The Admiralty in Berlin signalled to Souchon on 14 August: ‘Concur proposal undertake operation [in] Black Sea [with] agreement or against the will of Turkey’ [author’s emphasis]. But the admiral was also urged to co-operate with Wangenheim, and to wait until Turkish mobilisation was further advanced. Souchon’s military opposite number, General Otto Liman von Sanders, was no less impatient as he struggled to galvanise the Ottoman Army. Its condition initially left nearly as much to be desired as that of the Turkish fleet, which had been allowed to rot for more than 20 years. The British naval mission had made little progress beyond securing the abortive orders for two dreadnoughts, and Souchon was determined that its German replacement would get to grips with the derelict condition of most of the fleet. He returned to his flagship on the 15th.
On 16 August – the same day as an alarmed Russia offered a disdainful and increasingly confident Enver a defensive military alliance – the British mission members were expelled from the Turkish fleet while the Goeben and Breslau sailed for Constantinople. On the way the names Sultan Yavuz Selim and Midilli were painted on their respective sterns, the Turkish flag was hoisted (though the German command pennants remained in place) and the crews exchanged their floppy, beribboned, dark-blue sailors’ caps for red fezes. Anchored at the southern end of the Bosporus, off the Golden Horn, the gleaming German ships were cheered by Turkish crowds lining the shore as Jemal Pasha formally appointed Souchon commander-in-chief of the Ottoman fleet on the deck of the Goeben/Yavuz in a ceremony complete with brass band. Souchon took the salute when such Turkish warships as were sufficiently presentable (and mobile) passed in review. He was then conveyed ashore for an audience with the Sultan at the vast and ornate Dolmabahçe Palace on the shore of the Bosporus. His fleet sailed back to the Sea of Marmara and dropped anchor in Tuzla Bay: the two German ships, two old Turkish battleships and eight destroyers. Souchon soon rejoined them and reflected on the magnitude of his task; but he had at least been able to fulfil the first part of his orders, to proceed to Constantinople. It had taken less than a fortnight. The admiral now bent his formidable energy and organising ability to the task of fulfilling the second part, the bearding of Russia.
On 18 August Admiral Limpus of the unwanted British naval mission visited Enver with a friendly message from Churchill, who as noted had met the War Minister several times. He apologised for the ‘unavoidable’ sequestration of the two dreadnoughts, promised full compensation and offered to release them to Turkey after the war. Limpus advised Enver to send the German sailors and military advisers home, warning of disaster for Turkey if they were not and recommending a continuation of the stated policy of neutrality. Enver rejected this advice, even though there was still stiff resistance in the Cabinet to the German connection and to active participation in the war. German naval officers and ratings poured into Constantinople by train, munitions and other supplies came by rail and by barge down the Danube and along the Black Sea coast into the Bosporus; all protests from the Allies were ignored, even when some German sailors openly travelled in uniform, in flagrant breach of international law.
His Britannic Majesty’s Mediterranean Fleet was now assembled in considerable strength outside the Dardanelles: the three battlecruisers, four light cruisers and smaller vessels. In the early hours of 13 August, Admiral Milne was told, correctly this time, that Britain had been at war with Austria since the previous day. He was ordered to sail back to Malta with the bulk of his ships, to lay down his command and return to Britain, where inquiries were already under way into the acutely embarrassing failure to stop the Germans reaching the Dardanelles. Outside the gates the battle-cruisers Indefatigable and Indomitable and the gallant light cruiser Gloucester, a force large enough to outgun the vanished Germans should they come out, remained on guard, temporarily under the flag of Rear-Admiral Troubridge, pending a decision by London on what to do next.
Milne was replaced in the command of the Mediterranean Fleet, with singular lack of imagination, by Vice-Admiral Sir Sackville Carden, the lacklustre erstwhile admiral-superintendent at Malta, who relieved Troubridge off the Dardanelles. Carden was replaced in the deskbound command at Malta by Rear-Admiral Limpus, the former head of the British naval mission and thus the man on the British side with by far the most detailed knowledge of Turkish naval dispositions and facilities. But the Foreign Office, on the advice of Sir Louis Mallet, ambassador to Turkey, developed the remarkable view that appointing Limpus as commander of the force at the Dardanelles would offend the Turks. Of course Mallet had as yet no knowledge of the Turco-German alliance and still hoped Turkey would remain neutral.
