Austro-Hungarian squadron shells Durrës

On 6 December 1915 the Austro-Hungarian light cruiser SMS Helgoland with six destroyers swept along the coast of Albania as far as Durrës (Italian: Durazzo). According to the historian Paul Halpern, the ships sank five motor schooners, two of them in the roadstead of Durrës. Italian works speak of two Italian and three Albanian sailing vessels. The target was not the town itself but the vessels carrying food from Italy for the retreating Serbian army. It was the second of two raids in two days. On 5 December the cruiser Novara had raided the landing place of San Giovanni di Medua, today’s Shëngjin.

Supplies for the Serbs

At the end of November the Serbian army set off across the mountains of Albania and Montenegro towards the Adriatic. From 22 November ships with food sailed for it from Italy. They were unloaded in three places: at Medua; at Durrës, ruled by Essad Pasha Toptani, an ally of the Entente; and at Vlorë, which the Italians had held for a year. Medua and Durrës were open roadsteads, without quays or cranes. Cargoes were taken ashore in small coastal sailing craft, the so-called trabaccoli, and then sack by sack. The British official history notes that both ports lay dangerously close to the Austro-Hungarian base at Kotor.

The Austrians soon took advantage of this. During the night of 22–23 November Helgoland, with the cruiser Saida and destroyers, sank two small ships carrying flour off the Albanian coast. On 29 November the Army High Command instructed the fleet commander, Admiral Anton Haus, to patrol the Albanian coast constantly and disrupt the traffic. Haus moved his fastest ships to Kotor: the cruisers Helgoland and Novara, six Tátra-class destroyers and six torpedo boats. The Entente suffered other losses too. On 4 December the Italian destroyer Intrepido and the transport Re Umberto, carrying troops of the Italian expeditionary corps, were sunk by mines off Vlorë. According to the British official history many of the survivors were rescued by British drifters guarding the nets at the entrance to the bay.

Medua and Durrës

On 5 December Novara, commanded by Captain Miklós Horthy, later Regent of Hungary, together with four destroyers and three torpedo boats, shelled the coast at the mouth of the Bojana and then the port of Medua. Sources count the ships sunk differently. Some speak of three transports and many boats; Italian works of two ships, including the Italian steamer Benedetto Giovanni and the Greek Thira with ammunition. That same morning the French submarine Fresnel, on guard off Medua, ran aground at the mouth of the Bojana. The destroyer Warasdiner destroyed her by gunfire, and 26 sailors who had taken refuge on a nearby rock surrendered and were taken prisoner.

The next day, 6 December, Helgoland under Captain Heinrich Seitz sailed south with the destroyers. According to Italian works she was accompanied by two submarines. The squadron swept along the coast to Durrës and, almost unopposed, sank the sailing vessels it encountered. The British official history merges the two raids into one. It says that Helgoland left Šibenik on the evening of 5 December, cruised for several hours in the Strait of Otranto, and then sank “several small craft” in the bay of Durrës and at Medua. It adds that the exact composition of the Austrian force is uncertain. More recent works, drawing on Austrian archives, separate the two sorties as described above.

Consequences

The losses in tonnage were not great, but the raids showed that the Austro-Hungarian fleet did not intend to look on passively while the Serbs were rescued. Even so, British and Italian cruisers from Brindisi made sixteen runs between 5 and 10 December and delivered about 2,000 tons of supplies to Medua. The British admiral Ernest Troubridge, who had arrived in Scutari with Serbian headquarters, decided to leave the wrecks of the sunken ships in the harbour, because they hindered access by submarines. The Italians, on the other hand, concluded that the Serbs had to be taken further south as quickly as possible, and began fortifying Durrës. Helgoland’s next sortie against the port, on 29 December, cost the Austrians two destroyers.