page_title: Russian battleship Poltava (1894)
section_title: Siege of Port Arthur
hierarchical_section_title: Russian battleship Poltava (1894) / Construction and service / Siege of Port Arthur
caption_attribution_description: English: Japanese postcard of Russian battleship Poltava and other ships after their sinking during the Siege of Port Arthur
context_page_description: The Russian battleship Poltava was one of three Petropavlovsk-class pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1890s. The ship was transferred to the Pacific Squadron shortly after completion and based at Port Arthur from 1901. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, she participated in the Battle of Port Arthur and was heavily damaged during the Battle of the Yellow Sea. She was sunk by Japanese artillery during the subsequent Siege of Port Arthur in December 1904, but was raised by the Imperial Japanese Navy after the war and renamed Tango.
  During World War I, she bombarded German fortifications during the Siege of Tsingtao. The Japanese government sold Tango back to the Russians at their request in 1916. She was renamed Chesma as her former name had been given to a new ship. En route to the White Sea, she joined an Allied force that persuaded the Greek government to disarm their ships. Her crew declared for the Bolsheviks in October 1917, but made no effort to resist when the British captured her during the North Russia intervention in early 1918. In poor condition, the ship was used as a prison hulk.
context_section_description: Returning to Port Arthur on 11 August, the Russian squadron found the city still under siege by the Japanese Third Army led by Baron Nogi Maresuke. Poltava was hit on 18 August by four 4.7-inch (120 mm) shells, fired by a battery, that wounded six men. The new squadron commander, Rear Admiral Robert N. Viren, believed in reinforcing the landward defenses of the port and continued to strip guns, and sailors to man them, from his ships. By September Poltava had lost a total of three 6-inch, four 47 mm and twenty-six 37 mm guns. That same month, she began bombarding Japanese positions; through November she fired one hundred ten 12-inch shells and an unknown number of 6-inch shells.
  In October the advancing Third Army began to bombard the harbor with 28-centimeter (11 in) siege howitzers, firing at random. They hit Poltava twice on 7 October, though the shells only started fires. On 5 December the Japanese captured 203 Meter Hill, a crucial position that overlooked the harbor and allowed them to direct their artillery at the Russian ships. Poltava was hit that same day by five shells, three of which penetrated the deck. One hit a torpedo room, and another burst in the aft 47 mm magazine. That started a fire that could not be put out because the flooding system had been previously damaged and eventually ignited propellant charges in the adjacent 12-inch magazine. About a half-hour after the hit, the magazine exploded and blew a hole in the ship's bottom that caused her to sink 45 minutes later in the shallow water.
caption: A Japanese postcard showing Poltava partially submerged at Port Arthur
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