AN UNSINKABLE TITANIC
and repairs executed by means of caissons of timber, built around the gaping holes which had been blown into their hulls by torpedoes. The repairs to the Pallada were completed early in April, and about the 20th of June the Czarevitch and Retvizan were also in condition to take the sea. On the 13th of April, during the sortie in which the Petropavlovsk was sunk with Admiral Makaroff on board, the battleship Pobieda, in returning to the harbour, struck a contact mine, and was heavily damaged. Similar repairs were executed, and this ship was able to take her station in the line in the great sortie of August 10.
"On June 23 Captain von Essen's ship, the Sevastopol, was sent outside the harbour to drive off several Japanese cruisers that were shelling the line of fortifications to the east of Port Arthur. This she accomplished; but in returning she struck a Japanese mine, which blew in about 400 square feet on the starboard side, abaft the foremast, at a depth of about 7 feet below the water-line. The rent was from 7 to 10 feet in depth and 35 to 40 feet in length. The frames, ten in all, were bent inward, or torn entirely apart, and the plating was blown
[ 152 ]
