The Dandarnelles Disaster (7 page)

None the less at midnight on 2 August the two ships sailed separately northward from Messina, which meant, as decreed by local geography, that they were westward-bound. Souchon ordered them to link up again briefly at a point south of Sardinia, from where the
Goeben
would make for Philippeville (now Skikda) – and her escort for Bône (now Annaba) – on the Algerian coast, each arriving at first light, about 3.30 a.m. GMT. Interestingly, in view of future events much further east, Souchon's orders to his captains included an injunction not to ‘waste ammunition by firing at forts'. On the way southward, Souchon received the following message:

Alliance concluded with Turkey.
Goeben
,
Breslau
proceed at once to Constantinople.

Having come so far, and without consulting Berlin, Souchon decided to complete the mission he had begun, reckoning that the confusion he was bound to cause among the French would be worthwhile. He was more right than he knew.

The subsequent escape of the Mediterranean Division to the Dardanelles, and all the disastrous consequences, are usually blamed exclusively on the British, even by the British themselves. But Souchon's ships crossed the path of the bulk of the French fleet, and were detected by it, not once but at least twice, during their run to and from North Africa; and the French Navy did not have the excuse of the British Mediterranean Fleet that it was not yet at war with Germany when it failed to catch or even challenge Souchon. The first war-task of the French fleet, as the Germans had guessed, was to collect the army's XIX Corps, the ‘Army of Africa', from French North Africa and deliver it to Toulon and Marseilles for forwarding by rail to its place in the line in northern France. So urgent was this that Admiral Lapeyrère, the
amiralissime
or commander-in-chief, was ordered to let each troopship sail individually as soon as loaded rather than having it wait to join a convoy. The various divisions of the fleet would cover them by seizing control of the Mediterranean, dealing with the Austrian and Italian fleets if and when necessary, the admiral said before the war broke out. He did not bother to mention the Germans. But on 28 July he startled Paris by questioning his long-agreed orders: now he wanted to form
trooping convoys escorted by naval squadrons. The Ministry of Marine overruled him, specifically accepting the risk of individual sailings and pointing out that the French fleet was strong enough to dominate the entire Mediterranean. The message reached Lapeyrère at the main naval base of Toulon on 31 July.

The next day the French government rejected a German ultimatum to stay neutral in a war between Germany and Russia, which meant France was at war. General mobilisation was ordered from midnight on the 1st and Lapeyrère was informed on his flagship, the
Courbet,
at Toulon. The following evening a message from the French naval station of Bizerta in Tunisia reported that the wireless of the
Goeben
had been heard clearly nearby. Assuming correctly, even though the report was a false alarm, that the Germans would try to interfere with French troop movements, the admiral at seven p.m. on the 2nd ordered all troopships to stay in port until naval escorts arrived. As the entire fleet was also still in port, this implied a two-day delay for XIX Corps. Despite the chaos at the Paris Ministry of Marine, following the resignation of the minister after a nervous collapse, the Cabinet cobbled together a message to Lapeyrère, telling him the German ships had been seen at Brindisi on the night of 31 July–1August. He was told unequivocally to ‘set sail … and stop them'. Once again he was ordered to let troopships sail at once, alone if necessary. Once again he stayed in port. Early on the morning of 3 August he was told that the Germans had arrived at Messina on the afternoon of the 2nd. Lapeyrère finally set sail at four a.m.

The fleet was divided into three sections. Vice-Admiral Chocheprat led Group A, consisting of the First Squadron (six of the latest pre-dreadnoughts) and the First Light Division (four heavy cruisers and a dozen destroyers). This amounted to half the fleet and was bound for Philippeville. Lapeyrère himself led Group B in the dreadnought
Courbet
, accompanied by the Second Squadron of five older battleships (Rear-Admiral Le Bris), the Second Light Division and various auxiliaries, all bound for Algiers. The slow Group C, including the elderly Reserve Division of battleships with one extra added and four destroyers, had been sent out of Toulon on the evening of the 2nd and had reached the Balearic Islands, whence it was sent to Oran. All three groups were sailing at an almost leisurely 11–12 knots, Group A to the east, Group B in the centre and C to the west, corresponding to their destinations. All were in close order; amazingly, there was no screen of cruisers or destroyers to scout, despite the known imminence of general war.

