The German convoy service commenced on 7 April 1916 with a group of armed vessels sailing three times a week at fixed times along the shipping lanes from Gjedser Strait to the Sound, the Swedish east coast and Swinemünde. Another group sailed from Swinemünde to the Sound and Sweden; and another to Danzig—Pillau—Memel—Libau. The Germans at first did not have sufficient escorts, and the convoys could only proceed as far as Swedish territorial waters at Smyge-Huk. The Germans sailed a “Q-ship” at regular intervals along the route from here to Landsort to provide some protection at places where steamers had to leave territorial waters. The heavy demands of German and Austrian industry for Swedish iron ore led the Germans to increase the number of Swinemünde—Landsort convoys from three to six on 23 July.57
The convoys began just in time, for with the melting of the ice the Russians sent the Volk, E.19, and E.9 to report on German movements and patrols. The British, however, were under orders to attack only cruisers and larger ships and encountered none. The Russian Volk, which did not have this restriction, was able to sink three German colliers (a total of 6,000 tons) east of Häfringe on 17 May, representing the greatest success for a Russian submarine in the Baltic. The Germans responded by wasting time and effort on submarine “hunting groups,” which like their British and French counterparts had no success, but, with more escorts now in service, they were able to extend their convoys along the Swedish coast to Landsort.
The next sortie by three British and two Russian boats was less successful. E.18 torpedoed the large new German destroyer V.100 off Libau, but the Germans were able to get the ship into port. The British submarine, however, never returned and was probably lost on a mine west of Ösel. On 27 May the Gepard was rammed by the auxiliary ship K (Kronprinz Wilhelm, 1,700 tons, armed with four 10.5-cm guns), acting as a Q-ship, while attacking a convoy southeast of Häfringe. The Germans believed they had sunk her, but the damaged submarine was able to return to base. The next day in Hanö Bay, the Bars attacked the K, missed, and suffered a heavy depth-charging. The Germans believed they had accounted for the submarine, but she, like the ships in the convoy, was unharmed.
The submarines did not repeat their success of 1915. There were few sinkings, and German trade was not seriously disrupted. The submarines themselves were now harassed by German aircraft. Cromie, who became senior British naval officer after Laurence returned to England, reported that the British submariners did not have the same warm relationship with the new Russian commander in chief Admiral Kanin that they had enjoyed with Essen, and that it was difficult to dissuade the commander in chief “from doing useless stunts with the boats.” By mid-June he reported they were used principally for reconnaissance, as nothing but aircraft and patrols moved about and the Germans were very active in antisubmarine tactics. Cromie later wrote that in 1916 they “were kept idle for months” waiting for a landing in Riga Gulf that never occurred, and, on the whole, “1916 was a wasted year.”58 The Russian submarines scored the occasional success, but the Vepr caused diplomatic complications on 16 July in the Gulf of Bothnia when she torpedoed the German steamer Syria (3,600 tons) without warning and apparently within the three-mile limit of Swedish waters. The German crew were rescued by a Swedish torpedo boat. According to one authority, in the period from July to the end of November, four British and twelve Russian submarines (five new and seven old boats) undertook a total of thirty-one patrols resulting in the sinking of only two ships. This was probably due as much to the very effective use German traffic made of Swedish territorial waters as it was to German antisubmarine activities. Moreover, the Swedes tacitly cooperated with the Germans by instituting convoys of their own to enforce Swedish neutrality and protect ships traveling within their territorial waters. The Germans also used seven to eight submarines in the Baltic and Gulf of Bothnia, for both operations against Russian traffic and minelaying. In 1916 they lost one submarine in the Baltic and laid mines that sank a large new destroyer, a smaller destroyer, two minesweepers, and in November badly damaged the Rurik. They also sank with torpedoes or mines four naval supply ships and a surveying ship in naval service, although the number of merchant ships they sank or captured was comparatively small.59 The shipping losses were modest when compared to other theaters. Baltic conditions did not seem suitable for the conduct of Handelskrieg by either side.
