Russian cruiser Aurora (original) (raw)

Russian cruiser that participated in the October Revolution

Aurora, moored in Saint Petersburg, Russia, July 2022
History
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Name Aurora
Namesake Aurora (mythology)
Ordered June 1896
Builder Admiralty Shipyard, Saint Petersburg
Laid down 23 May 1897
Launched 11 May 1900[1]
Completed 10 July 1903
Commissioned 16 July 1903
Decommissioned 17 November 1948
Honours andawards Order of the October Revolution Order of the October Revolution Order of the Red Banner Order of the Red Banner
Fate Museum ship since 1956
Status Ceremoniously commissioned
Notes Participated in: Dogger Bank incident (1904) Battle of Tsushima (1905) October Revolution (1917) Siege of Leningrad (1941–44)
General characteristics
Class and type _Pallada_-class protected cruiser
Displacement 6,731 t (6,625 long tons)
Length 126.8 m (416 ft 0 in)
Beam 16.8 m (55 ft 1 in)
Draught 7.3 m (23 ft 11 in)
Installed power 24 Belleville boilers 11,610 ihp (8,660 kW)
Propulsion 3 shafts; 3 triple-expansion steam engines
Speed 19 knots (35 km/h; 22 mph)
Range 7,200 km (4,500 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement 590[2]
Armament 1903: 8 × 152 mm (6 in) guns 24 × 75 mm (3 in) guns 8 × 37 mm guns 3 × torpedo tubes (two underwater) 1917: 14 × 152 mm guns 4 × 76.2 mm (3 in) AA guns 1 × QF 2-pounder naval gun[3]

Aurora (Russian: Авро́ра, romanized: Avrora, IPA: [ɐˈvrorə]) is a Russian protected cruiser, currently preserved as a museum ship in Saint Petersburg. Aurora was one of three _Pallada_-class cruisers, built in Saint Petersburg for service in the Pacific. All three ships of this class served during the Russo-Japanese War. Aurora survived the Battle of Tsushima and was interned under US protection in the Philippines, and eventually returned to the Baltic Fleet. Aurora is most famous for her actions during the October Revolution where she reportedly fired the shot, that signaled the beginning of the attack on the Winter Palace.

Soon after completion, on 10 October 1903, Aurora departed Kronstadt as part of Admiral Virenius's "reinforcing squadron" for Port Arthur.[4]While in the Red Sea, still en route to Port Arthur, the squadron was recalled back to the Baltic Sea, under protest by Admiral Makarov, who specifically requested Admiral Virenius to continue his mission to Port Arthur. Only the seven destroyers of the reinforcing squadron were allowed to continue to the Far East.[5]

After her detachment from the reinforcing squadron and her arrival back to home port she underwent new refitting.[6] After refitting, Aurora was ordered back to Port Arthur as part of the Russian Baltic Fleet[7][8] Aurora sailed as part of Admiral Oskar Enkvist's Cruiser Squadron whose flagship would be the protected cruiser Oleg, an element of Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky's Baltic Fleet.[9] On the way to the Far East, Aurora received five hits, sustaining light damage from confused friendly fire, which killed the ship's chaplain and a sailor, in the Dogger Bank incident.[10]

During the Battle of Tsushima the Aurora was only lightly damaged but the ship's captain Evgeny Egoriev was killed. At nightfall the Aurora along with the Oleg were attacked by torpedo boats and at 22:00 they gave up trying to proceed north and headed southwest.[11] Once dawn arrived it was found that Zhemchug had retreated with the other two ships.[12] Enkvist decided transfer his command to the Aurora then take his ships to Manila and American internment.[12] On the way to Manila the ship's doctor managed to set up the ship's X-ray equipment and performed the first post battle X-rays in Russian naval history.[13] Evgeny Egoriev was buried at sea June 3 1905.[14]

World War I, Mutiny and Revolution

[edit]

During World War I Aurora operated in the Baltic Sea performing patrols and shore bombardment tasks. In 1915, her armament was changed to fourteen 152 mm (6 in) guns. In late 1916 she was moved to Petrograd for repairs.[15]

By late 1916, when Aurora arrived in Petrograd, conditions in the capital had deteriorated and the city was lawless and suffering from a cold winter and food shortages. Dissatisfaction with the Tsar was approaching a breaking point.[16]

During the February Revolution a significant number of the enlisted men had become sympathetic with, or had outright joined the Bolsheviks. This let to increasing tensions between the officer class - who were generally Tsarists - and the enlisted men.[17]

Tensions came to a head after officers fired their pistols at the enlisted men in an attempt to restore order. The crew captured the ship's captain, Mikhail Nikolsky, and ordered that he carry a red flag as a symbol of support for the Bolshevik cause. When he declined, he was shot and killed as were an unknown number of the ship's officers.[18][17]

A revolutionary committee was formed and a new captain was elected. The ship joined the Bolshevik cause and became the first major Russian warship to fly the red flag of the Bolshevik cause.[15][19][17]

On the eve of the October Revolution the ship was assigned to dislodge loyalist military cadets from the Nikolayevsky Bridge. After carrying out that assignment, the ship fired the famous blank shot that, according to Russian lore, was the signal to begin the assault on the Winter Palace. It is for this action that the ship is best known and most closely identified in Russian culture.[20][18][19]

In 1918 Aurora was relocated to the naval dockyard at Kronstadt and her new 6-inch guns were removed and installed on floating batteries to be used by the Bolsheviks during the civil war.[17]

In 1922, Aurora returned to service as a training ship.

During the Second World War, her guns were taken from the ship and used in the land defence of Leningrad. The ship herself was docked in Oranienbaum port,[21] and was repeatedly shelled and bombed. On 30 September 1941, she was damaged and sunk in the harbour.

