A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  In July 1916 Lieutenant General Sir Stanley Maude was appointed to command the Tigris corps and in August became commander in chief of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force. The government at first warned Maude in September that he could expect no reinforcements and that a renewed advance on Baghdad was not immediately contemplated. He was to maintain British control of the Basra vilayet.73 Maude’s initial objectives were limited: he intended to secure a position on the Hai River at Kut. On 12 December he began his offensive. The British logistical buildup included quantities of ammunition and howitzers and medium-caliber guns that gave the British artillery a preponderance effective against the Turkish trenches. The British advance was slow but steady, and by 24 February 1917 they had broken through the Turkish positions and the gunboats were able to anchor off the deserted and ruined Kut. The Russians had also undertaken an offensive in the Caucasus, and to allay any danger the Russian army might reach Baghdad, the government was now anxious for Maude to take the city.

  The advance gave the river flotilla another opportunity. During the long lull following the fall of Kut the preceding April, the vessels had been distributed up and down the Tigris and Euphrates, guarding the lines of communications against raids. Nunn now had the three 6-inch gun gunboats, the Mantis, Tarantula, and Moth, as well as three of the smaller Fly-class. He asked for and received Maude’s permission to cooperate in the pursuit, and once again the flotilla had the opportunity to act like cavalry. On the afternoon of the 26th, brushing past Turkish stragglers, the gunboats caught sight of the retreating Turkish river flotilla after passing Bughaila. Nunn ran into the Turkish rear guard at the Nahr al Kalek bend, and steaming full ahead through the hairpin turn the river made here, the Tarantula (SNO), Mantis, and Moth ran the gauntlet of heavy fire from Turkish artillery, machine guns, and rifles coming from three sides at ranges of only four to five hundred yards. They suffered heavy casualties but kept going, and in fact really could not retreat. The Moth was hit eight times by artillery fire and had four out of five officers and half her ship’s company killed or wounded. Nunn wisely sent a message by wireless for the smaller, less-protected and much slower Gadfly not to follow them around the bend. Once clear of the Turkish rear guard, the gunboats were able to spread confusion among the main body of the retreating Turkish army and overhaul the Turkish river flotilla. The Turks abandoned the steamer Basra, the tug Pioneer, and the gunboat Firefly, which to the great satisfaction of Nunn and the men of the flotilla came back under the white ensign after fifteen months in Turkish hands. The official history praised the proceedings of the gunboats: “This action of the Navy had the effect of turning the orderly retreat of the rear of the Turkish army into a panic-stricken flight.”74

  On 11 March the British occupied Baghdad. The major work of the river flotilla was done. Although the gunboats moved with the army north of Baghdad and cooperated in operations during the following months, the Tigris above Baghdad was not really suitable for their operations. In March 1918 the Admiralty decided they needed the crews for the antisubmarine war, and the eight Fly-class gunboats were transferred to the army. Four had their guns removed and were used as ordinary steamers; the remaining four were manned by officers and machine gunners from the Inland Water Transport Service with gun crews drawn from the Royal Artillery. The four larger Insect-class gunboats remained under naval control down river.

  The Mesopotamian campaign, unlike the Dardanelles, ended in victory. When the armistice with Turkey was concluded, the British were far north of Baghdad marching on Mosul. The campaign required a degree of effort few might have imagined when the first brigade was landed in November 1914 to secure the oil refineries. The ration strength of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force on 19 October 1918 was more than 410,000, of which about 217,000 were actually in the army, and, in the usual story of the ratio of “teeth to tail” only about 112,000 of them were fighting troops. There were more than 71,000 men, mostly Indians, in the Labor Corps and 42,000 in the Inland Water Transport. It will be a matter of perennial debate whether the imperial gains that the advance to Baghdad and beyond were assumed to bring justified this considerable effort.75

  THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AFTER THE DARDANELLES

  The end of the Dardanelles campaign brought a gradual decrease in British and French forces in the eastern Mediterranean. The submarine war became the dominant theme in this part of the world. There were various schemes for overseas expeditions. The French, who patrolled the coast of Syria and Lebanon with a heterogeneous collection of old ships, occupied the tiny island of Ruad off the coast of Lebanon on 1 September 1915 and the little island of Castelorizo off the Turkish coast on 28 December. Both islands served as outposts or intelligence centers for the operations off the Turkish coast, which were little more than pinpricks. The Turks were apparently annoyed enough at Castelorizo to secretly bring up artillery on the mainland opposite the island, and on 9 January 1917 they opened fire, sinking the British seaplane carrier Ben-my-Chree, which had anchored in the port. On 20 January the French easily repulsed a Turkish landing attempt. Late in the year, on 4 November, the Turks also bombarded Ruad, sinking a French trawler whose engines were under repair. At the height of the submarine war, the little islands were probably more trouble to supply than they were worth as intelligence centers.76

  After the evacuation of the Dardanelles, the British attempted to keep at least some maritime pressure on the Turks. This took the form of the Anatolian cattle raids of 1916. De Robeck, who was forced to witness the inevitable rundown of his command, proposed minor raids on the coast of Anatolia for the purpose of seizing livestock the British believed were being commandeered by the Ottoman government for shipment to Germany. De Robeck hoped to pin Turkish troops down through the threat of landings. He wanted to use regular troops, but none were available, and so he had to employ Greek irregulars, carried in a heterogeneous collection of British ships, which were used in the blockade of the Anatolian coast. Many of the irregulars had been expelled from their homes on the mainland, and de Robeck believed there was a certain amount of rough justice involved, as much of the livestock was supposedly confiscated from these people by the Turks. The proceeds of the raids were to be divided among the irregulars and the Royal Navy on return to port. The Admiralty agreed, provided the raids remained small in scope and did not require any special transport.

