A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  The Russian general staff initially did not take such a sanguine view of the war at sea. They were battered by the series of disastrous defeats at the hands of the Germans in the north and very worried over a possible landing by Turkish troops in the vicinity of Odessa. The Black Sea Fleet therefore remained on the defensive, protecting the Russian coastline in the characteristic Russian manner. They laid 4,190 (4,423 according to some accounts) mines at important points along the Russian coast by the end of 1914.6

  The Russians, with no dreadnoughts or efficient long-range submarines and as yet only a few long-range destroyers, were not in a position to mount a blockade of the Bosphorus. They were, however, able to begin offensive mining against the Bosphorus and attack Zonguldak on the Turkish coast. These remained the two major objectives of the Black Sea Fleet. Zonguldak was located in the region known as the “coal coast,” for the port was an important outlet for coal, which was carried in colliers to the Bosphorus and Constantinople. The Russians intended to cut off that traffic, thereby leading to severe shortages in Constantinople and a disruption of the Turkish war effort.

  Ebergard sailed on 4 November with his five old battleships, cruisers, and destroyers on the first Russian offensive operation of the war. Four of the new Bespokoiny-class destroyers laid minefields northwest of the entrance to the Bosphorus on the evening of the 5th. The operation was not a success. The location was poorly chosen, 8–12 miles from the Strait and outside the usual channels, and the mines later became as much of a hindrance to Russian as to Turkish movements. Moreover, many of the floating mines sank and were exploded prematurely by water pressure. This was only a first effort; the Russians continued their mining activities, and their performance improved. On the morning of the 6th, the Russian squadron was off Zonguldak and the old battleship Rostislav and cruiser Kagul, accompanied by six destroyers, moved inshore and shelled the port, sinking a Greek freighter. The Russians also were lucky enough to encounter and sink three Turkish steamers en route to Trebizond with men and supplies. The Turks had sent the steamers to sea without coordinating their movements with Souchon, and the result was disastrous. In retaliation, the Breslau, which had been in the eastern Black Sea protecting other Turkish movements, shelled the Russian port of Poti. These early operations set the pattern for the naval war in the Black Sea.

  The great distance and poor communications between Constantinople and the Caucasus front made transport by sea more attractive to Enver Pasha, the Turkish minister of war, and his German chief of staff Colonel Bronsart von Schellendorff than the long, slow, and difficult route overland. This gave the Russians their opportunities, and much of Souchon’s effort was expended in protecting that vulnerable transport. His primary mission as he saw it, however, was protection of the Bosphorus. Although success against isolated Russian ships was possible, a general fleet action had to be avoided. It took considerable argument, including, reportedly, the personal experience of a voyage in the Goeben to Trebizond, to finally convince Enver how hazardous reliance on sea transport could be.7

  The Russians struck again at Turkish maritime communications to the Caucasus on 17 November, shelling Trebizond in the eastern Black Sea. Souchon sailed with the Goeben and Breslau, hoping that with luck he might be able to overwhelm a portion of the Russian fleet as it returned to the Crimea. He did not succeed. Shortly after midday on the 18th, the Russians and Germans met off Cape Sarych, about 20 miles from the Crimean coast. The conditions were foggy and the poor visibility and short ranges of the encounter nullified the Goeben’s advantages in speed and firepower. On the other hand, all of the Russian battleships were not, at least initially, in a position to open fire. The Russian flagship Evstafi hit the Goeben with one of her first salvoes, but suffered four hits in the engagement, which lasted only ten to fourteen minutes. The Russians drew the appropriate conclusion from the battle: their squadron would have to remain together to face the Goeben, and this, in turn, would restrict their operations along the Turkish coast to operations by the entire squadron. The handful of slow and elderly Russian cruisers would have been easy prey for the Goeben. The disadvantages caused by the lack of fast light cruisers were painfully clear, for only the few large destroyers were suitable for independent operations away from the protective guns of the plodding old battleships.8

  The Germans also had their problems. Souchon had kept the lightly protected Breslau out of effective range and congratulated himself that the two old Turkish battleships Heireddin Barbarossa and Torgud Reis had not been with him, for if they had been, as he confided to his wife, their fate would have been sealed. The former German ships would have been too slow to escape, and they did not have all their artillery and were less protected than the Russians.9 In many respects the Goeben was on her own in a precarious existence.