The Russians inevitably found the German convoys, defended for the most part by lightly armed small craft, to be attractive targets for their surface forces. The comparative weakness of German strength in the Baltic made them even more attractive. Acting on intelligence received from the British about convoys of ships carrying iron ore from Landsort, the Baltic naval commander ordered an offensive sweep along the Swedish coast. On the night of 13 June, Vice Admiral Trukhachev led the armored cruiser Rurik, the cruisers Oleg and Bogatyr, the large destroyers Novik, Pobeditel, and Grom, and six to eight smaller and older destroyers and torpedo boats on the raid. The three large destroyers under Rear Admiral Kolchak separated from the remainder of the force at Kopparstenarne light and closed Norrköping Bay. They encountered a southbound German convoy of approximately ten steamers escorted by three auxiliary patrol boats, southeast of Häfringe Island. The Russian commander fired a warning shot to make sure the convoy was not Swedish. The German escort, led by the auxiliary cruiser Hermann (2,030 tons, armed with four 10.5-cm guns), an armed trawler, and two smaller boats, turned to engage the Russian destroyers while the convoy fled for the safety of the Swedish coast. The Hermann was sunk, but Kolchak did not close, believing the convoy escort had heavy guns and was accompanied by torpedo boats. Those large new destroyers, after all, were precious to the Russians, who believed they had sunk three to five freighters. In fact, only the luckless Hermann had been sunk. The freighters loaded with iron ore had escaped.60
The Russians followed the same pattern in a raid on the night of 29–30 June commanded by Vice Admiral Kurosch. This time they used the old armored cruiser Gromoboi; the small cruiser Diana accompanied by the large new destroyers Pobeditel, Grom, and Orfei; and five smaller destroyers. The three large Russian destroyers, commanded by Captain Wilken, were hampered by thick fog when they closed the coast in Norrköping Bay. There was no sign of the convoy, delayed by fog, but the Russians ran into three large new and five older German destroyers and torpedo boats. The eight Germans pursued the outnumbered Russians until they encountered the Russian cruisers approximately 30 nautical miles south of Landsort. The Germans fired torpedoes, but none of them found their mark, and neither side suffered casualties before the action was broken off. The Russians had failed, once again, to disturb the German ore traffic. Russian surface forces probably had their greatest success against the German ore traffic on 17 July when torpedo boats captured the German steamers Lissabon (2,800 tons) and Worms (4,400 tons) off Bjuröklubb in the Gulf of Bothnia. The Swedes claimed it was a violation of their neutrality and protested, especially as one of the steamers had been carrying a Swedish pilot.
Swedish neutrality was a two-edged sword. The Germans undoubtedly profited from the use of Swedish territorial waters and also from Swedish convoy arrangements in the Gulf of Bothnia, which were published on 29 July 1916 and had the effect of protecting German merchant shipping from Russian naval attack in Swedish territorial waters between Lulea and Kalmar Sound. Here ships could join the German convoys. The Swedish escort in the north was light, generally only a single torpedo boat that left Lulea every second day (and in the opposite direction at fixed hours) and proceeded at 8 knots. The Germans found certain disadvantages: the Swedish escorts anchored overnight and thereby lengthened the time necessary for the voyage and the Swedes did not concern themselves about stragglers. Nevertheless, they profited enormously, for, joined to the Swedish prohibition on submarines entering territorial waters, they made attacks on German shipping very difficult, if not impossible, particularly if prize rules were followed.61 The Swedes also instituted a weekly patrol service from Landsort to the Sound and from there to the
