page_title: Russian cruiser Vladimir Monomakh
section_title: Russo-Japanese War
hierarchical_section_title: Russian cruiser Vladimir Monomakh / Career / Russo-Japanese War
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Крейсер "Владимир Мономах". Год неизвестен (около 1900)
context_page_description: Vladimir Monomakh was an armoured cruiser built for the Imperial Russian Navy during the 1880s. The vessel was named after Vladimir II Monomakh, Grand Prince of Kiev. She spent most of her career in the Far East, although the ship was in the Baltic Sea when the Russo-Japanese War began in 1904. Vladimir Monomakh was assigned to the Third Pacific Squadron and participated in the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905. She was tasked to protect the Russian transports and was not heavily engaged during the daylight portion of the battle. The ship was torpedoed during the night and was scuttled the following morning by her captain to prevent her capture by the Japanese.
context_section_description: In February 1905, Vladimir Monomakh was assigned to the Third Pacific Squadron, which was sent to reinforce Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky's Second Pacific Squadron. The Third Pacific Squadron transited the Suez Canal and joined the 2nd Pacific Squadron at Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina on 14 May 1905 where they was assigned to the Cruiser Division commanded by Rear Admiral Oskar Enkvist.
  At the decisive Battle of Tsushima on 27 May 1905, Vladimir Monomakh was positioned to the right side of the Russian line of battle, guarding the transports and so avoided the pounding that the other vessels of Second Pacific Squadron received, although she engaged the Japanese cruiser Izumi. The Japanese ship was hit several times and driven off, but only three crewmen were killed and seven wounded. Vladimir Monomakh was hit several times itself and had one 120 mm gun destroyed and its crew killed. The most dangerous hit was a shell that burst over a 6-inch shell hoist and started an ammunition fire. The prompt flooding of the magazine averted an explosion.
  At nightfall, the Japanese torpedo boats engaged the surviving Russian warships and the cruiser claimed to have sunk one of her attackers at 8:25 p.m. Vladimir Monomakh, mistaking one of her attackers for a Russian destroyer, was hit around 8:40 by a single torpedo which ruptured her hull near the No. 2 coal bunker, but sank the torpedo boat. The damage was severe but her crew kept her afloat and her engines operational, although she continued to take on water. The next morning, however, Vladimir Monomakh headed towards Tsushima Island and began to unload her wounded into her surviving boats. Captain Vladimir Aleksandrovich Popov gave the order to abandon ship, and ordered the seacocks to be opened to scuttle the vessel rather than surrender it to the Japanese. The ship sank at 10:20 a.m. and the crew was captured by the Japanese auxiliary cruisers SS Sado Maru and SS Manchu Maru. Vladimir Monomakh was officially removed from the navy list on 28 September 1905.
caption: Vladimir Monomakh between 1893 and 1905
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