Probably one of the few historical vessels operated by the SRN, the SRN Admiral Ushakov is the ship of the same name of the former Imperial Russian Navy.
Built by New Admiralty Shipyards, Saint Petersburg and launched on the 1st of November 1893, she was a member of a class of coastal defence ships.
Admiral Ushakov was part of the Baltic Fleet at the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war. The Ushakov was chosen to form part of Admiral Nikolai Nebogatov’s “Third Pacific Squadron” which was sent out to reinforce Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky on his journey to the Far East. The ship was obsolete and was not considered suitable for a voyage to the Pacific. However the Admiralty insisted on including Ushakov and her sister ships General-Admiral Graf Apraxin and Admiral Senyavin to bolster their force. Journeying via the Suez Canal and across the Indian Ocean, they linked up with Rozhestvensky’s fleet off Cam Ranh Bay in Indochina and proceeded together to the Straits of Tsushima.
At the Battle of Tsushima, on 27–28 May 1905, the Ushakov was separated from Nebogatov during the night and fought to the last. She was twice hit below the water line and once above, the blazing wreck being run aground on the evening of 28 May after attempts to scuttle the ship failed.
She remained there until the crew, who miraculously had remained with the ship, managed to extinguish the major fires and made fast temporary repairs to her hull. She was then pulled back to sea and joined by the surviving cruisers Almaz, Oleg and Zhemchug as well as the destroyers Bodry, Grosny and Bravywhere, attempted to limp to the Russian held port of Vladivostok (the cruiser Aurora of later revolutionary fame was the only vessel to actually reach Vladivostok after becoming separated during the night). Due to a combination of bad visibility and navigational error, she missed the port and instead put into the port of Anadyr. It was here that the badly burnt hulk remained until the ‘liberation’ of Sieran on the 17th of October 1905.
All seven badly damaged vessels were inherited by the newly formed Sieranian Republic Navy and provided the sole vessels in the fleet for many years. The Admiral Ushakov had been so badly damaged that her rebuild was never completed entirely with one of the biggest distinguishing features being the merging of her funnels into a single aft stack.
She served as the flagship of the fleet until she was replaced by new-built vessels and as of 1938 still existed as an ammunition hulk.