Erast Gulyaev and built by John Elder & Co. of Govan on the Clyde. The Livadia continued Popov's line of circular ships although this time Popov sacrificed geometrical perfection for seagoing capabilities. She had a beam of 153 ft (47 m) against overall length of only 259 ft (79 m). An extreme example of tumblehome architecture, she sported a conventionally shaped superstructure mounted on a wide, flat-bottomed, turbot-shaped submerged hull or pontoon. Construction of the Livadia, "a gigantic life-size experiment" and a prototype for next-generation battleships, was supervised by William Pearce. Bruno Tideman and Edward James Reed acted as consultants, William Leiper and William De Morgan designed luxurious interiors. The Livadia turned out a surprisingly maneuverable and stable ship with a respectable maximum speed of 15.7 knots and her efficiency was comparable to conventional ships. Her performance at sea trials surprised most naval architects and was attributed to the favorable placement of the propellers. The maiden voyage of the Livadia revealed that her wide flat bottom was highly prone to damage by wave slamming. She spent her brief career as a yacht in the docks and was used for her intended purpose only once, carrying Grand Dukes Constantine and Mikhail across the Black Sea. Alexander III had no interest in resurrecting an inherently flawed ship, and in August 1881 Livadia was moored in Nikolaev and then hulked and stripped of her former luxuries. Her engines were removed and reused on the Russian cruisers. The rusty hulk saw some use during World War I and was finally decommissioned in 1926.

Background

The first Livadia was built in 1869–1873 by Leopold Schwede. She was a wooden seagoing paddle steamer displacing 1965 tons, 81 metres long and 10.9 metres wide (excluding wheel housings). The yacht was stationed in Crimea and tended to the Romanovs from the summer of 1873. After the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 she was converted into an auxiliary cruiser. She sank a Turkish schooner, survived the perils of the war but on the night of 21–22 October 1878 ran aground near Cape Tarkhan-Kut in western Crimea. Salvage attempts failed, and 47 days later the Livadia was destroyed by a violent storm. After the sinking, the Russian Department of the Navy proposed building a similar conventional yacht with improved speed and endurance. Vice Admiral Andrey Popov, the influential chairman of the Naval Technical Commission (MTK), objected and proposed a different concept based on his circular ships. Naval architects of the 1860s tended to increase the beam and reduce the length of their armored ships. This change of the proportions maximized the internal volume protected by the same amount of side armor. It was heralded by Sir Edward James Reed and taken to its extreme by Popov. Popov's coastal battleships Novgorod and Kiev were perfectly circular in plan. The design attempted to circumvent the limitations of the Treaty of Paris, although construction of the Novgorod and the Kiev began when the treaty had been effectively voided by the outcome of the Franco-Prussian War. Popov wrote that a circular shape results in minimal weight of armor belt for a given displacement. It also minimized the draft of the battleships, which was critical for their intended deployment in the estuary of the Dnieper and the Kerch Strait. Their seagoing capacities, on the contrary, were deemed unimportant. The Novgorod and the Kiev were commissioned in 1873 and 1875. The enormous drag of their wide hulls made their engines ineffective and they could make only 8 knots. Their steering was satisfactory against the stream, and entirely unmanageable downstream. Their rudders were ineffective while their outer propellers disturbed the steering yet had no influence on the speed (and were soon removed). And, finally, these ships were too wide to fit into any existing drydock.

Design

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