Arkhangelsk (original name: HMS Royal Sovereign) was a British and later Soviet battleship, the keel of which was laid in 1914, launched in April 1915, and commissioned into the British Royal Navy in April 1916. The total length of the ship was 189 m, width 27 m, and a full displacement of 31,200 tons. The maximum speed of the battleship Royal Sovereign was around 21-22 knots. The main armament at the time of the launch was eight 381 mm guns in four twin turrets. The secondary armament is 14 152 mm guns in casemates, 2 76 mm guns, 4 47 mm salute cannons (so-called pom-poms) and 4 533 mm torpedo tubes.
HMS Royal Sovereign was one of five Revenge-class battleships. Battleships of this type were built just before the outbreak of World War I, as a British response to the rapid naval armament of the German Empire. The plans for other British battleships - the Queen Elizabeth class - were largely modeled on. Revenge ships, however, had better armor with the same main and additional armament, which, in combination with a weaker engine room, resulted in a drop in speed - from about 25 knots in the Queen Elizabeth type to about 21-22 knots. In the interwar period, the Revenge class battleships underwent only minor modernization: the anti-aircraft artillery and armor were marginally strengthened, and in 1939 they were to be withdrawn from service for the new King George V ships. HMS Royal Sovereign was handed over to the Soviet Navy in May 1944, de facto against the war reparations that the USSR was to receive from the defeated Italy. The name of the unit was then changed to Arkhangelsk. The battleship, already under the Soviet flag, embarked on its first voyage in August 1944. In its course, it was attacked by the German submarine U-711, but it survived as a torpedo. In the period 1944-1945 it was part of the Arctic convoy cover and operated mainly from bases on the Kola Peninsula. The ship finally and definitively returned to the British flag only in 1949.