  The fears of the Russian army about a possible landing on the Black Sea coast near Odessa had at least some foundation in fact. General Liman von Sanders, inspector-general of the Turkish army and probably the best known of Enver Pasha’s German advisers, proposed landing a Turkish army at Akkerman to the south of Odessa. In his mind, this was a logical extension of German-Austrian operations on the eastern front all the way to the Black Sea. The proposal looked good on a map but was another example of the difficulty soldiers and sailors sometimes had in understanding each other’s point of view. Souchon, who had already described Liman as a good field soldier but “childlike, silly and impeding cooperation,” had great trouble convincing him it would be impossible to transport large numbers of troops over 300 miles and land them on an unprotected open flat coast within 150 miles of the Russian naval base at Sebastopol. There had been no preparation for an operation of this sort, the shipping was lacking, and the mere two German ships could not hope to protect the operation. The Turks did attempt a rash commando raid. On 6 December twenty-four Russian-speaking Turkish cavalrymen, dressed in Russian uniforms, landed near Akkerman with the objective of moving inland and cutting the Bender-Reni Railway, destroying villages and finally escaping into Romania. The raiders landed successfully but were soon captured without accomplishing their mission. It was a far cry from an extension of the eastern front to the sea.10

  The Russians undertook a raid of their own on the night of 23–24 December, attempting to block the harbor of Zonguldak by sinking four old ships loaded with stones. The Russian battle squadron was at sea to cover this and another mining operation against the approaches to the Bosphorus, which had taken place the evening of the 21st. The mining, in which four minelayers laid 607 mines in two fields northeast of the Strait in waters considered too deep (150 meters) by the Turks and Germans for mining, was a success. The attempt to block Zonguldak was not. Shortly before the mining operation, the Goeben and the old Turkish cruiser Hamidieh had sailed from the Bosphorus to escort three transports to Trebizond. On the 23d the Breslau sailed to rendezvous with the Goeben on her return north of Sinope. In the darkness of the early morning hours of the 24th, the German cruiser met the Oleg, one of the Russian blockships heading for Zonguldak. Heavy weather had scattered the Russian force, which had been delayed by an explosion in one of the blockship’s boilers requiring the ship to be towed. Additionally, some of the blockships had lost contact with their escorts. The Breslau switched on her searchlights and sank the Oleg but then broke away after encountering the battleship Rostislav. At dawn the Breslau met a second blockship, the Athos, which also had become separated from the main Russian force, and opened fire, causing the Russian crew to scuttle the ship. The remaining pair of blockships failed to reach the harbor. Coastal batteries, which the Turks had now moved up to protect the vulnerable port, kept the blockships from reaching the harbor entrance, and the two were finally scuttled in deep water. The Breslau clashed with Russian destroyers later in the morning, then took up a position ahead of the Russian squadron returning to the Crimea. She eventually broke contact after being fired on by Russian battleships off the Crimean coast.

  Luck so far had been with the Germ
ans, but that changed. The Goeben and Breslau met the afternoon of the 25th, the light cruiser continuing her cruise along the Anatolian coast while the battle cruiser steamed back to the Bosphorus. On the afternoon of the 26th, approximately one nautical mile from the outer buoy of the entrance to the Strait, the Goeben hit two of the newly laid mines and took on more than 600 tons of water.11 The torpedo bulkhead probably saved the ship, but as there was no dock large enough in Constantinople to take the ship, there was some question if she would be fully operational again during the war. The Germans solved the problem with their customary ingenuity and energy. Experts were sent out from Germany, two large metal cofferdams were built, and the leaks were sealed with concrete, which held firmly enough so that permanent repairs could be postponed for a number of years. After much hard work, the last of the repairs was completed by the beginning of May.12 The Germans also appear to have taken great pains to conceal the extent of the Goeben’s damage, which was not very evident to the naked eye. The ship was anchored in plain sight off Constantinople before repair in order to quell rumors, and on 28 January, although apparently not fully operational, she came out of the Bosphorus to cover the arrival of the Breslau and Hamadieh and to demonstrate her evident capability to the Russians, who were pursuing the cruisers after a sortie to the eastern Black Sea. Souchon sent the ship to sea again on 7 February in order to cover the return of the Breslau from a sortie to Batum and Yalta and to show herself once more before the major repairs began.13

