Varyag

In 1897 the Russian Admiralty, reinforcing the Imperial Navy's Far East Fleet, published specifications for a fast protected cruiser fit for commerce raiding: 152 mm quick-firing guns and a speed of 23 to 24 knots. Russian yards were already full, so the orders went abroad. Varyag was ordered from William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia on 11 April 1898, while Askold went to Germaniawerft and Bogatyr to AG Vulcan against the same requirement. She was laid down in October 1898, launched on 31 October 1899 and commissioned on 14 January 1901 under Captain Vladimir Behr.

She was 129.56 m long overall with a beam of 15.85 m and a draught of 5.94 m at normal displacement, designed at 6,500 long tons. Thirty Niclausse water-tube boilers fed two sets of four-cylinder vertical triple-expansion engines rated at 21,000 indicated horsepower, driving two three-bladed propellers. As a protected cruiser her defence was an arched armoured deck over the engines and magazines, 38 mm thick along the flat and 76.2 mm on the slopes down to the ship's sides, with 150 mm on the conning tower.

Her main armament was twelve Obukhoff 152 mm L/45 guns - two side by side on the forecastle, two on the quarterdeck and eight on upper-deck sponsons - throwing a 50 kg shell to 9,800 m at six rounds a minute. Twelve 75 mm quick-firers handled torpedo boats, backed by Hotchkiss 47 mm revolving cannon in the fighting tops and two Baranowski 64 mm landing guns for her marines ashore. Six 381 mm torpedo tubes were fitted. While she was building, an assistant physician who deserted the advance party for American citizenship became the subject of Tucker v. Alexandroff, in which the United States Supreme Court held that the unaccepted ship was nonetheless a warship under the 1832 Russo-American treaty.

At the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Varyag lay at Chemulpo Bay under Captain Vsevolod Rudnev with the ageing gunboat Korietz. On 8 February 1904 a large Japanese force under Admiral Uriu blockaded them in the harbour. Because Chemulpo was neutral Korean water, Uriu sent a written ultimatum: sail by noon or be attacked at anchor. Rudnev tried to fight his way out.

Outgunned, and with 31 men dead and 191 injured out of 570, both ships were back in harbour by one o'clock, and the crews scuttled them. The survivors were taken off by the British cruiser Talbot, the French Pascal and the Italian Elba; the captain of the American gunboat Vicksburg declined to take any, holding it a breach of United States neutrality. In 1907 Rudnev, by then dismissed from the Russian service with the rank of rear admiral, was decorated with the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun for his conduct in the action. He accepted it but never wore it in public.

The Japanese raised the badly damaged wreck from Chemulpo harbour, repaired her and commissioned her into the Imperial Japanese Navy as the cruiser Soya on 9 July 1907, naming her after Soya Misaki, the northernmost cape of Hokkaidō. She was used mainly for training, and from 14 March to 7 August 1909 made a long navigational and officer-cadet cruise to Hawaii and North America, repeating it every year until 1913.

In the First World War Russia and Japan were allies, and she was repurchased at Vladivostok on 5 April 1916 along with Peresvet and Poltava, taking back the name Varyag. She sailed for Murmansk by way of the Indian Ocean, arriving in November 1916, and went to Cammell Laird at Liverpool for an overhaul in February 1917 before joining the Arctic Ocean Flotilla. The October Revolution intervened: her remaining crewmen hoisted the red flag and refused to sail, and on 8 December 1917 a detachment of British soldiers seized her.

Assigned to the Royal Navy in February 1918, she ran aground under tow off Ireland, was refloated and served as a hulk until 1919, then was sold to a German firm for scrap in 1920. On 5 February 1920, under tow to Germany, she ran onto rocks near the Scottish village of Lendalfoot in the Firth of Clyde, and was broken up where she lay between 1923 and 1925.

The stoicism of her crew at Chemulpo outlived the ship. The Austrian poet Rudolf Greinz wrote a poem about her - 'Der stolze Warjag ergibt sich nicht', the proud Varyag does not surrender - which in Russian translation was set to music by A.S. Turischev in 1904 and is still sung. A memorial plaque was unveiled at Lendalfoot on Russian Navy Day, 30 July 2006, and a large bronze cross was added on 8 September 2007 at a ceremony attended by the former NATO Secretary General George Robertson. In 2010 her flag, recovered by the Japanese when she was salvaged and later held by the Incheon Metropolitan Museum, was returned to Russia on a renewable two-year loan.