According to a news item published in this newspaper passed the Russian armoured cruiser Rossia (1) the Suez Canal and was she with her length of 146 metres and 12,000 tons the largest ship until that moment passing this waterway. She was destined towards the Chinese waters with on board grand duke Cyrill Wladimirowitsch and visited Port Said. According to this item was she the largest warship within the Russian navy and belonging even to the largest warships of the world just like some British warships. With a coal bunker capacity of 2,000 tons and armed with 15cm guns with a range of 20 kilometres was her draught of around 7,5 metres fore and 8,5 metres aft to large for the canal with a depth of 8 metres. This caused the unloading of 4,000 quintals(1 quintal=100 kilo) of coal into a lighter and moving 300 ton war stores from the aft to the fore ship with as result that the medium draught was now around 7,8 metres. The two eldest pilots leaded the voyage and within 27 ¾ hours with the help of two tugs was the canal passed. During the night were the anchors dropped while during the whole voyage there was no opposite traffic possible. The pilotage for using the Suez Canal was quite expensive so except for the unloading coasts there was another 36,700 francs to be paid although nothing compared with the 500,000 Dutch guilders in gold which had to be paid for the Spanish reserve squadron commanded by Camara.
Note
1. Laid down at the yard of the Baltic Works at Saint Petersburg, Russia in October 1893, launched on 30 April 1896 and commissioned in the same year, rebuilt 1906-1909 and sold to be broken up on 1 July 1922. With a displacement of 12,195 long tons/12,391 tons were her dimensions 147,8 x 20,3 x 8,0 metres or 485’x 66.”6’x 26.2’. The two vertical triple expansion engines supplied 14,500 ihp (during trials 15,523 ihp) and one vertical triple cruising expansion engine of 2,500 ihp and 32 Belleville water-tube boilers allowing a speed of 19 knots while with a speed of 10 knots she had a range of 7,740 nautical miles. Her crew numbered 839 men while the armament consisted of 4x1-8” guns, 16x1-6” guns, 12x1-7,5cm guns, 20x1-4,7cm guns, 18x1-3,7cm guns and 5-15”(38,1cm) surfaced torpedo tubes.
