Russian armored cruiser Gromoboi, built for commerce raiding against British shipping far from the seats of empire, seen in Melbourne, Australia, during April-May 1901. The event was the granting of the Constitution of Australia, which united the six British colonies on the continent into one Commonwealth; following this event, Gromoboi stopped off in Japan before reaching Port Arthur, Russia’s force-leased, ice-free naval base in southern Manchuria on the Yellow Sea.
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Gromoboi was a big ship, displacing 12,455 tons and measuring 481’ in length. In comparison, the newest battleships at Port Arthur in 1901 were the Petropavlovsk-class, displacing 11,354 tons on a hull 376’ long. This was not a unique situation for the cruiser era; the long voyages and substantial bunkerage required for commerce-raiding warships, particularly those intended for distant waters, came with substantial size requirements. The largest ship to be involved in the Boxer Rebellion, for example, was a 14,200-ton British protected cruiser of the Powerful class, despite multiple battleships being stationed off China at the same time. In fact, it was relatively common for cruisers to exceed at least the length of battleships well into the Dreadnought Era, after the battlecruiser essentially evolved out of the armored cruiser concept.
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Gromoboi saw action against the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-5, participating in commerce raiding while based in Vladivostok with the cruisers Riurik, Rossiya, and Bogatyr. Gromoboi would also fight in the Battle off Ulsan against Admiral Kamimura’s cruiser squadron on 1/14 August 1904 (remember - Russia used a different calendar until the revolution). This was the pinnacle of her career; thoroughly obsolete by WWI, Gromoboi was used as a minelayer and briefly engaged SMS Von der Tann in August 1915, but otherwise saw limited use, particularly after the Russian Revolution. She was later sold for scrap in 1922, running aground en route, and had to be cut up in place.
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