Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  The German Naval Staff analyzed the comparative technical deficiencies in their ships in the areas of speed, firing range, and gun caliber. As Beatty was overtaking him, Hipper had greatly envied the superior engine power of the British battle cruisers. There was no cure for this until new ships were built. Similarly, although the Germans professed to be satisfied with the performance of their smaller 11-inch and 12-inch guns, new ships under construction—the battleships Bayern and Baden, and the battle cruiser Hindenburg—would come to sea with 15-inch guns. There was, however, one deficiency that could be corrected before new ships were completed: the fact that at the Dogger Bank British guns could fire at longer range. Long ranges depended to a large extent on the elevation of the guns in the turrets. At the Dogger Bank, the Germans could not raise the muzzles of their gun barrels as high as the British could. To elevate the guns farther meant enlarging the opening of the gun embrasures and thereby increasing the risk of shell fragments and splinters coming into the turret. The British had done this. And, after the Dogger Bank, the Germans did so, too. Another unexpected problem was reported by Captain von Egidy of Seydlitz: “The consumption of ammunition surpassed anything that had been previously anticipated. During the two hours’ action, the ammunition in the two turrets in which fire was continuously maintained was shot away, leaving only sixty-five and twenty-five rounds respectively. The average time between salvos was 42.3 seconds. . . . The new ships will have to be provided with greatly increased space for ammunition storage.”

  The Germans learned one vital lesson from the battle. The near fatal damage to the Seydlitz turned out—despite the terrible casualties in the turret inferno—to have been a blessing, which eventually would give the German navy a huge material advantage over the British. Understanding of the flashlike qualities of an explosive fire, and the realization that a fire in the turret system must not be allowed to penetrate to the magazine, dawned quickly on those who stared at the burnt-out after turrets of Seydlitz lying in a Wilhelmshaven dry dock. To quote from Ingenohl’s report: “The working chamber is a danger to the entire turret. In all new construction it must be eliminated. Shell and cordite hoists must be equipped with doors which close automatically after the cages have passed. The charges must be delivered to the guns in flame-proof covering. The doors connecting the magazines to adjacent turrets must be secured with padlocks to prevent premature opening, the key must be in the custody of the turret officer and the order to open only given when all the turret’s ammunition has been fired.” The German navy moved quickly to implement these recommendations. Multiple, elaborate “antiflash” shutters were installed between turrets and magazines in all battle cruisers and battleships and the risk of fires spreading was reduced by limiting the amount of combustible reserve ammunition, particularly powder, held in turret handling rooms. Of these changes and the reason for them, the Royal Navy remained ignorant.

  There was one mystery that the Germans failed to solve. Hipper was alarmed by the implications of once again having sailed in secret and nevertheless encountering Beatty and Tyrwhitt directly in his path. Scheer also was concerned: “The unexpected presence of English ships . . . leads to the conclusion that the encounter was not a matter of chance and that our plan in some way or another had got to the knowledge of the English.” Ingenohl reported to the Naval Staff, “It must be considered a remarkable coincidence that our [battle] cruisers would encounter the enemy precisely at dawn. It appears as if the enemy had intelligence concerning the operation.” The Naval Staff reply was dismissive: “Not apparent by what means,” it minuted, although it recommended watchfulness against the activities of a British agent who was supposed to pass his messages through inconspicuous newspaper advertisements. No one asked how the agent could have communicated the Dogger Bank intelligence in this manner when the decision to go to sea and Hipper’s sole message to his captains occurred on the day the Scouting Groups sailed. Room 40 and its work remained a secret.

  The debacle demanded a culprit. Captain Hans Zenker, of the Naval Staff, had no doubt as to who this should be. “The blame . . . lies with the Commander-in-Chief [Ingenohl],” he wrote to his superior Admiral von Pohl on February 1. “Our previous advances to the English east coast have had such an effect on English public opinion that it should have been expected that strong forces would be in the North Sea. Also, from previous experience, it should have been no surprise that the enemy had warning of our sortie. Such lack of foresight and prudence is all the more astonishing and regrettable because the Commander-in-Chief had already been excused for the defeat on August 28 [the Battle of the Bight] and, in two opera-tions against the English east coast [Yarmouth and Scarborough], only luck enabled him to avoid painful consequences. The only way to avoid further disasters from such obstinate inflexibility is to change the Commander-in-Chief.”

