Russian yacht Livadia ( 1880 ) 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 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 battleship s , 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 cruiser s . 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 October 21 – 22 , 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 . Naval architects of the 1860s tended to increase the beam and reduce the length of their armored ships . 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 . Their steering was satisfactory against the stream , and entirely unmanageable downstream . Their rudders were ineffective while their outer propellers disturbed the steering 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 , 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 . 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 . 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 September 5 , 1879 . Pearce agreed to complete the job by July 1 , 1880 . 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 candle s . 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 and 11 millimeters thick sheet iron . In November 1879 , when the double bottom was 2 / 3 complete ( but not formally laid down yet ) , 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 . 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 June 7 , 1880 to the joy of ten thousand spectators and visitors which included Grand Duke Alexey , 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 . 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 , < br > With death for compass and despair for star < br > And the white foam a shroud for the White Czar . 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 , the dreaded terrorists were hunting down Alexander II , and the British press rumored that the " Livadia " " was about to be blown by the Nihilists ' infernal machines " . According to " The Herald " of Glasgow , Russian authorities notified Glasgow police of a plot to place nitroglycerin time bomb s 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 . Despite this setback , the " Livadia " was completely fitted out in three months . On September 24 , 1880 Pearce personally steered the " Livadia " from Govan to Greenock and then into the Firth of Clyde , reaching 12 knots . Tideman , present at the trials , wrote that the ship steered " like a yawl . " Next day , the " Livadia " ran her first , unofficial , speed trial and made 15 knots . On September 26 the " Livadia " performed six hour long official trials presided by Russian Admiral Ivan Likhachev . She reached 14 . 88 knots with the engines running at 10 , 200 horsepowers . This time Tideman recorded somewhat wider than expected turn radius under full power , but deemed it unimportant : the " Livadia " could still turn on a dime by disengaging one of the side propellers . On September 27 the " Livadia " reached her top recorded speed of 15 . 725 knots at 12 . 354 horsepower . Reports by Gulyaev and Reed compared " Livadia " to contemporary HMS " Penelope " , HMS " Orion " and HMS " Iris " which had similar displacements and engine power , and concluded that her efficiency was on par with conventional ships . On September 30 the Russian crew of 24 officers and 321 enlisted men boarded the ship , raised the flag of Saint Andrew and began preparations for a homeward voyage . Their captain , Ippolit Vogak , had earlier commanded Popov ' s " Novgorod " and " Petr Veliky " . Pearce completed his job and was rewarded with 414 , 000 roubles premium in addition to 2 , 700 , 000 roubles base contract price . Maiden voyage . The " Livadia " left Greenock on October 3 with Popov , Tideman , Edward James Reed and William Houston Stewart on board . She safely reached Brest on October 7 , where she picked up General Admiral of the Imperial Navy Grand Duke Constantine . On October 8 the " Livadia " sailed into the Bay of Biscay and was soon caught in a violent storm . According to Reed , sailing straight into the storm to test the ship was Constantine ' s idea and that no Russian dared to argue . Waves of six to seven meters failed to upset the " Livadia " : transverse roll did not exceed 3 . 5 degrees , longitudinal pitch was within 5 . 5 degrees . Stewart praised the comfort of the " Livadia " : " I never was in so comfortable a ship at sea in a gale of wind . . . the absence of rolling , the easiness of motion , the great comfort on board , and the handiness of steering , were such as I have never seen before in any other ship under similar circumstances of weather and sea " . However , the crew was alarmed by the thunder - like sound of the waves slamming against her flat bottom . Reed and Vogak wrote that at times it sounded as if the ship had hit a hard rock . Around 10 a . m . of the next day the hull cracked , the space between inner and outer bottoms was flooded , and Vogak rushed his ship to a safe anchorage in Ferrol . The divers discovered a five - meter - long dent and numerous cracks in the fore segment of the hull which were ultimately blamed on waves . Popov concurred and admitted his failure " to foresee the effects of shallow draft " . He wrote that the damage had dual mechanism : first , when the flat pontoon pitched above the waves , gravity