The SMS Goeben and the
Great War on the Black Sea

Black Sea Fleet After Tsar Nicholas II

by Michael Bennighof


The entire situation changed in March, 1917, when Tsar Nicholas II abdicated to be replaced by a Provisional Government determined to carry on the war. While the end of Romanov rule caused restless agitation in the Baltic Fleet, it was a different story in the Black Sea.

"In the Black Sea Fleet the news of these events made no particular impression, possibly because we received them after a long delay ..." Kolchak told his interrogators shortly before his 1920 execution. "It was merely rumored that there had been disorders in the Baltic Fleet, that (fleet commander) Nepenin and other officers had been murdered."

Kolchak gave permission for revolutionary committee meetings ashore, and his sailors apparently obeyed his summons to return from them whenever needed for missions.

"It went on this way for the first few weeks, so long as nobody came to us from the outside and we were left to ourselves," Kolchak testified. "Then all sorts of deputations from the Baltic Fleet began to visit us. .... There appeared the first sign of disintegration, which made rapid headway among the crews ... I was extremely worried by the tendency and course adopted by the Black Sea Fleet under the influence of treason, propaganda and the appearance of unknown persons."

These "unknown persons" seem to have had great success, though the British liaison officer to the Russian Black Sea Fleet blamed Kolchak's officers for the discipline problems.

"I myself have noticed that there is no sympathy between officers and men," he reported to the Admiralty, "that out of routine the officers take no interest in their men. No attempt to institute games to occupy their spare time. ... Officers proceed on shore as quick as they can and their chief occupation is wine and the courting of women."

Not only wine limited the officers' effectiveness, a senior British engineer reported after an inspection tour of ships' engines.

"Another example of the criminal indifference with which the officers treat the men is that a lot of their business is transacted in the cafes," William Heep wrote after the war's end. "I have seen ... a party of officers and their womenfolk sitting down to a luxurious meal and in will come a down-at-heel orderly and deliver a message. He will stand rigidly behind the officer concerned until he is dismissed and then, with his humiliating salute, about turn and away. I know what I should think on one meal a day.

"After the coffee and cigarettes, generally from the ladies will come the inevitable tube of cocaine. One hand from each will go on the table and round will go the cocaine. When it is all served out everyone will sniff it up, something after the manner of a toast. .. Cocaine drugging is very prevalent with the upper classes and prostitutes throughout the Crimea and is very easy to obtain, apparently no strict observation being placed upon it."

Kolchak administered the Provisional Government's oath of loyalty to his men, and had the inscription "God Save the Tsar" removed from Sevastopol harbor. The admiral's attempts to maintain offensive missions were far less popular with the rank and file, and by June the Black Sea sailors' soviet, Tsentroflot, finally got him removed from command. Bitter over his dismissal, he resurfaced a few years later as leader of one of the White factions in the Russian Civil War.

A new regime brought a series of new ship names. Tsarist names were tossed out in favor of more revolutionary or egalitarian ideals. Imperatritsa Ekaterina II became Svobodnaya Rossiya ("Free Russia"); the newly-commissioned dreadnought Imperator Alexander III was rechristened Volya ("Freedom;" contrary to our former president's inane ramblings, the Russian language has several perfectly good words for freedom); Pantelimon (the former Potemkin) became Boretz za Svobodu ("Standard Bearer of Freedom").

Only a few actions took place between Kolchak's firing and the Bolshevik revolution in November. Both sides remained relatively idle, losing the fine edge of each had shown in the war's early years. In September, Souchon left for the North Sea and command of the High Seas Fleet's IV Battle Squadron. His replacement, Vice Admiral Hubert von Rebeur-Paschwitz, decided on a sortie into the Aegean to restore his crews' confidence and relieve some of the pressure on the Turks in Palestine.

Issuing out of the straits with both German ships and several Turkish destroyers in January, 1918, he surprised the British and shot up the monitors Raglan and M28. Moving on to attack the British base at Mudros, the Breslau strayed into a minefield. Five mines went off under and around the cruiser, sending her to the bottom in about thirty minutes.

Moving to assist her stricken consort, Goeben suffered a mine explosion under her stern, followed by another which gave her a serious list to port. Turning back for the Dardanelles, she struck another on the starboard side, which evened the list but caused her to settle dangerously low in the water. Maneuvering slowly up the Dardanelles to avoid Turkish minefields, the battle cruiser became firmly stuck in a sandbank.

British air and submarine attacks were driven off, but the Germans had little success in freeing the ship. The Torgud Reis came down from Constantinople, but could not manage to pull her free. Finally, the older battleship was brought alongside the Goeben and lashed firmly to the battle cruiser. Running her engines at full speed, the Torgud Reis managed to stir up enough sand to allow the Goeben to slip free.

Goeben limped back into the Golden Horn, leaving the Germans with a serious problem. Souchon's coffer dams would not help with the far greater damage suffered this time. In May, German and Austrian troops captured the Crimea and Sevastopol with the assistance of the Austrian Danube Flotilla's shallow-draft armored monitors. The Goeben moved across the Black Sea for a refit in the well-equipped former Russian naval base but had to leave before all the work could be completed when a new attack on the Dardanelles seemed imminent.

Before the Germans arrived Russian Admiral N.P. Sablin had slipped out of Sevastopol for Novorossisk with the two remaining dreadnoughts, 10 modern destroyers and some smaller craft. This force was still more powerful than anything the Germans and Turks could send against it, even with the capture of the loann Zlatoust and Evstafi, which refused to follow Sablin's orders after their crews hoisted the Ukraine's blue and yellow banner. The new dreadnought Demokratiya, the former Imperator Nikolai I, had been seized by the Germans at Nikolayev in February but remained far from completion.

Arguments over the Russian fleet's postwar fate began even before the ships had been secured. Dockyard workers in Sevastopol were reluctant to serve the new occupiers, and none of the captured ships were ready for sea. Several plans came from various German ministries, plus the Austrians, Bulgarians and Turks, but the German army had control of the ships at Sevastopol and would disperse them as it saw fit.

In June, 1918, the Volya and five destroyers, their crews choosing to follow instructions from the Ukrainian Central Rada (government council), returned to Sevastopol. Her sister ship's crew also wished to return, but radical sailors on the destroyer Kerch torpedoed and sank the Svobodnaya Rossiya before scuttling their own ship.

Crew shortages and an attack of Kafkaesque legalism delayed actual takeover of the ships until October, annoying the Turks, who wished to bring them to the Dardanelles as quickly as possible. The Volya finally sailed under the German flag in October 15 for a short test, but Turkey would not last out the month. An armistice went into effect on October 30.

The German naval high command overruled Rebeur-Paschwitz's desire to abandon the battle cruiser - now suffering open leaks - hoist his flag on the Volya (retaining her revolutionary Russian name in German service) and continue the war on the Black Sea. Instead, Goeben's crew handed her over to the Turks three days later and left for Germany.

As the Yavuz, the battle cruiser continued active service well the Yavuz, the battle cruiser continued active service well until 1948, though remaining inactive for long stretches. Despite determined efforts by German naval societies, museums and the West German government to purchase her as a memorial, the Turkish government rejected all such bids and sent the last battle cruiser to the scrapper's yard in 1971.

The SMS Goeben and the Great War on the Black Sea

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