Russian battleship Ekaterina II Ekaterina II ( " Catherine II of Russia " ) was the lead ship of the pre - dreadnought battleship s built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1880s . Her crew was considered unreliable when the crew of the battleship mutinied in June 1905 and her engines were decoupled from the propellers to prevent her from joining " Potemkin " . She was turned over to the Sevastopol port authorities before being stricken on 14 August 1907 . She was re - designated as " Stricken Vessel Nr . 3 " on 22 April 1912 before being sunk as a torpedo target for the Black Sea Fleet . Design and description . " Ekaterina II " was long at the waterline and long overall . She had a beam of and a draft of , more than designed . Her displacement was at load , almost more than her designed displacement of . " Ekaterina II " had two 3 - cylinder vertical compound steam engines built by the Baltic Works . Fourteen cylindrical boilers , also built by the Baltic Works , provided steam to the engines . The engines had a total designed output of , but they produced on trials and gave a top speed of . At full load she carried of coal that provided her a range of at a speed of and at . " Ekaterina II " differed from her sisters mainly in her gun mounts . Her guns used bulky , hydraulically powered Moncrieff disappearing gun mounts . They had a rate of fire of five minutes , ten seconds between aimed rounds . Each of the forward mounts could traverse 30° across the bow and 35° abaft the beam , or a total of 155° . Sixty rounds per gun were carried . The main guns were mounted very low , ( only ) above the main deck , and caused extensive damage to the deck when fired over the bow or stern . The seven Obukhov Model 1877 35 - calibre guns were mounted on broadside pivot mounts in hull embrasures , except for one gun mounted in the stern in the hull . Six of the eight five - barrelled revolving Hotchkiss gun s were mounted in small sponsons that projected from the hull with the aftermost pair mounted in embrasures in the hull to defend the ship against torpedo boat s . Four five - barrelled revolving Hotchkiss guns were mounted in the fighting top . She carried seven above - water torpedo tube s , one tube forward on each side , able to bear on forward targets , two other tubes mounted on each broadside forward and aft of the central citadel and the seventh tube was in the stern . History . " Ekaterina II " was named after the Empress Catherine II of Russia . She was the only one of her class to be built by the Nikolayev Admiralty Dockyard at Nikolaev . The ship was laid down on 26 June 1883 , launched on 20 May 1886 , and completed in 1889 . She ran her first trials in 1888 , after she had been transferred to Sevastopol to be fitted out , and spent her career with the Black Sea Fleet . In 1897 the Naval General Staff proposed to re - gun her with more powerful 12 - inch 40 - calibre guns and to replace the compound armour of her redoubt with Krupp armor , but this proved to be too expensive . Her machinery was upgraded between mid - 1898 and 1902 . Her boilers were replaced with eighteen Belleville water - tube boilers and her engines were converted to triple expansion . On trials after the refit she made and a speed of on 8 November 1902 . Her crew was considered sympathetic to the revolutionary movement when the crew of the battleship mutinied in June 1905 and her engines were disabled to prevent her from joining " Potemkin " . She was turned over to the Sevastopol port authorities before being stricken on 14 August 1907 . She was re - designated as " Stricken Vessel Nr . 3 " on 22 April 1912 before being sunk as a torpedo target . The remnants of the ship were salvaged in 1914 in Nikolaev .