Named for the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War, the ship was commissioned into the First Pacific Squadron of the Russian Pacific Fleet and was stationed at Port Arthur (today Lüshunkou District, Dalian, Liaoning, China), a Russian naval base acquired from China in 1898 as part of the Kwantung Leased Territory.

The most notable of these was the Battle of the Yellow Sea, where she was damaged by several shells but managed to make it back to port with the remnants of the Russian Fleet, leaving one crewman dead and 62 wounded.

[2] The Petropavlovsk-class ships' main battery consisted of four 12-inch guns mounted in two twin-gun turrets, one each forward and one aft of the superstructure.

Eight of these were mounted in four twin-gun wing turrets and the remaining guns were positioned in unprotected embrasures on the sides of the hull amidships.

[5] Sevastopol was launched on 1 June 1895[7] and, after the completion of her hull and decks in 1898, was transferred to Kronstadt where her armor and guns were installed.

[13] After the Japanese victory in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, both Russia and Japan had ambitions to control Manchuria and Korea, resulting in tensions between the two nations.

Japan had begun negotiations to reduce the tensions in 1901, but the Russian government was slow and uncertain in its replies because it had not yet decided exactly how to resolve the problems.

Japan interpreted this as deliberate prevarication designed to buy time to complete the Russian armament programs.

[14] As tensions with Japan increased, the Pacific Squadron began mooring in the outer harbor at night in order to react more quickly to any Japanese attempt to land troops in Korea.

[15] In early February 1904, the Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur.

She soon turned in pursuit along with other ships of the Russian fleet, all firing their forward guns, but she failed to score any hits.

[21] The Russian battleships were too big to fit into the dry dock at Port Arthur, so large caissons were built to provide access to the ships' hulls.

[22] On 9 August, with the Japanese Third Army assaulting the outer defenses of Port Arthur, the First Pacific Squadron sortied from its base.

[23] Even though Sevastopol was not fully repaired, she sailed with the rest of the fleet with one gun in her aft turret remaining inoperable.

The Japanese battleships returned fire[25] and Sevastopol suffered several shell hits to her superstructure, which killed one man and wounded 62 others.

[28] Returning to Port Arthur on 10 August, the squadron found that the city was already under siege by the Japanese Third Army led by Baron Nogi Maresuke.

[30][31] Within the defensive surroundings of White Wolf, Essen started to plan a sortie through the blockade to Vladivostok or a rendezvous with the Second Pacific Squadron, at that time coaling at Madagascar.

[31][32] At the same time, the commanding admiral of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Tōgō Heihachirō, as instructed by Emperor Meiji in Tokyo, ordered the destruction of the battleship by six waves of destroyers, along with some torpedo boats that were launched from the Fuji and Mikasa.