She was later salvaged and repaired after the war.

The ship was opened as a museum ship in Leningrad in 1957, as a monument to the October Revolution.[22]

After having served as a museum ship for 27 years, from 1984 to 1987 the cruiser was once again placed in her construction yard, the Admiralty Shipyard, for capital restoration. During the overhaul, due to deterioration, the ship's hull below the waterline was replaced with a new welded hull according to the original drawings. The cut off lower hull section was towed into the Gulf of Finland to the decommissioned Ruchi Naval Base [ru], and sunk near the shore. The restoration revealed that some of the ship's parts, including the armour plates, were originally made in Britain.[23]

In January 2013, Russian Defence Minister Sergey Shoygu announced plans to recommission Aurora and make her the flagship of the Russian Navy due to her historical and cultural importance.[24] On 21 September 2014, the ship was towed to the Admiralty Shipyard in Kronstadt to be overhauled,[21][25] to return in 2016.[26] On 16 July 2016, she returned to her home harbour in Saint Petersburg.[27]

The 1965 Soviet film The Salvos of the Aurora Cruiser shows the ship's action in the October Revolution.[28]

In 1973, a short film about the ship, titled Aurora, was released.[29]

Due to the honoring of the ship with high state awards, the flag flown at the stern is a special version of the main Naval Ensign. This tradition dates back to 1927, when the aurora was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and lasted until the end of Soviet Navy and was then resumed after returning from a major overhaul in 2016.[30]

  1. ^ "History". The Cruiser Aurora. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  2. ^ "General information". The Cruiser Aurora. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  3. ^ Polenov, L.L. (1987). Крейсер "Аврора" [_Cruiser "Aurora"_] (in Russian). Leningrad: Судостроение. pp. 162–165.
  4. ^ Corbett (2015) Vol. 1, p. 51
  5. ^ Corbett (2015) Vol. 1, p. 146, 147
  6. ^ Kowner, Rotem (2006). Historical Dictionary of the Russo-Japanese War. The Scarecrow Press. p. 52. ISBN 0-8108-4927-5.
  7. ^ Corbett (2015) Vol. 2, Chapters I, VI, X, XI, XIII, XIV
  8. ^ British Naval Attache Reports (2003) p. 354 the new redesignation to the 2nd Pacific Squadron was rarely used, in both Corbett texts and official British Naval Attache Reports, the term Baltic Fleet is mostly consistent.
  9. ^ Corbett (2015) Vol. 2, p. 194, 215, 273
  10. ^ Corbett (2015) Vol. 2, p. 35
  11. ^ Pleshakov, Constantine (2002). The Tsar's Last Armada. Perseus Press. pp. 289–291. ISBN 1-903985-31-5.
  12. ^ a b Pleshakov, Constantine (2002). The Tsar's Last Armada. Perseus Press. pp. 292–293. ISBN 1-903985-31-5.
  13. ^ Pleshakov, Constantine (2002). The Tsar's Last Armada. Perseus Press. p. 296. ISBN 1-903985-31-5.
  14. ^ Pleshakov, Constantine (2002). The Tsar's Last Armada. Perseus Press. p. 297. ISBN 1-903985-31-5.
  15. ^ a b BUDAKLI, Maritime Goods-Eren. "Avrora Cruiser - Maritime Goods". www.maritimegoods.com. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
  16. ^ alphahis (10 December 2012). "A police report on deteriorating conditions in Petrograd (1916)". Russian Revolution. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
  17. ^ a b c d Other, A. N. (22 March 2016). "Aurora: the Ship that Started a Revolution". Naval Historical Society of Australia. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
  18. ^ a b "The end of the line for the Aurora?". openDemocracy. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
  19. ^ a b Beckett, Jesse (14 February 2022). "The Cruiser Aurora Signaled the Start of the Russian Revolution". warhistoryonline. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
  20. ^ "The Cruiser Aurora Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia". www.saint-petersburg.com. Retrieved 8 February 2025.
  21. ^ a b Sávina, Sofía (7 November 2014). "Aurora: The cruiser that sparked a revolution – or did it?". Russia Beyond.
  22. ^ Mancebo, Ivanka Garcia. "Russian Cruiser Aurora - Opening times, prices & location". www.introducingsaintpetersburg.com. Retrieved 8 September 2024.
  23. ^ "Aurora". Museum Ships.us. Archived from the original on 13 January 2020. Retrieved 18 March 2021.
  24. ^ ""Аврора" вернется в строй" ["Aurora" will return to service]. Dve Novosti (in Russian). 27 January 2013. Archived from the original on 20 October 2013. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  25. ^ RT (21 September 2014). "Russian Revolution Symbol: Iconic 'Aurora' cruiser towed to renovation port". Archived from the original on 21 December 2021 – via YouTube.
  26. ^ "Legendary Aurora to return to its harbour after overhaul in 2016". TASS. 13 October 2014.
  27. ^ "Bolshevik Revolution warship Aurora returns to St. Petersburg". The Everett Herald. 16 July 2016.
  28. ^ "Призрак бродит по экрану". portal-kultura.ru (in Russian). Retrieved 8 September 2024.
  29. ^ Kachanov, Roman, Avrora (Animation, Short), Viktor Filippov, Aleksey Konsovskiy, Klara Rumyanova, Soyuzmultfilm, retrieved 8 September 2024
  30. ^ "Крейсер-музей "Аврора"". Archived from the original on 28 December 2016. Retrieved 27 December 2016.

59°57′19″N 30°20′17″E / 59.95528°N 30.33806°E / 59.95528; 30.33806