Battleship Imp Aleksander III
The Russian battleship that fought in WWI and the Civil War
The battleship, built by the last Tsar of russia and named for his father, served in two wars under at least five flags.
His Majesty's Russian Battleship the Imperator Aleksander III (Emperor Alexander III) was the most modern of ships when it was laid down at the Russud Yard at Nikolayev on the Black Sea in 1911. She was a 24,000 ton ship of the Imperatritsa Mariya class battleships and as such carried a 1386 man crew and a dozen impressive 12 inch (305mm) naval guns. She and her sisterships were designed to ensure naval superiority in the Black Sea over the Ottoman Turkish navy who was acquiring a pair of modern battleships from Great Britain at the same time.
World War One led to a slow down in work on the ship and she was still on the builders dock when Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne during the Russian Revolution in early 1917. Her officers were reorganised, the crew formed a soviet-style committee and the ship was renamed the Volya (Freedom) on April 29, 1917. She finally was commissioned into the fleet (eventhough not fully completed) in June and made a few short sorties into the Black Sea on the hunt for Turkish warships. November brought the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent peace negotiations with the German and Turkish governments which resulted in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Treaty called for the Ukraine to come under German occupation and forced Russia from the war. Before German troops could make it to the Black Sea the Volya was seized by Ukrainian revolutionaries (who promptly renamed it the Ukraine) in April 1918. When the Germans arrived in the region they took the gently used battleship for themselves and it joined the navy of the Kaiser. She was renamed the Volga and a German crew under Konteradmiral Walter Isendahl took over the ship in September 1918. The end of World War One brought an Allied occupation force into the Black sea through the Dardanelles and the ship along with its German crew surrendered to the British navy at Izmir in three months later. The ship briefly flew a Royal Navy ensign but it was decided to turn the vessel over to the White Russian government, whom the Allies were backing in the Russian Civil War.
The white Russians raised their flags over the ship by years end and named it after General MK Alekseev, one of their early leaders who had died during the conflict. The General Alekseev was handicapped by a shortage of trained crews, spare parts, and a lack of mission during its use by the Whites. It did however conduct a number of naval gunfire support missions for the White Army in its fight whenever the Bolshevik Red Armies came close enough to the coast for its huge 12 inch guns to be effective. In November 1920 the General Alekseev led the largest naval evacuation until Dunkirk from the Crimea to Turkey when Gen. Baron Piotr Wrangel, the last White army commander in eurpoe, evacuated his forces to Constantinople. This huge fleet was made up of 126 ships and carried 145,693 souls into exile. The General Alekseev remained in Constantinople harbor armed and with its flags flying until being escorted to Bizerta in French Tunisia where it was interned. With the exception of Admiral Stark's Siberian forces this was the last White Russian Fleet.
The ship lay in decay at Bizerta with a skeleton White Russian crew in residence for years until the French authorities demanded that they hand the vessel over in partial payment for assistance rendered to the exiles. The tattered tsarist Russian Naval ensign was lowered for the last time on October, 29, 1924 and the exiles left the ship in French hands. By this time the battleship was in largely unusable condition and after inspection it was recommended to turn the vessel over to the Soviet government as a good will gesture. A Soviet Naval party inspected the ship in 1926 but found it in such poor condition that they declined to take it back. The General Alekseev was sold for scrap to the Kliaguine Company in 1928. The ship was then slowly dismantled over the course of the next decade. Its usable naval equipment was taken sold abroad or taken by the French navy, its main guns were removed for further use and the ship itself was broken up and sold for its scrap value. By 1937 nothing remained of the old battlewagon but her 30 assorted 12inch and 130mm guns which were to have a fascinating life of their own.
Sources
"Black Sea dreadnoughts" Isenberg and Kostrichenko, Novorossijsk, 1998
"MIRUS". The making of a Battery" Colin Partridge and John Wallbridge, The Ampersand Press, 1983
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