On the afternoon of 3 August the French commander-in-chief received an offer of support from Admiral Sir Berkeley Milne, commanding the British Mediterranean Fleet (who embarrassingly outranked the Frenchman under whom he was expected to serve in wartime). He reminded the French that he had 3 battlecruisers, 4 heavy cruisers and 4 light, plus 16 destroyers. Taking his time, that night Lapeyrère thanked Milne, told him he was covering the passage of the Army of Africa and airily asked him to watch the movements of the Italian, Austrian and German fleets. ‘You will be informed as soon as I have regained my freedom of movement.' By midnight he knew that Italy had declared herself neutral and that the Germans had left Messina a second time and were being hunted by the British. Just after one a.m. on 4 August he received the text of a message from Paris which had taken an inexcusable five hours to decode and clarify, once again ordering him not to waste time with convoys, to work with the British to provide general cover for the troopships and to ‘destroy German cruisers, hostilities with Germany being now declared'. Germany had formally declared war with effect from six p.m. CET on 3 August. Lapeyrère had been ordered three times in 80 hours not to form convoys and twice in under 30 to catch the German ships.

The
Breslau
fired 190 15-cm shells at her target in 19 minutes; the
Goeben
, delayed for an hour by the need to avoid being sighted by two unidentified steamers, opened fire for ten minutes just after five a.m. with her secondary, 15-cm guns; 36 rounds caused a spectacular conflagration ashore. News of the shelling of Bône reached Lapeyrère by five a.m. on 4 August; and that of Philippeville, 60 miles to the west, 80 minutes later. The Germans were reported to be heading west after their bombardments – a feint, as subsequent reports revealed: Souchon was eastward-bound, heading back to Messina, desperately hoping he could find some more coal, especially for the
Goeben,
her bunkers now less than half-full. Lapeyrère ignored the subsequent correction because, like Milne, the French Ministry of Marine and the British Admiralty, he was convinced that Souchon must run west, in a bid to get home to Germany. It was the
idée fixe
of all his opponents. But wherever the Germans might be headed, one or both of them was sure to cross the path of the French Group A. Chocheprat, however, had slowed down because one of his battleships and a destroyer had engine trouble. Later calculations of the courses and timings of the French and the Germans indicated that Chocheprat's left wing, westbound, passed within 40 miles of the
Goeben,
heading east, at about seven
a.m. on 4 August. Had the Frenchman been travelling at a normal speed, had he put out a cruiser or destroyer screen in the normal way, he would have sighted Souchon on a morning offering visibility of ten miles. For her part the
Breslau
overheard clear, plain-language signals between two French battleships (of Group A) at about 1.30 a.m. on the 4th. She sighted an unidentified, darkened ship to starboard an hour later.

Neither Chocheprat nor his chief made any effort to find the Germans. Instead the entire French fleet slowed to a crawl to accommodate two limping ships, of no use in their condition, rather than detaching them and pressing on. There was no attempt to link up or co-ordinate with the British, and the fleet was wasting time on a task – shepherding troopships – which it had specifically and repeatedly been forbidden to perform. In fact the French Navy went even further than merely missing a chance to stop the Germans if Milne's second-in-command, Troubridge, is to be believed: Lapeyrère's flagship
Courbet
had actually sighted the
Goeben
's smoke at a distance of 25–30 miles on the morning of 4 August but the admiral did nothing about it, not even telling the British, because he thought a chase would be futile, despite his orders to try. The French fleet might even have been able to surround the enemy battlecruiser. Lapeyrère disclosed this to Troubridge when they met at Malta on 16 August – by which time, as we shall see, Troubridge was in disgrace.

