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 against overall length of only . 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.Andrienko 1994, p. 25.
Naval architects of the 1860s tended to increase the beam and reduce the length of their armored ships.Hovgaard 1920, p. 38. 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.Hovgaard 1920, p. 39. Their steering was satisfactory against the stream, and entirely unmanageable downstream. Their rudders were ineffective while their outer propellers disturbed the steeringHovgaard 1920, p. 40. 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
According to Popov, the new imperial yacht should have had a wide, flat-bottomed tumblehome hull and sustainable speed of 14 knots. Popov recruited Erast Gulyaev to produce initial drawings. The main, submerged hull of the new Livadia was 71.63 metres long and 46.64 metres wide. It was compared in shape to a pancake,This was the name actually used by Russian designers (, blin) - Andrienko 1994, p. 30. a turbot, a turtle or even a pair of soup plates. The superstructure perched on the hull was only 33.53 metres wide, and had a clipper bow for an overall length of 79.25 metres. Gulyaev explained that "as the Livadia had to be a yacht, it was decided to make all her qualities subordinate to the utmost safety of navigation, and to the utmost comfort depending on the possible limitation of rolling motion at sea, and on the provision of spacious apartments with a luxurious amount of light and air."
The submerged hull was split into forty watertight compartments. Four housed the steam engines, placed forward, the boilers, electrical systems and store room. The rest were allocated to coal storage. A belt of forty smaller compartments wrapped around the hull, forming a rigid structural frame. Popov sent the drawings to the Dutch naval architect Bruno Tideman, who ran a series of tests of a paraffin wax model in a ship model basin and concluded that the design was feasible.Andrienko 1994, p. 26.Tideman and Reed provided consultancy to Popov's projects since 1876 - Dirkzwager 1970, p. 208. According to Tideman, the ship could reach 14 knots with 8,500 indicated horsepowers, below Popov's earlier estimate of at least 10 thousand horsepower (the first Livadia could make 13 knots on mere 460 horsepower). Tideman insisted that the contract must be awarded to a first-rate firm and that the plans be approved by him.Dirkzwager 1970, pp. 208–209.
In the summer of 1879, the drawings were sent to Sir William Pearce of John Elder & Co. Pearce agreed to build it, and in August Tsar Alexander II gave his assent. Pearce and the head of the Baltic Shipyard Mikhail Casi, representing Alexander II, signed the contract on 5 September 1879. Pearce agreed to complete the job by 1 July 1880.Andrienko 1994, p. 27. The deal excluded interior finishes, to be completed in Russia. Unusually for the period, Pearce agreed to guarantee the speed of an experimental craft. According to the contract, the full price was payable only if the ship attained 15 knots. Under-performance was punishable by hefty liquidated damages, and the Russians reserved the right for a full money back guarantee if the ship failed to make 14 knots. They agreed to pay generous premiums if speed and engine power exceeded design targets of 15 knots and 12,000 indicated horsepowers. Pearce was instructed to build his own state-of-the-art steam engines, with no cap on maximum power output. The Russians subscribed to supply the complete electrical system, including arc lighting by Yablochkov candles.Andrienko 1994, p. 31. The British press discussed the unusual project and concluded it was a test bed for future military ships and their powerplants in particular.
Construction and trials
The pontoon hull was built of soft Siemens steel framing 11 millimeters thickMacLear 1967, p. 197. sheet iron.Andrienko 1994, p. 31. In November 1879, when the double bottom was two-thirds complete (but not formally laid down yet),Andrienko 1994, p. 30. Popov persuaded the imperial authorities to award interior finishes contact to the British, and hired Tideman to review the design again. Tideman built another 1:10 scale model, ran another series of tests and recommended changes to the powerplant and propeller arrangement that caused a significant extension of the contract. The Livadia had a double, perfectly flat bottom and only 7 ft (2.1 m) of draft, excluding the propellers.Hovgaard 1920, p. 40; Andrienko 1994, pp. 31–32. Their blades projected 9 feet below the hull. Tideman found what he claimed was near-perfect propeller configuration: all three screws had the same diameter but varied in blade pitch, which in practice required running the engines at different revolutions per minute.
The Livadia was launched on 7 July 1880 in front of ten thousandBallantyne 1881, p. 162. spectators and visitors which included Grand Duke Alexey,A Steam Vessel Constructed on a Novel Model. The New York Times, 8 July 1880, p. 3. the future General Admiral of the Imperial Navy. She was christened by the Duchess of Hamilton. The visitors were impressed by the size and luxury of the ship's interiors which had been designed by William Leiper and William De Morgan and mostly completed before the launch. The decorators had used Louis XIV style for the reception rooms, "Crimean-Tartar style" for the drawing rooms and "the simple kind of modern English style" for the private rooms.Brett 1992, pp. 21-22. The total volume of the royal apartments reached 3,950 cubic meters, 6.7 times more than on the first Livadia. Reporters hailed the technological novelties of the Livadia: she had, in total, 23 steam engines for different jobs including powered steering. The on-board water supply system had backup accumulators that maintained pressure even when steam pumps were not at work. The show on River Clyde inspired Algernon Charles Swinburne's unforgiving poem which ended with a prophecy: And fear at hand for pilot over sea, With death for compass and despair for star And the white foam a shroud for the White Czar.The Launch of the Livadia, dated September 30, 1880, as cited in a review in Swinburne's Studies in Songs. The New York Times, December 19, 1880, p. 4.
The engines and coal-fired boilers were installed in August. Pearce used steel for the powerplant and manganese bronze for the propellers and claimed that his engines were the world's most powerful for their weight. Back in Russia, terrorists were hunting down Alexander II, and the British press rumored that the Livadia "was about to be blown by the Nihilists' infernal machines"."The Livadia" The New York Times, 23 October 1880, p. 4. According to The Herald of Glasgow, Russian authorities notified Glasgow police of a plot to place nitroglycerin time bombs into the ship's coal bunkers. The coal was unloaded, the divers examined the bottom of the ship and found no trace of the bomb or the three alleged terrorists. The Livadia did suffer an explosion - her boilers ruptured during cold pressure tests. The accident was traced back to hot bending of the Livadia'''s boiler plates. It became a textbook example of unacceptable practice and instilled "a very justifiable dread of bending such plates while hot" into contemporary boilermakers.Stromeyer 1893, p. 184. Despite this setback, the Livadia was completely fitted out in three months.