  The raids began in March 1916 and were continued by Vice Admiral Thursby, de Robeck’s successor in the Aegean, until the latter part of October. At the time the term cattle actually meant all types of livestock, and a considerable amount was seized, especially sheep. The role of cattle rustler was a strange one for the Royal Navy. Professor Myres, an Oxford classics professor commissioned in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, proved particularly talented and knowledgeable in carrying out this type of warfare. It is doubtful if it really hurt the Turks very much; these areas of the Anatolian coast were not heavily populated or well served by roads to the main centers of population, and inevitably the coastal districts were denuded of suitable targets. The irregulars were hard to control, and there were some diplomatic repercussions. The Greek government protested because of the danger of reprisals against other Greeks living on the mainland, and the Ottoman government protested through the United States that the use of irregular bands instead of regular forces was contrary to international law. Thursby considered the cattle raids had served their purpose and ended them at the end of October.77

  At the end of December 1917, the new commander of the British Aegean squadron, Rear Admiral Sydney Fremantle, proposed a resumption of the raids on a somewhat larger scale, involving five to six hundred men. The proposal was rejected on the familiar grounds. The Admiralty could see no really important objectives or anticipate any significant results for raids on the Anatolian coast.78

  A similar fate befell proposals for amphibious operations on the Syrian coast. This type of operation had always appealed to people such as Captain Richmond, and in May 1917 after he had
returned to the Grand Fleet he produced a plan that attracted Beatty, who forwarded it to the War Staff for further consideration. Richmond envisaged operations against the Turkish line of communications from Mersina to Gaza, conducted by monitors, seaplane carriers, destroyers, drifters with mines, self-propelled lighters, and fast motorboats. A military force would be embarked for raids inland. The problem with this and similar schemes in the eyes of the Admiralty was directly connected with the submarine war, which taxed all their resources. In the Admiralty’s final judgment, minor operations such as Richmond proposed were apt to develop and tend toward a further dispersion of forces. Wemyss, when First Sea Lord in October 1917, took a similar position when the War Office approached him about possible operations. Aside from direct naval assistance to the British army advancing in Palestine, Wemyss did not think any demonstration by the forces at their disposal would have any appreciable effect in drawing Turkish troops toward the threatened coastline.79 For various reasons, and because Macedonia, Egypt, and Palestine were essentially land campaigns, the Dardanelles campaign of 1915 would remain from the naval point of view the major overseas campaign in the Mediterranean.

  NORTH RUSSIA

  German domination of the Baltic and Turkish control of the entrance to the Black Sea meant that the only feasible way to transport large quantities of supplies to Russia during the First World War was by means of the north Russian ports. Archangel, the traditional port in the north, was located in the southeast corner of the White Sea and was generally considered closed by ice from November to May. The Russian government therefore developed Murmansk-Romanov in the Kola inlet on the northern coast, which although further north than Archangel, was warmed by ocean currents and relatively ice free. Once it became apparent that the war would not be over within a few weeks, Russian needs for war matériel from abroad became large and were destined to grow. This would eventually place serious demands on British shipping, and relations between the Allies would not always be harmonious.80 The quantities involved were considerable. During the 1915 season, 700,000 tons of coal and 500,000 tons of general cargo, mostly munitions and supplies, were carried to the White Sea from Great Britain and France. In the 1916 season the tonnage from Great Britain, France, and the United States rose to 2.5 million tons, which represented approximately twenty-five times the normal peacetime trade of the White Sea.81

  For the greater part of the first year of the war in Arctic waters, the Russians and their allies faced greater problems from the weather than from the Germans, and the Admiralty assisted by sending the old battleship Jupiter (launched 1895) to the White Sea to work as an icebreaker. The Jupiter reportedly set a record as the first ship to ever reach Archangel in February and remained on station until May 1915. The Russians were worried, however, that their immunity from German action would not last. They were particularly concerned about potential minelaying and asked the British for assistance. The Admiralty recognized the potential danger and, despite the many demands on their resources, managed to scrape together in June a flotilla of six trawlers fitted with minesweeping gear. Even before they sailed, the Germans demonstrated that the Russian fears had some justification. The German auxiliary cruiser Meteor, actually the former British cargo liner Vienna (1,912 tons), which had been caught in Hamburg by the outbreak of the war, laid 285 mines in the northern approaches to the White Sea, cleverly scattered in the channels between the headlands that vessels were likely to follow on route to Archangel. Between June and September the Meteor’s mines had sunk or damaged nine Allied freighters.82