There was little activity off the Dardanelles during September 1914 as various units of the British Mediterranean Fleet, and later also of the French Navy, kept watch. But on the 26th a Turkish torpedo-boat emerged into the Aegean, like a rabbit taking a peek from its warren at the waiting foxes. A party of British sailors and marines boarded the little warship from a destroyer – and found a few Germans among the crew. The British therefore did not hesitate to order the ship to put about and go back into the strait. The German General Weber Pasha, ‘adviser’ to the Turkish General Staff on the defence of the entrance forts, did not hesitate either. On his own authority, without even informing his Turkish allies in advance, he took the momentous decision to close the Dardanelles. Extra mines were soon laid under the tutelage of the German Vice-Admiral Usedom (sent to stiffen the defences at Souchon’s request) in the approaches to the Narrows, the lighthouses were extinguished and the strategic waterway, to which free access had been guaranteed by several international treaties, was blocked. Scores of Russian grain-ships queued in vain in an unprecedented maritime traffic-jam to get out, but eventually had to return home. Nearly all Russian exports and imports were cut off, terminating the possibility of trading grain for munitions from Britain and France and thus grievously undermining both Allied strategy and the Russian war effort.
The British were soon forced to rely on food imported from North America. This recourse opened up their transatlantic shipping to the eventually catastrophic depredations of the German U-boat campaign, which came closest of all factors to knocking the United Kingdom out of the war. The closure of the Dardanelles amounted to an inverted blockade: the Allied naval forces waiting outside were not conducting such a procedure against officially neutral Turkey but were notionally watching for the enemy German ships to come out. They were legally entitled to stop and search a warship in case it was carrying enemy German sailors, just as they would have been entitled to stop a merchant ship carrying supplies meant for the Germans, in order to prevent their delivery. But when the Turks accepted Weber’s action, it was as if they also accepted that they would soon be under siege and might as well raise the drawbridge in their own time before the inevitable attack came.
The dread consequences of the Turco-German treaty and the arrival of the Mediterranean Division eight days later were not so obvious at the time. The closure was an act of war by, or on behalf of, a supposedly neutral power, but the British and French, their attention naturally focused on the burgeoning impasse on the Western Front, showed little immediate inclination to do anything about it. There was as little activity in the Aegean for the whole of October as there had been for most of September and indeed since Souchon’s arrival. It was a different story in the Sea of Marmara, the Black Sea and the Bosporus strait which links them.
The impatient Souchon had been pressing the Turks for permission to exercise in the Black Sea since early September; this was reluctantly granted in mid-month, initially for two ships at a time, excluding the ‘purchased’ German pair for the time being. At this point, on 16 September, Admiral Limpus took his rejected men out of Constantinople and sailed away to Malta. Enver and his political supporters told Souchon there were to be no naval ‘demonstrations’ off the coasts of Bulgaria and Romania for fear of causing unnecessary alarm. Once General Weber had closed the Dardanelles on the 26th, events in the Turkish fleet gather
ed pace. On 3 October Souchon sent the Goeben and Breslau into the Black Sea for the first time, to exercise with two Turkish battleships. On the 8th Breslau was sent there again to scout for the Russian Black Sea Fleet, which however the Russians had prudently confined to port in their main base of Sevastopol, to avoid provoking the Turks. On the 12th Souchon risked sending his entire serviceable fleet into the Black Sea on manoeuvres, receiving a metaphorical slap on the wrist from a complaisant Enver.
German and Turkish naval staff were hard at work on operational plans and orders. A German ‘soft loan’ at this juncture helped to underpin a nascent pro-war majority in both the CUP leadership and the Cabinet: the Turks were now confident enough to demand, from all the warring powers, an end to the demeaning ‘capitulations’ conferring extra-territorial status on privileged foreigners. The Entente powers were no less keen than the Central powers to comply.
