Borodino-class motorship

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Borodino motorship, 1914
Class overview
BuildersKolomenskiy yard
OperatorsCaucasus and Mercury
Built1911–1917
Planned14
Completed11
Cancelled3
Active0
General characteristics [1]
Length
  • 92.9 m (304 ft 9 in) o/a
  • 89.9 m (294 ft 11 in) p/p
Beam9.8 m (32 ft 2 in)
Draught2 m (6 ft 7 in)
Propulsion2 × 600 hp (447 kW) 6-cylinder diesel engines
Speed23 km/h (14 mph)
Capacity500 passengers, 320 tons of cargo

Borodino class motorship was a class of Russian river passenger ships.[1] The series is named after Borodino village, and the ships themselves are notable for their size, power, and use in the Russo-Japanese War and the Bolshevik Revolution.

Origins[edit]

The Borodino class were some of the first screw ships for passengers on the various rivers in Russia. The ships were built between 1911 and 1917 at the Kolomenskiy shipyard for Caucasus and Mercury primarily for passenger service, although some also performed postal work.

Specifications[edit]

The ships each had a pair of six cylinder diesel engines, and had double decks. Capable of carrying 500 passengers and up to 300 tons of cargo, they were not small paddle boats, but large ships, over 300 feet long over 30 feet wide.[1]

History of the series[edit]

During the Bolshevik Civil War, the Borodino class ships were used as troop transports in service with the Red Army. One of the ships was temporarily the flagship of an ad-hoc war fleet, mostly of other retrofitted river craft and fishing vessels.[2]

In World War II a few of the ships were used to evacuate people and wounded soldiers from Stalingrad, but most were tasked with carrying valuable equipment and material back away from the German front towards the interior of the Soviet Union.

After 1960, the remaining ships not destroyed by war were rebuilt and refurbished, and operated by the Volga Shipping Company.

Ships[edit]

Built Original Name Renamed Fate
1911 Borodino Tovarishch Raskolnikov (1939)
Mikoyan (1948)
Scrapped, 1997
1912 Krasnoarmeets Feldmarshal Kutuzov (1918) Sunk, 1942
Pamyat Tovarishch Markina Bagration (1919) In Crimea, 2005
Semnadtsatyy God Dvenadtsatyy God (1918)
God Oktyabrskoy Revolyutsyi (1936)
Burnt, 1978
Ilyich Tsesarevich Aleksey (1917)
Inzhener Raymund Koreyvo (1918)
Krasnaya Latviya (1929)
Mikhail Tomskiy (1936)
Sunk, 1942
1913 Uritskiy Tsargrad (1920) Scrapped, 1991
1914 25oe Oktyabrya Tsar Mikhail (1917)
Kiev (1918)
Burnt, 1978
Parizhskaya Kommuna Ioann Groznyy (1914)
Petrograd (1919)
Fridrikh Adler (1919)
Pamyat Parizhskoy Kommuny (1920)
Burnt, 1999
1915 Karl Libknekht Korol Albert (1918) Sunk, 1943
Lenin Velikiy Knyaz Nikolay Nikolaevich (1917)
Erzerum (1918)
Burnt, 1920
1917 Akademik Timiryazev Vadim Arshaulov (1919)
Lev Trotskiy (1929)
Sunk, 1942

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c "Series of the Type "Borodino"". www.riverships.ru. Archived from the original on 18 March 2007.
  2. ^ "Ships Monthly". 18 (3). Waterway Productions Ltd.: 11. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)