  The pattern of war remained substantially the same in 1915. The new Russian minefield claimed a Turkish auxiliary minesweeper on 28 December, and on 2 January the Turkish torpedo gunboat Berk received damage that put her out of action for the remainder of the war. The Russian battle squadron made periodic sorties to the Anatolian coast to shell ports and operate against Turkish shipping. The extensive use of mines for defensive purposes in 1914, as well as the first fields off the Bosphorus, had exhausted the stock of Russian mines and consequently curtailed mining activity the following year. The German and Turkish cruisers escorted shipping and attacked the Russian coast, shelling ports and searching for Russian shipping. There were occasional clashes, such as on 6 January when the Hamidieh and Breslau unexpectedly ran into the Russian squadron off Yalta and the Breslau scored a hit on one of the Evstafi’s 305-mm gun turrets before escaping.

  The major threat to the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was undoubtedly the British and French expedition to the Dardanelles. The obvious question was, To what extent would or could the Russians assist from the Black Sea side? The Russians, as far as the British were concerned, had not displayed great enthusiasm. At the end of January, before Allied operations at the Dardanelles began, Grand Duke Nicholas, commander in chief of the Russian armies, replied to a request from Churchill for Russian naval cooperation at the mouth of the Bosphorus and preparations to land troops in case of favorable opportunities by stressing that the Russians were determined not to weaken their front against the Austrians and Germans. Grand Duke Nicholas emphasized the difficulties facing the Black Sea Fleet: the Russian dreadnoughts were not finished, and there were no modern submarines and only an insufficient number of fast modern destroyers. The Black Sea Fleet was no more than the equal of the Turkish fleet and that only when all ships were together. Russian ships could only carry coal for four days at sea, coaling at sea was impossible in bad weather, their nearest base was more than twenty-four hours from the entrance to the Bosphorus, and the Turkish batteries compared to the guns of the Russian ships “were such as to give little hope of a successful attack by the latter.” The Russians expected matters to improve once the first of the dreadnoughts entered service along with modern submarines and more destroyers, but this was not before May. Moreover, they considered a minimum of two army corps necessary for a successful landing, and these troops could not be withdrawn from the principal theater of the war. Otherwise, the Russians claimed to fully support the Allied expedition.14

  Despite the grand duke’s gloomy—or realistic—outlook, depending on one’s point of view, Russian general headquarters issued a directive at the moment the Allied bombardment of the outer forts at the Dardanelles began, ordering the Black Sea Fleet to cooperate by creating a diversion at the Bosphorus that, if the Allied operations were successful, might be extended by landing Russian troops. A few days later general headquarters cabled Ebergard that the operations of the Black Sea Fleet should be significant enough to ensure the Russians a major role at any peace talks and that all available resources should be used to develop operations on a large scale without placing the warships in immediate jeopardy. On 28 February Grand Duke Nicholas promised the British the Black Sea Fleet would attack Constantinople and an expeditionary force would be landed but that this would not take place until the British and French had broken through the Dardanelles and their fleets were before the Princess Islands in the Sea of Marmara.15

  The Russian force designated for the possible landing at the Bosphorus was the V Caucasian Corps, approximately 37,000 men with 60 guns. Russian general headquarters delayed the movement of troops from the Caucasus region after the failure of the Allied naval attack on 18 March, but on 6 April ordered the transfer of corps headquarters to Odessa and the movement of two brigades by rail to Sebastopol and the remainder of the corps by rail to Odessa. The Russians designated seven steamers to carry a first echelon of approximately 9,200 men. The staff of the transport flotilla conducted embarkation exercises at Odessa, which were apparently intended to be noticed by the Turks and to prevent the latter from shifting troops from the Bosphorus to the Dardanelles. Ebergard would have preferred a base closer to the Bosphorus, notably Bourgos in Bulgaria.16 However, Bulgaria was still neutral, and Bourgos was therefore out of the question.