Norwegian border, but this was of little interest to the Germans. It either paralleled their own convoys or was in waters where they had no fear of attack. If anything, the British and Allies might profit more from it. Later in 1917 the Germans also failed to induce the Swedes to put their convoy in the Gulf of Bothnia on a daily basis. The Swedish navy had neither sufficient ships nor men.62
Sweden’s political and diplomatic stance is a complicated subject, beyond the scope of this study. Undoubtedly, there were strong pro-German sentiments in certain sections of the Swedish government and society, as well as traditional anti-Russian feelings. In a well-known work published shortly after the war, the former British naval attaché in Scandinavia, Rear Admiral M. W. W. P. Consett, was particularly bitter over Sweden’s conduct.63 Recent studies indicate Consett may have had too narrow a view, and that Esme Howard, the British minister in Stockholm, was more correct in his assessment of the larger picture—the necessity to avoid throwing the Swedes into the arms of the Central Powers and keeping Sweden open as a route for supplies to reach Russia.64
The British were nonetheless able to profit from Swedish neutrality by bringing out a number of ships trapped in the Baltic at the beginning of the war. There were no fewer than ninety-two British ships in Swedish and Russian Baltic ports, and by autumn of 1915 the demands on shipping were so great that they could no longer be ignored. An Anglo-Swedish syndicate was formed, and the ships began to make the perilous passage through the Sound, Kattegat, and Skaggerak by hugging Norwegian and Swedish waters whenever possible. The Germans might not have let those ships escape from under their noses, but the Swedish navy provided protection, and on one occasion the Swedish torpedo boat Pollux cleared for action when a German torpedo boat threatened the British ship Thelma in Swedish waters in the Sound north of Malmo on 16 November 1915. Two more Swedish torpedo boats and an aircraft soon arrived to reinforce the point. On 23 January the Swedish torpedo boat Castor, with Prince William of Sweden reportedly on the bridge, saved the F. D. Lambert from two German destroyers off Falsterbö. In June Prince William was also reported as having laid his torpedo boat across the narrow channel off Falsterbö in order to prevent a pair of armed German trawlers from following the British steamer Dunrobin. The same month Swedish torpedo boats undoubtedly saved the Penmount from capture by a German destroyer off Malmo. One could cite other examples.65 It was those small, hard-worked torpedo boats, rather than the larger Swedish coast-defense ships and cruisers, that were of the most value in enforcing Swedish neutrality.
A total of twenty-nine ships managed to escape from the Baltic by July 1916 before the Swedish government (under German pressure and as a result of friction with the British over the blockade) announced on 28 July that the Swedish navy had laid a new minefield in the Kogrund Channel at the entrance to the Sound and that only Swedish vessels would be taken by pilots through it. This had the effect of forcing vessels beyond the very shallowest draft out of Swedish waters into German minefields. The Allies protested hotly and the question became a matter of considerable discussion, but it was not until May 1917 that the Allies reached an agreement with the Swedes that permitted a total of 90,000 net tons of British and Allied shipping to leave the Baltic through the Kogrund passage in return for the release of a specific number of Swedish ships and cargoes detained by the British.66
In September 1916 Vice Admiral Nepenin became commander in chief of the Baltic Fleet, replacing the somewhat lackluster Kanin, who was relegated to the tsar’s Council of the Empire. Nepenin, former chief of reconnaissance, was particularly noted for his organization of the intelligence office earlier in the war. It seemed a genuinely popular appointment, and there were strong hopes the Baltic Fleet would enjoy more dynamic leadership.67 Unfortunately, these high hopes were never realized; Nepenin met a tragic fate early in the Russian Revolution the following year.
