The General-Admiral-class ships were a pair of armored cruisers built for the Imperial Russian Navy in the early 1870s. They are generally considered as the first true armored cruisers. Design and description Originally classified as armored corvettes, the General-Admirals were redesignated as semi-armored frigates on 24 March 1875. They were laid out as central battery ironclads with the armament concentrated amidships. The General-Admiral-class ships were long overall. They had a beam of and a draft of . The ships were designed to displace , but displaced as built, an increase of over . The iron-hulled ships were not fitted with a ram and their crew numbered approximately 482 officers and men. The ships had a vertical compound steam engine driving a single two-bladed, propeller, using steam provided by cylindrical boilers. The number of boilers differed between the sisters. General-Admiral had five that generated a working pressure of so that the engine produced . This gave her during a maximum speed around during her sea trials. Gerzog Edinburgski had four boilers and her engine made that propelled her at . The General-Admiral class carried a maximum of of coal which gave them an economical range of at a speed of . They were ship-rigged with three masts. To reduce drag while under sail, the single funnel was retractable and the propeller could be hoisted into the hull. The sisters armament were four , two rifled breech-loading guns (RBL), and four early masnine-gun likes Engstrom guns. The ships had a complete waterline belt of wrought iron that ranged in thickness from 6 inches amidships to at the ends of the ships. The armor had a total height of , of which was below the waterline. The central battery was also protected by 6-inch armor plates. Ships Service General-Admiral had was blown ashore during a heavy storm at Kronstadt in 1875, shortly after being completed. She did not participate in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 and made one cruise in the Pacific in the early 1880s. The ship spent 1884–85 in the Mediterranean before beginning a refit in 1886 during which she was partially re-boilered. General-Admiral had her boilers replaced, her funnel was replaced by two non-retractable funnels, and a fixed propeller was installed in 1892. The ship was reclassified as a 1st-class cruiser on 13 February 1892 and participated the Columibian Naval Review in Hampton Roads, Virginia, the following year. Afterwards she