  There is something of the Potemkin village about the V Caucasian Corps, that is, it appears designed more for show than reality. There was also some question if the force would have been large or powerful enough to succeed at the Bosphorus, and it was probably intended to step in and secure Russia’s claims to Constantinople should the Turks be defeated by the British and French at Gallipoli. The British were, in fact, ready to recognize future Russian control of Constantinople, but this would have been best assured by having a force ready to move immediately in fulfillment of the old adage that possession is nine-tenths of the law.17

  The more tangible Russian naval effort came on 7 March when the Russian squadron bombarded the coal facilities at Eregli and Zonguldak, sinking seven steamers and a large three-masted sailing vessel. From the 5th to the 8th of March, the new submarine Nerpa cruised off the Bosphorus. The patrol produced no results, but this was the first time the Russians were able to employ a boat capable of operating off the Strait. The diversion the Russians had promised at the Bosphorus took place on 28 March. The five battleships and two cruisers of the Russian squadron were escorted by ten destroyers, trawlers, and minelayers fitted with minesweeping equipment. The Russian force also included the seaplane carriers Almaz and Imperator Nikolai I. The former was an armed yacht, fitted with a boom, and capable of carrying four seaplanes; the latter one of two 9,240-ton liners purchased in Great Britain (the second was the Imperator Alexander I) before the war and fitted to carry seven to nine seaplanes. The battleships Rostislav and Tri Sviatitelia, preceded by the minesweepers and destroyers, closed the coast and bombarded the lighthouses at the entrance to the Strait while the seaplanes undertook a reconnaissance and bombed, ineffectually, a Turkish torpedo boat and the coastal batteries. The Russian destroyers forced a Turkish steamer to beach herself, but otherwise the bombardment appears to have had little effect.18 The Russians planned to repeat the bombardment the following day, but thick fog frustrated them, and after waiting vainly all day for the weather to improve, the squadron moved off in the evening to split into separate groups that bombarded Eregli, Kozlu, and Zonguldak the next day, sinking approximately eleven small sailing craft but otherwise, apparently, not causing much damage.

 
The Turks and Germans were not really worried about a Russian breakthrough at the Bosphorus. They were concerned about the British and French at the Dardanelles. Nevertheless, for psychological reasons and to demonstrate that the Goeben and Turkish fleet were capable of action, Souchon decided to strike at the collection of Russian transports reported at Odessa. The striking force, the cruisers Medjidieh and Hamidieh, accompanied by a half-flotilla of four torpedo boats fitted with minesweeping gear and commanded by Korvettenkapitän Büchsel of the Medjidieh, was to surprise the Russians in Odessa at dawn on the 3d. The Goeben and the Breslau were to be off Sebastopol to cover the operation. The operation failed when the Medjidieh was mined and sank in shallow water off Odessa on the morning of 3 April. The torpedo boats rescued the crew, and one torpedoed the Medjidieh in an attempt to completely destroy the wreck. This was not successful; the Russians raised the ship in June and towed the hulk to Nikolaev for repair. In October the captured Turkish cruiser entered Russian service as the Prut. The Goeben and Breslau sank two Russian steamers off the Crimea but found themselves pursued by the Russian squadron, which came out in an attempt to intercept the ships that had raided Odessa. The chase lasted all day, but the Russian battleships could not get within effective range. In the evening Russian destroyers attempted to get into position for a torpedo attack, but only the Gnevny managed to come within torpedo range, and the German and Turkish force was able to return to the Bosphorus without further loss.19