The Imperator Aleksandr II-class battleships were two battleships built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the 1880s. They were intended to counter the small armored ships of the other Baltic powers. Construction was very prolonged and the ships were virtually obsolescent when completed. They were optimized for ramming. served in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas before becoming a gunnery training ship in 1904, but she was inactive during World War I before joining the Bolsheviks in 1917. She was sold for scrap in 1922. Imperator Nikolai I served in the Baltic and Mediterranean Seas as well as the Pacific Ocean during the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. She surrendered after the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 and was commissioned in the Imperial Japanese Navy before she was sunk as a target in 1915. Design The Imperator Aleksandr II-class battleships were the first all-steel battleships to be built for the Baltic Fleet and were designed to allow Russia to dominate the Baltic Sea by defeating rival ships like the and the German s, both of which were built of wrought iron. They were designed according to the tactical theories of the day which emphasized ramming and incorporated a ram bow. In addition their forecastle deck sloped slightly downwards to allow the main guns to fire at the waterline of the enemy at short range as the ship closed to ram. A full transverse armored bulkhead protected the forward guns from raking fire and no armor was originally provided to protect them from the side. They were given a full sailing rig to allow for deployments to the Mediterranean and other distant locations although it was never actually used. Imperator Nikolai I was originally going to be built to a completely different design, but this was changed at the last minute to a modified version of the Imperator Aleksandr II design, so there were significant differences between the two ships. General characteristics Imperator Aleksandr II was long at the waterline and long overall. She had a beam of and a draft of . She displaced at load, over more than her designed displacement of . Imperator Nikolai I was dimensionally similar to her sister except that her draft was only . She was also heavier than her sister. The hull was subdivided by one centerline longitudinal and ten transverse watertight bulkheads and it had a double bottom extending from frame