The Germans deviated from their generally defensive stance in November of 1916 and met with what was probably their greatest disaster in the Baltic during the war. Rear Admiral Langemak, commander of the German reconnaissance forces, was anxious to raid the western portion of the Gulf of Finland, hoping to catch Russian transports and their destroyer escorts, which German submarine reconnaissance reported sailed by night behind the Russian “Forward Position.” The Germans also planned to shell the anchorage at Baltic Port. The Germans were encouraged by the ability of their submarines to penetrate the gulf, and the news of a successful raid by German destroyers in the English Channel was apparently sufficient to provide the psychological impetus and overcome Prince Heinrich’s last doubts about the scheme. On the evening of 10 November, the Tenth Destroyer Flotilla, consisting of eleven modern destroyers under the command of Korvettenkapitän Wietling in S.56, sailed on the ill-fated mission. The Germans had completely underestimated the strength of the Russian mine defenses and had hardly reached the meridian of Cape Tachkona when first V.75 and then S.57 struck mines. Wietling encountered no Russian traffic behind the “Forward Position” and proceeded to shell Baltic Port, which was empty of shipping. The bombardment caused little damage. The Germans then turned for home, but ran into the minefields on their way out of the gulf, and V.72, G.90, S.58, S.59, and V.76 hit mines and sank. The Germans could only console themselves with the fact that they had achieved complete surprise, that the damage was perhaps greater than the Russians admitted (the sheds shelled were apparently full of army horses), the Russian surface forces had been slow to react, and the German loss of life had been small (sixteen dead, twenty wounded) with most of the crews rescued by the German destroyers. This was really quibbling. The loss of seven out of eleven precious modern destroyers for scant results could only be described as a disaster and a glaring example of what could happen if the mine danger was taken too lightly. Although Prince Heinrich took final responsibility for the disaster, it is not surprising that Langemak was superseded by Admiral Hopman, who had held the command the preceding year.68
1917: REVOLUTION AND PARALYSIS
The year 1917 was one of revolution in Russia. The autocracy had been shaken by two and a half years of defeat and the population worn down by war. The March revolution brought about the abdication of the tsar and the end of the autocracy. Russia’s allies hoped that the new liberal government would be able to continue the war, perhaps even more effectively, and the end of the autocracy relieved the embarrassment of the allies claiming to fight Prussian militarism while allied to Russian despotism. The Bolshevik seizure of power in November ended these hopes. That is the simplified version of events, a benign revolution subverted later on by the Bolsheviks. The picture does not fit the Baltic Fleet. From the very first, the revolution seriously affected the fleet, which then declined steadily to but a fraction of its former fighting value. There had been scattered disorders and disturbances before the March revolution. The relative inactivity of the big ships created a fertile breeding ground for unrest. Admiral Nepenin was one of the early victims, despite his recognition of the provisional government. He was murdered on 4 March (Russian calendar) in Helsingfors where the fleet was still icebound. There were numerous other murders of officers, the formation of revolutionary sailors’ committees to share in the command of the ships, and a general collapse of discipline. Traditionally the situation was worst in the battleships, better in the destroyers and submarines. The reports of the British and French naval attachés provide a vivid picture of their growing despair, mingled periodically with their hopes that the situation might be settling down, only to be plunged back into despair by fresh outbreaks of disorder. Knowledgeable observers had written off the Baltic Fleet as an effective fighting force long before the Bolsheviks seized power. There is no space in a survey of this kind to go into these events in detail, but given the historical importance of the Russian Revolution, there is substantial literature on the subject.69
The tempo of naval operations reflected the fact that politics had superseded military operations in the Baltic Fleet. The Russians concentrated on str
engthening their mine defenses, and offensive operations were generally limited to submarines. The British submarines were sent on patrol against the German bases, such as Libau, or in defense of the Irben Strait, but they had no luck. The Russian submarines went out against German shipping on the Swedish coast. They too met with little success in the face of German countermeasures. The Russians lost the submarines Bars, Lvica, and AG.14. The latter had been commanded by the only son of the late Admiral Essen and was one of five U.S.-designed Holland boats built in sections in Canada, shipped across the Pacific, and assembled at Petrograd—six others went to the Black Sea. German submarines also were active, both in minelaying and attacks on shipping. They achieved a certain amount of success, particularly in the Gulf of Bothnia, sinking sixteen mostly very small ships. The mines claimed an old torpedo boat, an auxiliary minesweeper, and a minesweeping motorboat. German aircraft and airships were also alert, and in August aircraft were decisive in frustrating the Russian attempt to salvage the destroyer Stroini (350 tons), which had run aground west of the Sworbe Peninsula while covering Russian minelaying in the Irben Strait. On 24 September the destroyer Okhotnik (615 tons) was sunk off Zerel by a mine laid by an airplane, possibly the first success in war attributed to aerial mining.
A Naval History of World War I Page 37