  Ingenohl attempted to defend himself by telling the kaiser that an English battle cruiser had gone to the bottom along with Blücher. This failed to save him. On February 2, nine days after the battle, Ingenohl was relieved of command, along with his Chief of Staff, Vice Admiral Eckermann. The new Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet was none other than Admiral Hugo von Pohl, moved over from his post as Chief of the Naval Staff. Pohl, fifty-nine, a respected former battleship squadron commander, was described by a prewar British naval attaché in Berlin as “short and square built, but slim. Has the reputation of being a good seaman. Gives impression of ability, quickness of decision and force of character. . . . He won’t enthuse people at all [but he is] . . . a man . . . with a good knowledge of his profession. He does not look healthy.” Pohl was a better naval tactician than Ingenohl, but it scarcely mattered; like his predecessor, he was never allowed to prove his merit in battle. The real culprit in the defeat at the Dogger Bank was Kaiser William, who continued to demand that the fleet be preserved and that its commanders avoid battle with superior force. William tightened these restrictions when he appointed Pohl. All sorties by Hipper’s battle cruisers were forbidden and for over a year German capital ships did not venture into the North Sea. As Churchill wrote, “Apart from submarine warfare, a period of fifteen months halcyon calm reigned over the North Sea. The neutral world accepted . . . [this] as decisive proof of British supremacy at sea.”

  After the Battle of the Dogger Bank and the consequent shackling of German dreadnoughts to their harbor buoys, different paths opened before the two opposing navies. The German Naval Staff turned to U-boat warfare and initiated a submarine campaign against merchant shipping, Allied and neutral, sailing to Allied ports. In Britain, the public was temporarily satisfied with the navy. The National Review saw in the restriction of “the second navy in the world to the mud banks of the Elbe . . . as supreme an exhibition of superior sea power as the world has witnessed.” But this was not the mood at the Admiralty, where restless spirits wanted a more vigorous and imaginative employment of the navy’s resources. Even before the Battle of the Dogger Bank, discussions were under way about the use of British sea power in offensive operations far from the North Sea.

  CHAPTER 23 “A Demonstration at the Dardanelles”

  For three thousand years in history and legend, the Straits of the Dardanelles, flowing for forty miles like a wide river between the hills of Europe and the plains of Asia Minor, have been a stage for courage and tragedy. Four miles from the southern entrance to the Straits stood the ancient city of Troy. At the Narrows—the classical Hellespont, where the Straits are less than a mile across—Xerxes led an army across on bridges of boats.

  [Herodotus implausibly estimated Xerxes’ force at 5,283,320 men.]

  Here the mythical Leander swam the Hellespont at night to visit his lover, the virgin princess Hero, before, eventually, both were drowned. Here, in 1810, the Romantic poet Lord Byron swam the stream in emulation of the lovers. And here, in the early years of the Great War, occurred an effort to bring to fruition that war’s only truly innovative strategy: an attempt, first by sea and then by land, to pierc
e and break down the barriers separating Russia from her allies and in so doing possibly to shorten the war.

  The Dardanelles are a water passageway from the Mediterranean Sea and the Aegean to the Sea of Marmara. The mouth of the channel at Cape Helles on the Aegean is two miles wide, but once inside the Straits, the shoreline on either side opens out to a width of four and a half miles, then gradually comes together again at the Narrows, fourteen miles upstream. Above the Narrows, the passage widens again to an average of four miles until, twenty-six miles later, it reaches the Sea of Marmara. The water in the Straits is deep, up to 300 feet at the Narrows. Steep cliffs line the northern side, the shore of the Gallipoli peninsula; across, in Asia, where the Trojan plain reaches down to the island of Tenedos, the shoreline is low and the bottom is shallow. There is no tide in the Dardanelles, but water flowing from the Black Sea rivers and from the melting snows of the Caucasus Mountains creates a permanent current of 2 to 4 knots.

