Encyclopedia - Potemkin
The Knaiaz Potemkin
Tavritcheki - more popularly referred to simply as Potemkin -
comprised a pre-war Russian battleship, launched in 1903 (having been laid
down five years earlier), which gained notoriety in 1905 when its crew took
part in a failed revolutionary mutiny.
As a pre-Dreadnought displacing some 12,800 tons and with a crew of 731 the Potemkin was renamed Pantelimon and placed to wartime use in 1914 along with six other Russian pre-Dreadnoughts in the Black Sea, chiefly geared towards coastal defence.
With the February Revolution of 1917 the Pantelimon was once again named Potemkin only to be renamed once more the following year, to Boretz za Svobodu. It suffered destruction in April 1919 by anti-Bolshevik naval forces.
The role of Potemkin in 1905 was subsequently depicted on film by famed director Sergei Eisenstein in 1925.
A respirator was a gas mask in which air was inhaled through a metal box of chemicals.
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