Site of Sinking : Battleship "Empress Maria"

 ship wreck, disaster site, historical layer / disappeared object

Imperatritsa Mariya (Императрица Мария: Empress Maria) was an Imperatritsa Mariya-class dreadnought of the Imperial Russian Navy, lead ship of her class. Construction began before World War I and she saw service with the Black Sea Fleet during the war. She provided cover for older pre-dreadnought battleships as they bombarded Ottoman facilities, although she engaged the ex-German light cruiser Midilli several times without inflicting anything more serious than splinter damage.

Imperatritsa Mariya was sunk at anchor in Sevastopol by a magazine explosion on 20 October 1916. She was subsequently raised, but her condition was very poor, and she was finally scrapped in 1926.

Imperatritsa Mariya was 168 meters (551 ft 2 in) long at the waterline. She had a beam of 27.43 meters (90 ft 0 in) and a draft of 8.36 meters (27 ft 5 in). Her displacement was 23,600 long tons (23,979 t) at load, 1,000 long tons (1,016 t) more than her designed displacement of 22,600 long tons (22,963 t).

She proved to be very bow-heavy in service and tended to ship large amounts of water through her forward casemates. The ammunition for the forward 12-inch (305 mm) guns was reduced from 100 to 70 rounds each while the 130-millimeter (5.1 in) ammunition was reduced from 245 to 100 rounds per gun in an attempt to compensate for her trim. This did not fully cure the problem, but Imperatritsa Mariya was lost before any other changes could be implemented.