Russian 1st rate
Name: 12 apostles
"Devenstadt Apostolov - The Twelve Apostles" Russian Imperial Ship of the line
The "Twelve Apostles" was a 120-gun 3 decked ship of the line built by the Russian shipwright Captain S. I. Chernyakovsky.
It was launched on the 15th July 1841 and became part of Russia's Black Sea Fleet. Its lower deck had twenty eight 68-pounder guns designed by the Russian artillerist Lekhner. On the other two decks there were 36 and 24-pounder guns.
Although the ship was titled "120-gun" the ship actually carried 130 guns. The crew of the ship consisted of about 1000 men, among which were 12 officers and 65 corporals.
The city of Sevastopol was the home of the Tsar's Black Sea Fleet, which threatened the Mediterranean. Sevastopol is one of the classic sieges of all time, the siege was the culminating struggle for the strategic Russian port in 1854–1855 and was the final episode in the Crimean War. On the 13th February 1855, the Twelve Apostles was ordered to Sevastopol Bay to form a second beam line along with six other vessels. The Russian commanders arrived at the hard but a most sensible decision, to submerge the ships across the entrance channel to prevent entry to the port, thus assisting the shoreline batteries. The ship's crew disembarked to reinforce the city's defenses, the Twelve Apostles was scuttled and sank.
Fifty years after the heroic defense, to commemorate the sunken ships on the second beam line, a "scuttling monument" was erected in the sea, 23 miles from the shore, which is still in place today. The quay facing side of the octagonal pedestal, is adorned with a bronze plaque that depicts the scuttled ships. Despite the location of the monument, it proved to be the only monument of Sevastopol which endured in the melting pot of WWII and welcomed the liberators in May 1944.