3-pounder Hotchkiss () guns in the superstructure. The ships were fitted with four torpedo tubes, one each above water in the bow and in the stern, and a submerged tube on each broadside. The waterline armor belt of the Borodino class consisted of Krupp armor thick. The armor of their gun turrets had a maximum thickness of and their decks ranged from in thickness. The armored lower deck sloped downwards to connect to the anti-torpedo bulkhead of the same thickness. Service Construction began on Knyaz Suvorov, named after Prince Alexander Suvorov, on 10 August 1901 at the Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg. The ship was laid down on 8 September, when the ceremonial laying of one of the plates was performed by Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich, General-Admiral of the Imperial Russian Navy. She was launched on 25 September 1902, in the presence of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Grand Duke Konstantin, and King George I of Greece. She was completed in September 1904, after the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War, at the cost of 13,841,000 rubles. On 15 October 1904, Knyaz Suvorov, Rozhestvensky's flagship as commander of the Second Pacific Squadron, set sail for Port Arthur from Libau along with the other vessels of the squadron with the mission of reinforcing the First Pacific Squadron at Port Arthur and breaking the Japanese blockade. Rozhestvensky had received numerous reports of Japanese agents and torpedo boats disguised as fishing vessels before sailing and he ordered maximum alertness after coaling at Skagen, Denmark, on 7 October. Early on the evening of the following day, when the squadron was near the Dogger Bank, the auxiliary repair ship Kamchatka reported that she was under attack by torpedo boats in the rain. About four hours later, the squadron encountered British fishing trawlers working the Dogger Bank in the fog and opened fire on them at very short range. One trawler was sunk and at least three others were damaged; several fishermen were killed and others wounded. The battleships also fired upon and damaged the Russian cruisers and . The incident enraged the British population and caused a diplomatic incident with the British that nearly led to war until Russia apologized and agreed to pay reparations on 29 October. Rozhestvensky led his ships down the Atlantic coast of Africa, rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and reached the island of Nosy Be off the northwest coast of