in sponsons on the upper deck, protected by gun shields. She carried two torpedo tubes on the broadside aft. Wartime modifications Evstafi was fitted with anti-aircraft guns on top of each of her turrets during 1915 and screens were added on top of her funnels to keep out light bombs. She first received three 75 mm guns, but these were later replaced by two guns and a pair of guns. Service history Construction of Evstafi began on 13 July 1904, well before the formal keel-laying ceremony on 23 November 1904. Progress was relatively quick, despite the disruptions caused by the 1905 Revolution, and she was launched on 3 November 1906. Fitting-out, however, was considerably delayed by a number of changes made as the navy digested the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War and she was not completed until 28 May 1911. Shortly after completion she ran aground off the Romanian port of Constanţa in October 1911, but was only slightly damaged. World War I Evstafi, as the newest ship in the Black Sea Fleet, was the flagship of Vice Admiral Andrei Eberhardt, commanding the fleet, for the first year or so of World War I. Two weeks after the Russian declaration of war on the Ottoman Empire on 2 November 1914, the Black Sea Fleet, comprising the pre-dreadnoughts Evstafi, , , , , and three cruisers were escorted by three destroyers and 11 torpedo boats set out on 15 November to bombard Trebizond. They did this successfully on the morning of 17 November and they turned west to hunt for Turkish shipping along the Anatolian coast before setting course for Sevastopol later that afternoon. They were intercepted by the Turkish battlecruiser Yavuz Sultan Selim and the light cruiser Midilli the following day in what came to be known as the Battle of Cape Sarych. Despite the noon hour the conditions were foggy and the capital ships initially did not spot each other. The Black Sea Fleet had experimented on concentrating fire from several ships under the control of a "master ship" before the war and Evstafi held her fire until Ioann Zlatoust, the master ship, could see Yavuz. When the gunnery commands were finally received they showed a range over in excess of Evstafis own estimate of , so Evstafi opened fire using her own data before Yavuz turned to unmask its broadside. She scored a hit with her first salvo