  Three connected bodies of water—the Dardanelles, the Sea of Marmara, and the Bosporus—together make up one of the most important water passageways in the world. Linked, they form the only entrance to and exit from the Black Sea; they are a highway for all trade coming from the Danube, the Dniester, the Dnieper, and the Don and the great ports of Constantinople, Odessa, and Sebastopol. In 1914, an endless flow of steamships carried nine-tenths of Russia’s exported grain through the Dardanelles. Control of this channel meant control of Russia’s lifeline to the sea, to the West, to her allies. Because the Dardanelles were a Turkish waterway, Germany, Turkey’s ally, meant to block them and thereby to isolate and strangle the empire of the tsars.

  Since September 21, the Allied watchdog at the Aegean end of this critical waterway had been Vice Admiral Sackville Hamilton Carden, commander of the British East Mediterranean Squadron. Carden, a gray-bearded, fifty-seven-year-old, Anglo-Irish officer, had held this responsibility since the unlucky Rear Admiral Troubridge had been summoned home to face the inquiry into his role in the escape of Goeben. When this happened, Carden was occupying the position of admiral superintendent of the Malta dockyard, the final, preretirement posting of an average, undistinguished career. Certainly, Carden had never expected to command at sea again, much less be confronted with challenges of the most demanding naval and military importance. Then lightning struck, Troubridge vanished, and Carden, the only British vice admiral in the Mediterranean, found himself plucked from Malta and spirited away to command the squadron bottling up Goeben. Logically, this assignment should have gone to Rear Admiral Henry Limpus, who, as head of the British naval mission to Turkey, was thoroughly familiar with the Turkish government, its military and naval figures, and—of greatest immediate relevance—the defenses of the Dardanelles. Limpus was not appointed because of a delicately balanced calculation by the Foreign Office. By September 9, although the German admiral Wilhelm Souchon had become commander of the Ottoman navy and the German general Otto Liman von Sanders, the head of the German military mission, was virtual commander of the Turkish army, Turkey still remained neutral. Sir Edward Grey hoped that this neutrality could be preserved. At so uncertain a moment, it seemed to Grey that the sending of a British officer who knew most of Turkey’s secrets to command a squadron off the Dardanelles might sufficiently offend the Turks as to tip the scales toward war. Thus, Limpus was sent to the Malta dockyard and Carden was brought to the fleet. This minuet of admirals enraged Churchill, who called it “a chivalry which surely outstripped common sense.” Writing to Grey, he complained, “It now appears that Turkey can not only injure our whole naval position by a flagrant breach of neutrality about Goeben, but also is to have a veto over Admiralty appointments. . . . If [Sir Louis] Mallet [the British ambassador to Turkey] thinks he is dealing with a government amenable to argument, persuasion and proof of good faith, he is dreaming. . . . Nothing appeals to the Turkish government but force.” Fisher was appalled. “Who expected Carden to be in command of a big fleet?” he wrote to Jellicoe. “He was made Admiral Superintendant at Malta to shelve him.” Nevertheless, Carden was appointed and given the same belligerent instructions previously issued to Troubridge: “[Your] sole duty is to sink Goeben and Breslau, no matter what flag they fly, if they come out of the Dardanelles.”

  To carry out his task, Carden had his flagship, the battle cruiser Indefatigable; her sister Indomitable; two old French battleships, Suffren and Vérité; the light cruisers Dublin and Gloucester; twelve destroyers; and three British and three French submarines. For a week after the new admiral’s arrival, the squadron patrolled peacefully, watching over the stream of Russian merchant ships still passing in and out of the Straits. At German insistence, the Turks had laid mines across the Narrows, but a small channel had been left open and the ships, after taking on a special pilot, continued to steam through unmolested. Then, on September 27, Carden’s squadron stopped and boarded a Turkish destroyer coming out of the Dardanelles. German sailors were found on board, a violation of Turkish neutrality, and the ship was turned back. Immediately, without consulting the Turks, the German colonel commanding the forts at the Narrows ordered the waterway closed. All lighthouses were darkened, large signs were erected on the cliffs announcing that the Straits were sealed, and the minefields were extended across the Straits. Thereafter, despite international treaty obligations guaranteeing free passage of the Straits by all nations not at war with Turkey, the Dardanelles were closed. British military supplies could no longer reach Russia except through Archangel on the White Sea; Russian wheat, upon which the Tsar’s empire depended for most of its foreign income, could no longer be exported. Hundreds of ships from Russia, Rumania, and Bulgaria, loaded with grain, lumber, and other products, clogged the harbor at Constantinople. Unable to find docking space, they anchored, their dense forest of masts and smokestacks swinging in unison on the stream.

