The Claim
The Russians built the worst warship in history
The Monitor Novgorod was a Russian war ship built in 1874 that was based on a seemingly good idea. 6 years before the ships completion a Scottish ship builder came up with the idea that widening the bottom of the ship would cause it to not only displace more weight, but only require the same amount of armour.
The Idea of the Monitor Novgorod was to create an ironclad, which is a steam powered armoured ship, with enough armour to protect it from almost anything and be able to carry guns to out range any other ship. Since the ships design was a circle it meant it wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective at general sailing, but was instead meant to be used as sort of transportable gun platform for coastal defence.
The ship had 6 compound-expansion steam engines to power the 6 separate propellers, all of which were fuelled by 8 boilers. The ship had a top speed of 7.5 miles an hour and wasn’t exactly good at handling rough seas.
As for the guns, it carried 2, 11 inch rifled muzzle loading guns that fired 222kg shells up to 730 meters, the guns sat next to each other on individual turntables, so they could be used independently or locked together.
There is a story about this ship, which is one of the reasons its considered one of the worst war ships of all time, though its unclear if its true or not. Apparently on the earlier versions of the Novgorod the guns were so powerful, that when it fired the recoil would cause the ship to spin round uncontrollably, making the entire crew throw up and having to spend several minutes spinning in circles. No one seems to know how true this is but it would make sense as the ship was round and the guns off-center, so it could be possible.
The Monitor Novgorod saw little action during its time, and ended up staying in Sevastopol during the 1880’s before being classified as a coastal defence ship in 1892. Apart from sailing around very slowly and awkwardly the ship didn’t really do much in its new role except getting some more armour bolted on and having a couple of its propellers removed, lowering its maximum speed to 6.9 mph.
It was eventually put up for private auction in 1908 but didn’t receive a single bid, after sitting in a dockyard for the next 3 years the ship was eventually sold for scrap.
Naval historian Antony Preston wrote the following article about the Novgorod in his book “The Worlds Worst Warships”:
But in other respects, they were a dismal failure. They were too slow to stem the current in the Dniepr, and proved very difficult to steer. In practice the discharge of even one gun caused them to turn out of control and even contra-rotating some of six propellers was unable to keep the ship on the correct heading. Nor could they cope with the rough weather which is frequently encountered in the Black Sea. They were prone to rapid rolling and pitching in anything more than a flat calm, and could not aim or load their guns under such circumstances.
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