Although the anti-war faction was slowly dwindling, Enver felt from about the middle of October that in the absence of a smashing new triumph on the part of the Germans and their allies and/or a decisive step by Turkey, the rising tide of support for war would peak and begin to ebb. On 22 October he drew up a plan for Turkish intervention in the war and put it up to the German General Staff for comment: it included a move to seize the initiative in the Black Sea complete with military moves against Russia, against Britain in Egypt and in the Balkans, depending on developments there. The General Staff approved and politely looked forward to early delivery. Two days later Enver personally presented Souchon with his orders to enter the Black Sea in strength, attack the Russian coast and seize maritime supremacy, whenever he was ready. Individual orders went to Turkish naval officers to follow the German admiral’s instructions.
On 26 October Souchon signalled to Berlin that he was ‘entering Black Sea with fleet under guise of fleet exercise, with intent to attack …’. The next day a Turkish fleet entered the Black Sea from the Bosporus intent on war for the first time in 36 years. The ships, including Yavuz and Midilli, both sporting the red and white Ottoman flag, formed groups to bombard four Russian naval bases – Sevastopol, Odessa, Feodosia and Novorossiysk – and to lay mines along the Russian Black Sea coast. Souchon ended his fleet order with the pseudo-Nelsonian envoi, also hoisted in flag form on the Goeben/Yavuz as she turned away for Sevastopol: ‘Do your utmost: the future of Turkey is at stake.’ Never was truer word spoken.
The fleet command allowed the whole of 28 October for preparation, rehearsal, final training and detailed orders to the crews, and for the task groups assigned to each target to get into position for the concerted series of attacks at dawn on Thursday 29 October. The pair of torpedo-boats assigned to shell Odessa, displacing a mere 160 tonnes each, jumped the gun in the most literal sense by opening fire early. Panicky wireless messages in plain language were quickly broadcast from Odessa, alerting all Russian naval stations in the Black Sea: ‘War has begun … war has begun …’
Soon afterwards a Turkish gunboat appeared off Novorossiysk on the north-east coast of the Black Sea, east of the Crimean peninsula, under a white flag. A cutter brought a Turkish officer ashore with a warning: the port’s oil tanks and corn silos, and ships in harbour, would come under shellfire in four hours’ time. This gesture was made in order to enable the authorities to evacuate civilians. At 10.50 a.m. the modern, four-funnelled light cruiser Midilli duly appeared and fired no fewer than 308 rounds of ten-centimetre ammunition at Novorossiysk in salvo after salvo. The oil tanks blazed fiercely, sending streams of burning fuel downhill into the town and forcing people to flee for their lives; 14 ships were sunk or damaged. A vast pall of smoke hung over the harbour like a funeral pyre. A Turkish cruiser appeared off Feodosia and also delivered a warning, well before opening fire on the town.
Alerted by the wireless warnings from Odessa, the forts of Sevastopol opened a fierce shellfire as soon as the long grey shape of the Goeben with her five gun turrets, each showing two long 28-centimetre guns, appeared in the light haze about four miles offshore as the sun came up at about 6.30. She was accompanied by two small Turkish escorts. The whole city shook to the tremors from the defensive barrage. Considering that the coastal artillery had not fired a shot in anger in 60 years, the Russian gunners performed well, even though much of their ammunition fell short. Some of it did not: the attacking trio were seen to move backwards and forwards in an attempt to put them off their aim. Two ten-inch shells passed through the Goeben’s after-funnel, her wireless antennae were damaged, a searchlight destroyed and a boiler-room was also hit. One of the flagship’s treacherous boilers failed. Only 47 rounds of 28-centimetre shells were fired, along with a dozen shots from the battlecruiser’s secondary 15-centimetre armament – a light barrage that could only have been a tribute to the spirit of the defenders (and quite possibly evidence of a shortage of German 28-centimetre shells). Little damage was done to the city, and unaccountably no Turkish or German shell came near the bulk of the Black Sea Fleet moored in harbour.
