of her belt above her loaded waterline as she was still overweight, a decrease of from her half-sisters. The deck armor was 2.25 inches outside the citadel and 1.5 inches over it. Construction and service Ekaterina II was built at the Admiralty Shipyard in Nikolayev. The other three ships were built in Sevastopol by the Russian Steam Navigation and Trading Company. The Admiralty Shipyard was not yet ready to build such a large ship and required additional preparations before it was ready to begin Ekaterina II. Some delays were caused by the necessity to send some equipment from St. Petersburg, but the primary reason for the lengthy six-year construction time were near-constant design changes after building had begun. The gun mountings were found to be larger than anticipated and the redoubt had to be carried out over the ship's sides on sponsons to make enough room. The frontal armor thickness of the redoubt was reduced from to 12 inches in compensation. The redoubt also had to be moved back about to prevent the ships from trimming by the head and the armor was rearranged as mentioned earlier. Modernizations The boilers of each ship were replaced by Belleville water-tube boilers around the turn of the century during lengthy refit periods. Several different proposals were made during this period or later to reconstruct the ships and make them effective combatants again. These often involved replacing their compound or steel armor with modern Krupp armor, replacing their guns and barbettes with a pair of twin turrets mounting more powerful 12-inch guns and, most radically, to cut the ships down by one deck. None of these proposals were ever carried although the armor and new turrets were actually ordered for Chesma, but the Navy reconsidered the cost-effectiveness of the modernization and diverted both to the battleship then building. Ekaterina II (Екатерина II) was named after the Empress Catherine II of Russia. She was built by the Admiralty Dockyard at Nikolaev. She was laid down on 26 June 1883, launched on 20 May 1886, and completed in 1889. Her crew was considered unreliable when the crew of the battleship mutinied in June 1905 and her engines were decoupled from the propellers to prevent her from joining Potemkin. She was turned over to the Sevastopol port authorities before being stricken on 14 August 1907. She was redesignated as Stricken Vessel Nr. 3 on 22 April 1912