In the summer of 1911, the first Russian turbine-driven destroyer
was launched at Putilovsky Plant in Saint Petersburg.
She brought fame to Russian shipbuilders
and had an impact on the projects of similar ships constructed by other countries.
Her actions during World War I immortalized her name in the history of the Russian Navy.
The name that she inherited from the heroic cruiser of the Russo-Japanese War.
Destroyer Novik was the last of the so-called "people's cruisers"—
a range of ships that were constructed using money
raised by the Special Committee for Navy Reinforcement with Voluntary Donations
created during the Russo-Japanese War.
Based on the experience of that war, in 1907 the General Navy Headquarters
drew up general requirements for a new generation of destroyers:
they were to deliver powerful torpedo strikes in a division of same-class ships
when cruising within a squadron, set active minefields, and act individually in skerries.
On the basis of these requirements, the Navy's Technical Committee
put together "The terms for designing a destroyer with a speed of 35 knots,"
which had to drastically surpass its predecessors in terms of dimensions and speed.
At the moment of her commission, Novik was more powerful
than all the destroyers built in 1911-1912 and was the strongest in the world
among ships of the same type in terms of torpedo and artillery armament.
Length: a little more than 102 meters
Beam: 9.5 meters
Draft: about 3 meters
Total displacement: 1,360 tons
Armament
Primary armament: four 102-millimeter guns produced by Obukhovsky Plant
Four twin torpedo launchers with a caliber of 450 millimeters
Main power plant
Six Yarrow Vulcan boilers and three Curtiss-AEG-Vulcan steam turbines
produced almost 42,000 horsepower.
Thanks to advanced engineering solutions, the ship set a world record for maximum speed—
37.3 knots—during her trials in August 1913.
Cruising range: 1,760 miles at 21 knots.
By the beginning of World War I,
Novik was the only destroyer of the new type in the Baltic fleet.
She had an active role in the campaigns of 1914 and 1915 as a high-speed minelayer.
Novik went on twelve cruises to the German coast and laid more than 500 mines.
Several enemy warships and transports struck them and were damaged.
In August 1915, a powerful German squadron tried to make its way to the Gulf of Riga
through the Irbe Strait defended by mines and artillery.
At a quarter past midnight on August 17,
a lookout on Novik discerned two ships in the thick darkness,
right ahead of the destroyer.
General quarters was sounded, the enemy was identified, and the crew opened fire.
The two ships set a parallel course and returned fire.
They were freshly commissioned German destroyers V-99 and V-100,
almost Novik's sisterships.
The third salvo from the Russian destroyer hit the enemy leading ship V-99.
Novik stopped chasing them only after the badly damaged V-100
set up a smoke screen.
The entire engagement lasted only 17 minutes,
but brought fame to Novik.
From 1916, the Baltic fleet was quickly complemented with Novik-class destroyers
built at shipyards in St.Petersburg and Tallinn.
In total, 16 ships were commissioned before Russia withdrew from World War I,
and 20 more were under construction.
Series of these destroyers were slightly different in terms of armament
and other elements, but they all proudly bore the common name Noviks.
Novik herself became the flagship of the Mine division in 1916,
and led it to raid German convoys carrying iron ore from Sweden.
At the beginning of October 1917,
together with the combat-capable Noviks of her division,
she defended the Moonsund islands
against the superior forces of the German High Seas Fleet.
Soon after Russian troops had withdrawn from the Moonsund Strait,
Novik was sent to St.Petersburg to be overhauled.
However, the revolution interfered with repairs
and from 1918 the destroyer found herself laid up.
In 1924, the USSR Council of Labor and Defense
decided to complete the construction and repair of 12 Baltic Noviks.
The main ship of the series was among them, though in 1926 she was renamed Yakov Sverdlov
after one of the first leaders of Soviet Russia.
The destroyer was retrofitted at the same Putilovsky shipyard.
She received antiaircraft artillery and new torpedo tubes.
However, the ship was no longer able to reach her record-breaking speed.
Yakov Sverdlov and her sisterships formed the core of Baltic fleet's light forces
until the end of the 1930s,
when new Gnevny-class destroyers were commissioned.
Yakov Sverdlov's service in World War II came to an end as early as 1941.
During the first two months of the war between Germany and USSR,
she was based in Tallinn and participated in combat operations.
The ship left the surrounded city escorting flagship light cruiser Kirov.
The famous "Tallinn passage" of the main forces of the Baltic fleet to Kronstadt
became the last cruise of the renowned Novik.
The destroyer was not fated to reach Kronstadt.
At 20:40 on August 28, the ship hit a mine, split in half, and sank.
To this day, there has not been another Russian warship to bear the name Novik.
It remains in the history of the Russian Navy as a valiant destroyer
that stayed faithful to the Baltic region, which she defended in two world wars.