off Odessa and was damaged. Novgorod was stationed in Sevastopol throughout the 1880s and made short cruises every summer. She received the refurbished boilers from Vice Admiral Popov after that ship was reboilered in 1883. She was reclassified as a coast-defence ironclad on 13 February 1892, by which time her armament had been augmented by two quick-firing Hotchkiss five-barreled revolving cannon. These guns had a range of and a rate of fire of 32 rounds per minute. By the following year her hull and machinery were in poor condition. The ship was turned over to the Port Authority of Nikolaev for disposal on 1 May 1903 and stricken from the navy list on 3 July, after which she was used as a storeship. Novgorod was offered for sale to Bulgaria in 1908, but the offer was not taken up. The ship was sold for scrap in December 1911. Myths and reality In his book, The World's Worst Warships, naval historian Antony Preston characterised the popovkas like this: But in other respects, they were a dismal failure. They were too slow to stem the current in the Dniepr, and proved very difficult to steer. In practice the discharge of even one gun caused them to turn out of control and even contra-rotating some of six propellers was unable to keep the ship on the correct heading. Nor could they cope with the rough weather which is frequently encountered in the Black Sea. They were prone to rapid rolling and pitching in anything more than a flat calm, and could not aim or load their guns under such circumstances. The design of these ships was very controversial while they were being built in the 1870s, with many articles being published in the newspapers of the day by supporters and detractors, and later picked up by historians. One such account, published in 1875, claimed that Novgorod made an uncontrollable turn while on the Dniepr, while Reed, describing a time when the ship's engines on one side were reversed during a cruise in Sevastopol Bay, wrote: "The circular form is so extremely favourable to this kind of handiness that the Novgorod can easily be revolved on her centre at a speed which quickly makes one giddy. She can, nevertheless, be promptly brought to rest, and, if, needed have her rotary motion reversed." It would seem probable that the two reports quoted above were combined