  The British trawlers began sweeping on their arrival—one was mined within a week—and merchant ships were formed into convoys preceded by a pair of minesweepers on routes in and out of the White Sea. The British naval presence grew slowly with more trawlers, the obsolescent cruisers Intrepid and Iphigenia and the old battleship Albemarle, sent out to serve as an icebreaker and keep the channel to Archangel open as long as possible during the winter of 1915–6. The Russians also provided what they could, notably fishing vessels converted into auxiliary minesweepers and a minelayer and pair of small destroyers transferred from Vladivostok.83

  The White Sea traffic enjoyed relative immunity for much of the 1916 shipping season. The Germans did not repeat their attempt to send surface raiders but tried to disrupt operations with their large minelaying submarines. In addition, in five weeks between late September and early November, five submarines from the High Sea Fleet worked off the Murman coast between North Cape and Kola Inlet. By the time the onset of the Arctic winter forced the Germans to stop operations they had sunk thirty-four ships, nineteen of them Norwegian.84 The losses, considering the volume of cargo carried, were small, barely exceeding 3 percent.85 When compared to other areas, notably the Mediterranean, it is apparent the Germans devoted relatively little attention to Arctic waters.

  The Allies in a conference at Petrograd in January-February 1917 committed themselves to the delivery of 3.5 million tons of supplies, munitions, and coal to Archangel and Murmansk during the 1917 shipping season. By the winter of 1917, British forces in the White Sea under Commodore (later Rear Admiral) Thomas Kemp had grown to include the old battleship Glory, which served as a depot ship at Murmansk, 3 old cruisers, 4 armed boarding steamers, 2 yachts, 23 trawlers, and 4 drifters. Russian forces had also grown to include 6 destroyers and torpedo boats, 17 dispatch vessels and auxiliary cruisers, and at least 36 minesweepers. During the winter the Russians also received the welcome reinforcement of 3 to 4 new icebreakers that had been built in England.86

  The German switch to unrestricted submarine warfare in February 1917 did not immediately affect Arctic waters. There was, on the whole, relatively less submarine activity than the preceding year. The British maintained patrols off Kola Inlet to meet and protect incoming traffic, and when the White Sea opened, ships proceeded independently to Yukanski, where they were assembled into convoys that sailed for Archangel every forty-eight hours preceded by trawler sweepers. In September and October shipping from the United Kingdom was ordered to proceed independently via the Norwegian Inner Leads, that is, to take advantage of Norwegian territorial waters. Trawlers met them in Arctic waters off Vardo or Kirkenes and every forty-eight hours escorted them to Archangel. The losses in Arctic waters during 1917 were not severe given the volume of traffic. The real losses on the route to north Russia appear to have taken place further to the south, outside of Arctic waters. They were much heavier than the preceding year, about 13 percent on the total number of round voyages, and the total volume of cargo delivered to north Russian ports was about 16 percent less than the preceding year. About three-quarters had been carried by the British, one-fifth by the Russians.87

  The Allied activity in north Russia during 1917 took place amid growing disorganization following the March revolution, which culminated with the Bolshevik seizure of power in November and the commencement of negotiations for peace with the Central Powers. Russia was effectively out of the war. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed on 3 March 1918. The relevant provisions of the treaty for northern Russia included the stipulations: the German submarine blockade in the Arctic Sea would continue until the conclusion of a general peace; Russian warships were to be brought into Russian ports until the conclusion of peace; and Allied warships “within Russian sovereignty” were to be treated as Russian warships.88 This meant that technically the Russians might have to insist on the internment of Allied warships caught in their waters.

  The British could take comfort from at least one aspect of Russia’s defection. The Allies would no longer have to fulfill a 1918 program of shipping to the White Sea for they had been strained almost to the breaking point to meet their commitments at the height of the submarine war in 1917. Ships released from service to and from the White Sea would be employed in the French and Italian coal trade or to carry cereals and other essential imports to Great Britain. Furthermore, the British were to requisition approximately fifty Russian steamers representing an aggrega
te tonnage of about 150,000 gross tons.89

  The British and their allies were worried about the vast backlog of supplies at Archangel and suspected that the Germans might attempt to seize them. The Royal Navy was also afraid that the German use of Murmansk and Archangel as bases for submarines or raiders would to a large extent render the planned northern Barrage (see chapter 13) useless.90 The British were correct in worrying about German designs on northern Russia. A major German offensive was anticipated on the western front before significant American forces could arrive, and the German High Command considered a drive on Murmansk as another aspect of their war against the Entente. Admiral von Holtzendorff, chief of the Admiralstab, certainly found the idea of a base on the Barents Sea very attractive.91 The situation and events in northern Russia in 1918 were very complex, and one cannot do justice to them here. The motives of all concerned, British and Allied, German, Red and White Russian, Red and White Finn, were mixed.92 The initial Allied intervention gradually changed from protecting supplies and northern Russia from Finnish or German incursions to hostilities against the Bolshevik government in a murky and shifting political situation.