On the way back to the Bosporus, the flagship came across a Russian steamer which had been converted into a minelayer – the Prut. Captain Ackermann signalled her to stop, lower her lifeboats and abandon ship. He then ordered her sunk by gunfire, sending her with her 700 mines to the bottom. Some of the crew, including the captain, were taken prisoner, the rest allowed to row to safety. A Russian Orthodox naval chaplain refused to leave the doomed ship, standing at the stern by the Russian flag, beard flowing in the breeze, with a holy book in one hand and crossing himself with the other: he went down with the blazing wreck. Shortly afterwards three small but modern and fast Russian destroyers tried a torpedo attack, which took more than 130 rounds of 15-centimetre shell to drive off. A Russian collier was also seized. Mines were laid by the attackers in several parts of the northern Black Sea, including the Kerch Channel leading to the Sea of Azov (by the Midilli) and off Sevastopol. The mines would soon claim victims. The Turkish warships also sank a Russian gunboat and three steamships.
Inevitably, as a result of all this unprovoked aggression, Russia declared war on Turkey. The other members of the Triple Entente, Britain and France, followed suit. Rear-Admiral Wilhelm Souchon of the Imperial German Navy was now fully entitled to say: ‘Mission accomplished.’
CHAPTER 4
Councils of War
The first three months of war in Europe had already thrown up a series of spectacular events from which only one clear conclusion could be drawn: the war could not ‘be over by Christmas’ and might well last very much longer. The Germans, having decided to knock out France, Russia’s ally, so that they could deal with Russia herself, the main enemy, at their leisure, violated Belgium’s internationally guaranteed neutrality in strength on 3 August in order to outflank the French Army, thus ensuring that Britain would enter the war on France’s side, in defence of Belgium. This heavily weighted right hook was intended to swing round the French armies positioned close to the German border and take Paris – the Schlieffen Plan. The Germans also brought up formidable siege artillery, including their new heavy howitzers, against the Belgian fortress complex centred on Liège, which fell on 17 August, opening the way for the main attack on France.
The British Expeditionary Force (BEF), initially of just four divisions, was safely transported across the Channel to take up its place, as agreed in pre-war staff talks, on the French left – just in time to be attacked by the German First Army at Mons in Belgium. The Allied left wing conducted a fighting retreat that lasted for two weeks until French reinforcements arrived from further east and the German advance was halted at the Battle of the Marne in the early days of September. The Germans fell back on the River Aisne, broadly the line they were to hold, with only minor adjustments, for the next four years.
The Belgian Army was dug in at the western end of its exiguous national territory and the BEF, augmented to six divisions, moved up alongside on its right. The Germans, trying to rescue the Schlieffen Plan that had been botched by their own genera
ls and halted at the Marne, threw fresh troops into the right of their line and launched a fierce new outflanking attempt, which became the First Battle of Ypres, on 30 October. After enormous losses they fell back on 11 November, frustrated by the machine-guns and unmatched musketry of the flower of the British regular army, which also suffered heavy casualties. The German strategy of a breakthrough on their right was permanently frustrated, but the Germans did capture the main Belgian ports, including Antwerp and Zeebrugge – a headache for the Royal Navy when German light naval forces, including U-boats, began to operate from them.
In mid-August Winston Churchill, who wanted, and sometimes seemed to manage, to be ‘everywhere at once’ (he had, for instance, gone far outside his naval brief to persuade Kitchener in the first hours of the war not to return to his command in Egypt and then persuaded Prime Minister Asquith to make him Secretary of State for War), had used spare naval manpower to form a Royal Naval Division (RND), initially of 8,000 men who had volunteered for service at sea. When the Germans laid siege to Antwerp on 26 September, once again deploying their giant howitzers, the First Lord of the Admiralty volunteered to lead the fight for the great port on the Scheldt when it appeared about to fall. This offer, regarded as ‘mad’ by his political and naval contemporaries, was not taken up, but he did throw in the half-trained RND to support the hard-fought defence of the city (BEF units arrived too late to save it). He also made a brief visit to the front there. Some 1,500 RND men were interned in neutral Holland while nearly 1,000 surrendered. Antwerp fell on 10 October. Perhaps the strongest impression Churchill carried away from the lost battle was the awesome power of the German heavy siege-guns. They certainly worked in Flanders …
The Dandarnelles Disaster Page 8