Qualla: SS Admiral Nakhimov

SS Admiral Nakhimov: Introduction

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Leo Medvedev/Лев Леонидович Медведев, CC BY-SA 4.0. She had already sunk twice before the night that killed her. Built in Germany in 1925 as the liner Berlin, she plied the Atlantic between Bremen and New York, once plucking survivors from a foundering ship off Virginia. War turned her into a floating hospital under the swastika; mines put her on the Baltic seabed in 1945. Salvaged as Soviet war reparations, she blew up and sank a second time during her own recovery. Rebuilt and renamed Admiral Nakhimov, she became the flagship of the Black Sea passenger fleet - and on the night of 31 August 1986, minutes out of Novorossiysk, a cargo ship's bow opened her side and finished, in seven minutes, what mines and explosions had twice failed to do.

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Image: Leo Medvedev/Лев Леонидович Медведев | CC BY-SA 4.0

SS Admiral Nakhimov: Three Names, Three Flags

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Her first life was gilded. As the North German Lloyd liner Berlin, launched in 1925, she carried passengers between Bremerhaven, Southampton, and New York. In 1928 she answered the distress of the sinking Vestris off the American coast and took aboard survivors of a disaster that...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

SS Admiral Nakhimov: The Pride of the Black Sea

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Назаров Игорь Олегович, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1957 the rebuilt liner had entered service with the Black Sea Shipping Company, and for a time she was the fleet's flagship. Each summer she ran the six-day round trip between Odessa and Batumi, carrying around a thousand holidaymakers a voyage along a coast of resort towns an...

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Image: Назаров Игорь Олегович | CC BY-SA 4.0

SS Admiral Nakhimov: Seven Minutes

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SergBuilo, CC BY-SA 4.0. At 10 p.m. she left Novorossiysk for Sochi with 1,234 people aboard, most of them Ukrainian vacationers. Barely into Tsemes Bay, the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasyov appeared on a converging course. Warned by radio, the freighter's answer was almost casual: 'Don't worry. We will pass cl...

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Image: SergBuilo | CC BY-SA 4.0

SS Admiral Nakhimov: The Divers Who Followed Them Down

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SergBuilo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Sixty-four ships and twenty helicopters converged, pulling 836 people from water so thick with fuel oil that some rescuers could not keep hold of their hands. Then came the recovery, and its own grief. Navy divers of the Black Sea Fleet worked the overturned hull at night, blasti...

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Image: SergBuilo | CC BY-SA 4.0