The two German ships joined up once more south of Sardinia just after nine a.m. and headed eastward for Messina. At 9.15, however, a lookout on the
Breslau
sighted two columns of smoke coming towards them from the west. Kettner alerted the
Goeben
and Souchon, who at first assumed they were from French battleships. But as they drew nearer the Germans could make out two British battlecruisers. This was serious news. The
Goeben
had ten 28-cm (11-inch) guns capable of firing a broadside weighing 6,600 pounds; British battlecruisers each had eight 12-inch guns with a broadside of 6,800 pounds, in combination therefore boasting more than twice the Germans' firepower. But the German big guns were made of better steel, had a higher muzzle velocity, higher elevation (meaning greater range), superior rangefinders and more reliable ammunition. British battlecruisers sacrificed some armour to make them faster than battleships whereas German ships of this type had almost as much armour as battleships, together with bigger engines that gave them an advantage of at least two knots over their British contemporaries. Some 20 feet broader in the beam than these early Royal Navy battlecruisers, the
Goeben
(22,640 tonnes) offered a steadier gun
platform. The British pair,
Indomitable
(17,250 tonnes) and
Indefatigable
(18,750 tonnes), had a design speed of 25 knots and carried much more coal than a German capital ship. Souchon ordered Kettner to sail away from the scene at top speed towards the north-east: this was no place for a light cruiser.

As the senior of the two British captains, Francis Kennedy, RN, of
Indomitable
commanded the pair and sent a simple wireless signal to Admiral Milne, who was at Malta at the time. Short though it was, it managed to include a mistake:

Enemy in sight, steering east, consisting of
Goeben
and
Breslau
.

The excitement at the Admiralty when Milne relayed the news at ten a.m. was palpable. Churchill, its political chief, was informed at once. But Kennedy's error, though understandable, was fundamental – the use of the word ‘enemy'. His report was timed 9.46 a.m. GMT on 4 August, over 14 hours before Britain would officially go to war against Germany, at midnight. The Germans had been given until then to withdraw from Belgium. Meanwhile Milne's message omitted to include the essential fact in Kennedy's signal that the Germans were steering
east.
Churchill, as he was to do many times during what became known as ‘the
Goeben
affair' and then during the ensuing Dardanelles campaign alike, personally wrote the first reply to Milne and Kennedy:

Very good. Hold her [
Goeben
]. War imminent.

After hasty consultation with the Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, and the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, Churchill added to his message 50 minutes later an order to ‘sink the
Goeben'
if the Germans attacked French transports. But the full Cabinet cancelled this and the Admiralty rescinded the order just after two p.m. There was to be no act of war before midnight. This was merely the first of many slaphappy or merely sloppy signals from the Admiralty to Milne, his deputy Troubridge and individual ships, as will be shown. The ultimately disastrous abuse of the new invention of wireless at sea, a blessing but also a burden, by the Admiralty and Churchill in particular contrasts sharply with the way the Germans treated Souchon.

Routine administrative and informative signals were sent to his flagship and every other German naval detachment afloat or ashore. The admiral
was in touch by wireless with the highly important naval
Etappe
(staging post), ably run by Commander Hans Humann in Constantinople, with some of the colliers the Imperial Navy had positioned in carefully chosen, out-of-the-way spots in the Mediterranean in case of need as well as other merchant ships such as the
General
, and of course with the Navy Office in Berlin. But he was sent only one brief order in the vital opening days of war and then left to get on with his work. He used his own discretion in deciding to carry out his predetermined first war-task, disrupting the French, regardless of the new instruction to go to Constantinople at once. By the moment he received it, very little extra time would be needed to obtain a rich dividend from confounding French movements: he saw no need to clear this with Berlin, even though there was a risk (not much of one as it turned out) that he might get involved in an action with French ships, which could have compromised his mission to Constantinople.

Souchon wondered whether to dip his colours in salute, as peacetime courtesy decreed, to the two approaching British ships, which he assumed would be commanded by an admiral likely to be senior to him. He decided not to, in case the gesture was misread as hoisting a battle flag. The
Goeben
was cleared for action – guns manned and loaded, ready ammunition in place, rangefinders hard at work – but kept her guns aligned fore and aft. The British, who must have known the
Goeben
had an admiral aboard whereas they did not, also refrained from saluting. The eastbound Germans and the westbound British approached each other at a combined speed of well over 40 knots, passing each other, the
Goeben
to the south, at a distance of 9,000 metres (10,000 yards or five nautical miles), well within the range of the guns of both sides. The British big guns tracked the Germans but held their fire as the two battlecruisers turned in a wide arc to swing behind the
Goeben
, beginning what must stand as the most dramatic race in naval history.