 Sevastopol was built by the Baltic Works in Saint Petersburg . Her keel was laid down on 16 June 1909 and she was launched on 10 July 1911 . She was commissioned on 30 November 1914 and reached Helsingfors late the next month where she was assigned to the First Battleship Brigade of the Baltic Fleet . Sevastopol and her sister Gangut provided distant cover for minelaying operations south of Liepāja on 27 August , the furthest that any Russian dreadnought ventured out of the Gulf of Finland during World War I. She ran aground on 10 September and was under repair for two months . On 17 October a half @-@ charge of powder was dropped and ignited when it impacted the floor of the forward magazine . Flooding the magazine prevented an explosion , but the fire killed two men and burned a number of others . She saw no action of any kind during 1916 , but hit underwater rocks twice that year , suffering minor damage each time . Her crew joined the general mutiny of the Baltic Fleet on 16 March 1917 , after the idle sailors received word of the February Revolution in Saint Petersburg . The Treaty of Brest @-@ Litovsk required the Soviets to evacuate their base at Helsinki in March 1918 or have them interned by newly independent Finland , even though the Gulf of Finland was still frozen over . Sevastopol and her sisters led the first group of ships out on 12 March and reached Kronstadt five days later in what became known as the ' Ice Voyage ' . 
