The Dandarnelles Disaster (10 page)

But by now the trail was stone cold. The pusillanimous decisions of Milne and Troubridge had been compounded by extraordinary ineptitude at the Admiralty, for which Churchill, with his penchant for prolix signals and interference in matters of operational detail, must bear the lion's share of responsibility. The British Mediterranean Fleet was now 59 hours behind the German Mediterranean Division. Even so, for a while Milne positioned his battlecruisers between the Peloponnese and Crete to block a westward move by Souchon, still Milne's
idée fixe
despite the mounting evidence to the contrary.

On the morning of the 10th, however, he led his three battlecruisers and two light cruisers on a sweep of the Aegean Sea with its myriad islands and hiding places, finding nothing. At 9.30 a.m. German wireless traffic was intercepted, indicating that the
Goeben
could not be far away; but radio direction-finding did not yet exist. Milne's search continued for more than 24 hours until he received a message from London, relayed via Malta, saying that the German ships had reached the Dardanelles, as had been reported by a local British vice-consul 15 hours earlier, and adding:

You should establish a blockade of Dardanelles for the present, but be on the lookout for mines.

Once again the master-quibbler Milne sought confirmation, and once more he was justified, as the Admiralty reply shows:

No blockade intended … carefully watch the entrance in case enemy cruisers come out.

The same slapdash drafting of signals prevailed at the Admiralty, unfazed by the premature declaration of war against Austria. Blockade is an act of war; Turkey had, however duplicitously, declared herself neutral and London had no reason yet to believe otherwise. Milne was quite right to wonder aloud whether he was really meant to open hostilities against the Ottoman Empire. Twenty-four hours after the Germans entered the Dardanelles, HMS
Weymouth
(Captain W. D. Church, RN) had approached the entrance, on the afternoon of 11 August. Two Turkish torpedo-boats came out and signalled by flag: ‘Heave to.' When Church disingenuously allowed his ship to ‘drift' towards the entrance, two blank warning shots were fired and the guns of the entrance forts swung towards the light cruiser. He then asked for a pilot and was refused. Church took up a position on the three-mile limit. On the morning of the 12th a torpedo-boat brought a Turkish Army lieutenant, who boarded the British watchkeeper with a message: the two German ships were in Turkish waters and had been purchased by the Ottoman government. The
Goeben
was now the
Sultan Yavuz Selim
and the
Breslau
had become the
Midilli,
he explained in halting English
.
Church asked if he might sail up the straits as far as Chanak, the town overlooking the Narrows from the Asian shore, and was flatly refused. The stable door was firmly closed in the face of the Royal Navy – after the horses had bolted safely inside.

For the time being the Germans dropped anchor off Chanak. Souchon was still well over 100 miles from his objective of Constantinople; Enver was still unsure of his Cabinet colleagues' resolve, although he felt with some justification that things were moving his way. The German admiral on 12 August received a message, dated the 10th, from the Admiralty in Berlin, urging him to go on to Constantinople as soon as possible ‘in order to press Turkey to declare for us on basis of concluded treaty'. It was followed by another signal containing orders to be carried out if he
was not allowed to stay in Constantinople. There were, it seemed, two possibilities:

(1) With tacit consent or without serious opposition from Turkey, breakthrough [into] Black Sea to attack Russia, or

(2) Attempt breakthrough [to] Adriatic Sea. Report as soon as ready to sail out, so that Austria [can] make move [on] Otranto …

Otranto is at the mouth of the Adriatic, where the French fleet assembled a blockading force soon after Austria joined in the war against the Entente on 12 August. Souchon, assuming a heavy British presence outside the Dardanelles, could only have regarded such a breakout as suicidal and dismissed it out of hand. Instead he told Berlin: ‘I intend to move forward against the Black Sea as soon as possible.' Taking on the Russian Black Sea Fleet, even though it was not inconsiderable, must have seemed the better bet. Besides, his real mission was to exploit the alliance with Turkey against Russia, Germany's main enemy, by provoking a new war between the two ancient rivals.

In accord with the Turkish lieutenant's statement to Captain Church of the
Weymouth
, Souchon told his two ships' crews that ‘Turkish government [is] declaring, with knowledge of German government, that
Goeben
and
Breslau
have been sold to Turkey. For political reasons it is necessary not to counter these rumours.
Ships of course remain German'
[author's emphasis]. This was a neat ruse, agreed with Enver, which annoyed the British: Turkey had decided to ‘buy' the two German ships, purportedly to replace the two dreadnoughts commandeered by the Royal Navy. Preparing his detailed report to Berlin about the run east, Souchon made an interesting but understandable miscalculation. He attributed HMS
Gloucester
's lack of support while shadowing his ships to the success of his own telegraphists in jamming her wireless. Obviously he could not understand how he had been able to elude the attentions of the rest of the British Mediterranean Fleet so easily after having been so energetically chased by two of its battlecruisers. Captain Howard Kelly was fully aware of the jamming, signalling at one point, ‘I am deliberately being interfered with' (the future admiral was addicted to the feeble
double entendre
: when his ship returned to Malta after her long chase, Captain Wray signalled from the flagship of the Cruiser Squadron: ‘Congratulate you on your splendid feat.' Kelly replied, ‘Yes, they are very large'). The efficiency of his wireless operators was just one of the attributes of a well-run ship.

Meanwhile the Germans' most pressing practical problem was the serious dilapidation of the
Goeben
's boiler tubes, exacerbated by the exertions of the run east, during which four of the battlecruiser's crew had been worked to death. Captain Ackermann reported that no fewer than 8,000 tubes were blown and 50 boilermakers would have to be brought from Germany with replacements to repair them. But at least by 13 August the ship's bunkers were full with 3,000 tonnes of coal for the first time in weeks. Souchon and his flag captain realised that if the battlecruiser had to sail, she could not expect to exceed 18 knots as the unavoidable running repairs were made on three or four boilers at a time. Until that process was complete, the ship would forfeit one-third of her design speed.

Souchon left this headache behind, sailing to Constantinople in a dispatch boat for talks with Enver. The German commander was alarmed by what he had seen of the defences of the Dardanelles as he entered them and almost immediately signalled Berlin with a shopping list. He suggested sending two admirals, ten seaman-officers plus technical experts as reinforcements for his division and for the Turkish defence as soon as possible. More communications equipment, guns, ammunition, torpedoes and mines were badly needed. His sense of urgency about the defences make it clear that he anticipated the need to prepare for a British attack on them sooner rather than later from the moment he entered Turkish waters. Enver explained that so long as the attitudes of as yet neutral Bulgaria and Romania were in doubt, many of his Cabinet colleagues remained hesitant about activating the still-secret alliance with Germany. Souchon, having agreed with Enver that he should take over the command of the Ottoman fleet, next met Jemal, the Navy Minister, and demanded that the British officers and technicians of Admiral Limpus's naval mission be removed from all Turkish warships and naval installations. Reluctantly Jemal agreed.

Souchon also called on Ambassador Wangenheim to discuss the political situation in Constantinople. The admiral was impatient to carry out his mission against Russia while the diplomat urged understanding of Turkish hesitation so long as the position of their Balkan neighbours remained unclear. The Bulgarians and Romanians were clearly waiting to see how the Central Powers progressed against the Triple Entente in the campaigns to the north and west. The two German officials agreed fully in principle on the objective of exploiting their hard-won advantage, gained from the alliance and boosted by the arrival of the navy: the only issue between them was the timing.

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.