the shipyard in 1870, when Russia abrogated those clauses of the treaty. A temporary slipway was built at the New Admiralty Shipyard in January 1871 and construction of Novgorod, named after the city, began on 13 April. Using two shifts to speed construction, her hull was completed by 29 December, when the official keel-laying ceremony was held. Within two weeks it was disassembled, and the first shipment of parts arrived at Nikolaev on 2 April 1872. Reassembly began on a specially-prepared slipway eight days later. As there was no rail line between Saint Petersburg and Nikolaev, the components had to be railed to Odessa, where they were transshipped onto river barges and steamers. The boilers were too large and had to be shipped by freighter from the Baltic Sea to Odessa for transshipment. Construction was delayed by late deliveries of parts and the workforce's lack of experience; the ship was finally launched on 2 June 1873, with Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich in attendance. Novgorods guns were mounted in September, and she entered service the following year, at a cost of 2,830,000 rubles. During the winter of 1873–74, a small superstructure was built aft of the barbette and an enclosed wheelhouse was built atop it. In addition, the shape of the forward superstructure was modified so that it overhung the bow, and prominent bridge wings were added. A telescoping boom for a spar torpedo was fitted at the same time. In 1875, the ship made a port visit to Taganrog, and hosted Sir Edward Reed during a cruise along the Crimean coast that October. During the Russo-Turkish War, she was assigned to the defense of Odessa, and her armament was reinforced by a pair of 4-pounder guns mounted on her aft superstructure to protect her against torpedo boats. These guns fired a shell at a muzzle velocity of to a range of . During this time, the navy realized that the ship's outermost engines contributed little to her speed, and with steam capacity insufficient for all of her engines, the outer engines were removed in 1876–77. This reduced Novgorods total power to and her speed to about . The ship made a cruise to the Romanian town of Sulina on the Danube after the war, and she received armoured covers for her engine room skylight and the central barbette hatch to protect against plunging fire. In July 1879 she ran aground