subjected it to an enormous stress , bending the whole structure down . Next , as it plummeted down , the flat bottom hit water head - on , rupturing the rivets and tearing off the crossbeams . Reed noted that the radial framing pattern chosen by the designers resulted in a strong center section and inadequately weak extremities , and that any experienced shipbuilder should have discovered this weakness in advance . The " Livadia " could have been quickly repaired in a drydock , but none of world ' s docks was wide enough for her . The new drydock in Nikolaev , designed by Clark Stanfield specifically for the battleship " Novgorod " and the other " popovkas " , had not yet been expanded to fit the " Livadia " . Moored in Ferrol , Spain , for seven months , she became an easy prey for the journalists . " The New York Times " ridiculed the " Livadia " , her designers and her crowned patron : instead of blowing up the " Livadia " , the " nihilists " " designed " her , for it was hardly possible to conceive a worse ship . According to the anonymous satirist she was " a yacht on board of which seasickness would be wholly unnecessary " , " a Nihilist device that no Nihilist would dream of destroying . " Instead of hunting terrorists , " the English and Russian Police should seize the designer of the " Livadia " and hang him on the spot . " In November the newspaper changed its attitude , this time praising the " Livadia " for her stability on the high seas ; the speed attained by " an enormous iron turtle " impressed the reporter who suggested that the " Livadia " " may possibly lead to considerable changes in the art of ship - building . " According to the " New York Times " , on December 10 the Russians dispatched 83 men to assist repairs on the " Livadia " while still entertaining plans to build a 12 , 000 - ton " Livadia " - style armed ironclad . Repairs proceeded slowly , and the " Livadia " left Ferrol only on . The " Livadia " , captained by Vice Admiral Ivan Shestakov , proceeded with utmost caution , evading rough waves at all costs . She passed the Bosphorus on . and reached Sebastopol on the next day . She made 3 , 890 miles in 381 hours , consuming more than 2 , 900 tons of coal . Shestakov reported easy steering , perfect stability and good build quality of the " Livadia " but advised against using her as a royal yacht until further tests could attest to her safety for Black Sea operations . Abandonment . On the Russian Empire was shaken by the murder of Alexander II . His successor , Alexander III , was facing continuing terrorist threat , civil unrest , pogroms of the Jews and other problems of far greater importance than Popov ' s yacht . Popov fell out of favor : Alexander III had no faith in old Navy brass and delegated naval matters to his younger brother Grand Duke Alexey . He publicly chided Popov ' s extravagant and wasteful experiments . The indifference of the tsar and the rise of Alexey doomed the " Livadia " . On the " Livadia " sailed for her first and last voyage across the Black Sea . She raised the ensign of the Commander of the Black Sea Fleet , picked up Grand Dukes Constantine and Mikhail in Yalta and carried them to Batumi and back . The sea was choppy , the Romanovs were upset by waves slamming against the bottom and shaking the superstructure . Later in June the " Livadia " was raised in dry dock . The inspection found her structure to be inadequately weak and recommended proper reinforcement of the hull . The Department of the Navy agreed and then issued a countermanding order subjecting the " Livadia " to speed trials " before " any major repairs . In August 1881 she made 136 speed runs and barely reached 14 . 46 knots and 9 , 837 horsepowers . The failure to make 15 knots sparked allegations of fraud against Popov and his Scottish contractor , but was ultimately explained by the incompetence of the crew and low quality of local coals . the " Livadia " was sent to an anchorage in Nikolaev where she was stripped of all the luxuries . Her retirement had not been formally announced , and Russian press cautiously called her " the former yacht " . Popov ' s attempts to save the " Livadia " were cut short by Shestakov ' s report that the tsar was determined to get rid of the " Livadia " . Alexander agreed to convert her into a floating jail , ruling out any seagoing in the future . Popov was again accused of fraud and embezzlement and struggled with imperial prosecution for four years . In April 1883 the " Livadia " was renamed " Opyt " ( , " Experiment " or " Test " ) and left to rot while the Navy discussed her fate . Plans to convert her into a troopship were discarded , and by the end of the decade her engines had been removed and installed in " Minin " , " General Admiral " and " Duke of Edinburgh " . The hulk was used as a floating barracks and a warehouse . In 1913 " Opyt " was recommissioned for port duties ; she was finally struck off the Soviet Navy register in 1926 . According to Andrienko , she was still afloat in late 1930s . Experience of the " Livadia " attracted shipbuilders ' interest in the beginning of the 20th century , when the risk of torpedo attack forced the navies to reconsider ship protection technique and employ submerged anti - torpedo bulge s .