Free Red Mutiny by Neal Bascomb

top speed of seventeen knots. Twelve
inches of Krupp steel protected its turrets, nine inches of the same its belt line. In terms of firepower, it outclassed the USS
Maine
and HMS
Illustrious
of the same period. Its two twin-armored turrets, fore and aft, carried four twelve-inch guns that could decimate enemies with seven-hundred-pound shells at a range of over six miles. Along its 371 feet, it boasted a secondary battery of sixteen six-inch quick-firing guns, fourteen three-inch twelve-pound guns, an assembly of machine guns, torpedo tubes, mine-laying equipment, and two torpedo launch craft. The
Potemkin
was an armed fortress, and with its three yellow funnels sitting forward amidship, it looked like a terrible beast, crouched and eager to attack.
    In October 1903, it took its first sea trials. Two months later, Captain Golikov took command and shepherded the ship to completion in April 1905. The ship's log specifically records two bad omens during this period: first, a towline ripped the double-headed eagles, the symbol of the Romanov family, from the ship's bow; second, Nicholas's portrait fell off the wall in Golikov's cabin, shattering the glass in the frame. It is unknown whether Golikov took much meaning from these omens, but the captaincy of the
Potemkin
was to be his final post and the journey to Tendra Island his final voyage.

    While the battleship moved out of Sevastopol, Golikov turned to his second officer, Ippolit Gilyarovsky. "Once away from the revolutionary dockworkers, we'll manage to get rid of these heretics in our own ranks." How little he understood the crew after two years at their command. Neither as stringent a disciplinarian as his fleet commander, Vice Admiral Chukhnin, nor as vicious as his second officer, Gilyarovsky, Captain Golikov was, in a word, middling.
    Born into a high-ranking noble family from Moldova (his father was an architect and state councilor), Yvgeny Golikov joined the Naval Cadet School at eighteen years of age in 1872. At that time, professors continued to glorify the age of the sail, looking down on steam-driven warships and the "mechanics" who drove them. He studied mathematics, navigation, three languages, and leadership techniques—a curriculum as frozen in time as the Table of Ranks that Peter the Great had instituted for nobles in 1722. Graduating a guarde-marine, he was promoted to ensign after the typical two-year period and then found himself on board a mine-cutter in the Russo-Turkish War in
1877, guarding a supply bridge over the Danube. It was the only action he would see.
    Once the war had ended, Golikov served for the next twelve years aboard the tsar's yachts (first for Alexander II, then his son), gaining little naval experience but rather a good deal of the royal family's favor during their long vacation voyages. He counted among his close friends Konstantin Nikolayevich, cousin of Tsarevich Nicholas. Despite this advantage, he ascended at only a typical pace through the ranks, remaining a lieutenant for eleven years until promoted to captain second rank in 1892. Seven subsequent years aboard a grab bag of transport vessels, steamers, and coast-defense ironclads earned him first-rank status. After several naval staff positions, he was appointed to the
Potemkin.
At the time, he preened because of the "special favor" he enjoyed from Nicholas II and the General Admiral of the navy, Aleksei Aleksandroyich, and he was festooned with twelve separate medals and ribbons, most of them honorary. Golikov had never distinguished himself, in service or ability, but naval promotion was based on seniority and loyalty to the tsar. In his new position, he earned one hundred times a typical sailor's yearly salary.
    When Golikov took command of the
Potemkin,
the Black Sea Fleet was beginning to face a crisis: the spread of revolutionaries (or "half-educated Godless traitors," as the senior flagman called them) among the sailors. Golikov was told to conduct periodic