  The flow of merchant shipping had been cut, but for another month, Carden and his squadron continued to patrol the mouth of the Straits in peace. Then, on October 29, without awaiting a declaration of war, Admiral Souchon took Goeben and Breslau, both flying the Turkish flag, across the Black Sea and bombarded southern Russian ports. Britain, responding to this attack on her ally, dispatched an ultimatum to Turkey demanding removal of all German personnel from Goeben and Breslau within twelve hours. The British ultimatum expired at noon on October 31, and that afternoon Turkey declared war. Although Britain’s retaliatory declaration waited until November 5, Churchill wanted an immediate demonstration of British displeasure. On November 3, Carden’s two battle cruisers and the two French battleships bombarded the outer forts, on either side of the entrance to the Dardanelles. The bombardment was not part of any well-considered plan; rather, it was simply an expression of Churchill’s belief, as he expressed it to Fisher, that “it is a good thing to give a prompt blow.”

  The action lasted twenty minutes. Indomitable and Indefatigable fired from 13,000 yards at Fort Sedd el Bahr on the European side while the two French battleships attacked the Kum Kale forts on the Asian side. The European forts remained silent throughout the bombardment, as the British ships were out of range, but a large magazine explosion in one of the Sedd el Bahr bastions killed five officers and sixty-one men and produced a column of gray smoke that rose an impressive 500 feet in the air. The French had less success. Because their ships were older and their guns had shorter range, they were forced to come in closer to Kum Kale. They were fired upon, at first slowly and inaccurately, but before they withdrew, shells were falling close to the ships. Overall for Carden, the day’s lesson seemed positive. The admiral was encouraged to believe that by repeating and prolonging the bombardment, he could methodically destroy the outer forts, then move on and apply the same treatment to the intermediate and Narrows forts. And once the Turkish forts and guns had been blasted into silence, he could—if he wished and was so instructed—lead a British fleet into the Sea of Marmara.

  This brief November encounter, while encouraging Carden and the Admiralty, a
lso served to warn the Turks and Germans that the Straits’ defenses needed strengthening. No new heavy guns could be procured and installed at short notice, but the fortress batteries were linked by telephones, range finders were set up, and range buoys laid in the water for better targeting. Mobile, quick-firing howitzers were brought from Adrianople to the Dardanelles and placed in concealed positions along the European and Asian shores. The number and power of searchlights along the waterway were increased. More German artillery officers and trained gun crews arrived. And the minefield was doubled, with eleven rather than five lines of mines stretching across the waterway.

  While his enemies bolstered their defenses, Admiral Carden and his squadron, following their brief November exertions, lapsed into a three-month interlude of calm. Indomitable and Indefatigable were called home to England, and Inflexible, returning from the Falklands, replaced her two sisters at the Dardanelles. One exception to the general apathy occurred on December 13. Carden’s officers, watching the Turks at the Narrows through field glasses from the entrance, could see Turkish ships and boats moving freely. The British submarine B-11, manned by two officers and eleven seamen, was dispatched to make trouble. Diving to eighty feet beneath the minefields and applying her submerged speed of 4 knots against a current in the Straits of 3 knots, the submarine proceeded laboriously up the northern shore to a point just below the Narrows. There, her raised periscope revealed a two-funneled gray warship lying at anchor. This was the 10,000-ton Turkish battleship Messudieh, built in 1874, rebuilt in 1902, now carrying two 9.2-inch and twelve 6-inch guns, and stationed below the Narrows to help protect the minefields. The old battleship had no chance; B-11 fired one torpedo from 600 yards, dived, and felt the shock of the powerful explosion that meant the end of Messudieh. Subsequently, every member of B-11’s crew received a medal and her captain, Lieutenant Norman Holbrook, was awarded the Victoria Cross.