Russian yacht Livadia (1880)

The Livadia seen in 1881 by the side

Opyt

The Livadia (Russian Ливадия ) was a state yacht of the House of Romanov -Holstein -Gottorp, built in the years 1879-1880. You should replace the first yacht of the same name, which was sunk in 1878 off the coast of Crimea.

History

The year on September 5, 1879 commissioned by Alexander II yacht has been placed in the same year in Glasgow at the shipyard John Elder & Co. at Kiel, but the official ceremony this only took place on 25 March 1880. The ship made ​​a radical bootsbauerische novelty; they do based on the ideas of Andrei Alexandrovich Popov, Vice - Admiral, who had already devised a number of " round ship", the plans were designed by the shipbuilder Erast Gulyaev. In this case, however, Popov put more emphasis on geometric perfection as to the seaworthiness. As an obviously extreme example of the main deck toward the incident architecture, so reminiscent of a more of a "O" in cross-section hull superstructure were rather conventional. Construction of the yacht, which was also regarded as a prototype of the subsequent warship generation were monitored by Sir William Pearce, additionally advised by Bruno Tideman and Edward James Reed. William Leiper and William De Morgan designed the interior .. The control of the ship at the first test drives astonished most of shipbuilders and a particularly favorable arrangement of the ship's propeller was attributed. However, the flatter her bottom was already very vulnerable at the maiden voyage to damage by wave action was. The Livadia she spent most of her short life in the ship docks and was once used for their tasks, as they drove the Grand Duke Constantine, and Mikhail on the Black Sea. The pressure at this point Alexander III. had no interest in an occupied with such vulnerabilities ship to service, so that the ship was launched in Nikolayev in August 1881 and for 40 years was at the quay. Here, it was converted in 1883 to a Hulk called Opyt. The entire previous luxury has been removed, expanded the machines and used in the Navy cruisers. The Hulk himself was still in use during the First World War, only to be stopped permanently in 1926.

Technical information

The ship had, according to literature, an overall length of between 72 m to 79.25 m, in the waterline 71.63 m and a width of between 46.64 m in the water line to 47 m ( unspecified), the displacement was between 4,420 and 4,500 tons. The underwater hull was designed nearly circular, whereas it is also called " round ship" derives. The three steam engines delivered 10,500 hp, which initially was sufficient for the contractually agreed maximum speed of over 14 knots, but this could not be achieved in the subsequent operation. The Emperor had on the yacht with a total area of 3950 m² and a crew of 24 officers and 321 other staff.