Allies in Sevastopol

The British chronology of the war records under 26 November 1918 the arrival of the Allied fleet at Sevastopol. The dates in the sources differ. According to Russian accounts, a British light cruiser put into Sevastopol on reconnaissance on 24 November and the main squadron arrived a day later. Other works, British ones included, give 26 November. At the head came the British dreadnoughts Superb and Temeraire, followed by French battleships, including the Justice, as well as cruisers and destroyers, and also Italian and Greek ships. Russian authors count 22 ships in all.

The way into the Black Sea lay open to the Allies after the Armistice of Mudros. On 13 November their fleet lay off Constantinople, and from there it could sail on northwards through the Bosporus. The legal basis was provided by the Armistice of Compiègne, in which Germany undertook to evacuate all the Black Sea ports and hand over to the Allies all the Russian warships seized there.

In Sevastopol, which the Germans had occupied in May, there were a good many of them. There were old battleships and cruisers that had failed to get away in the spring, as well as ships that had returned from Novorossiysk in June, among them the most valuable, the dreadnought Volya. The Germans never formally commissioned her into their navy, although they tried her out at sea in the autumn. When, after the revolution in Germany and the armistice, their garrison began preparing to leave, they allowed Russian officers to return to their old ships. On 24 November the Russian St Andrew’s ensigns were raised again on the Volya and other vessels. The Russians hoped that the fleet would return to them and serve the Whites in the fight against the Bolsheviks.

The Allies, however, had other plans. They took over the ships as prizes from the Germans, not as the property of an ally. The British demanded that the Russian ensigns be lowered and British ones raised. The Volya was manned by a British crew and taken to İzmit on the Sea of Marmara. The other Allies also demanded their share of the captured ships.

Sevastopol became an Allied base on the Black Sea. From mid-November Crimea was governed by the new regional government of Solomon Krym, which had replaced the pro-German cabinet of General Maciej Sulkiewicz and counted on Allied protection against the Bolsheviks. Under the division of zones Britain was to deal with the Caucasus, so mainly French and Greek ships and troops remained in Crimea. In the following weeks British and French soldiers landed in Sevastopol. German troops continued to leave the peninsula for several more weeks. The Volya returned to Sevastopol only in 1919, handed over to the Whites, who renamed her General Alekseyev.