Trebizond offensive

The Trebizond offensive was one of the few successful combined army and navy operations of the First World War. For ten weeks, from February to April 1916, General Vladimir Lyakhov’s Coastal Detachment advanced along the steep Lazistan coast, from the Russian border towards Trebizond. Ships of the Black Sea Fleet shelled the Turkish trenches from the sea, and small landing parties came ashore behind each successive line of the defenders. When two brigades of Kuban Cossacks were brought in by sea in April, the Russians broke through the last line of defence on the Kara Dere river, and the Turks abandoned Trebizond without a fight. Russia gained a port through which it could supply the army standing at Erzurum.

Name and dates

Russian literature speaks of the Trebizond operation (Трапезундская операция), Western literature of the Trebizond campaign or the battle for Trebizond. We take as its start the attack of Lyakhov’s detachment on the Turkish position on the Arhavi river. According to General Yevgeny Maslovsky, then head of the operations section of the Caucasus Army staff, Russian ships and infantry attacked it on 23 January by the Julian calendar, that is 5 February 1916 by our calendar. The British history of the Caucasian wars by W.E.D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, the other main source for this page, also describes a bombardment on 5 February. We take as its end the Russian entry into Trebizond: 5 April by the Julian calendar, that is 18 April 1916.

All dates on this page are given by the Gregorian calendar. Because Russia was then 13 days behind, the same events are sometimes dated differently in different publications. The British chronology of the war on which our timeline is based records the landing at Atina under 4 March, the start of the advance on Trebizond under 6 April and the capture of the city under 17 April. The Turks abandoned Trebizond on the night of 15–16 April, and the Russians entered it on 18 April.

Background

Trebizond was the most important port of northern Anatolia. From it a good road ran through Gümüşhane and Bayburt to Erzurum, with a branch to Erzincan. The Ottoman Third Army, fighting in the Caucasus, received men and supplies from Constantinople by this route, because the journey by sea was much shorter than the march from the railheads. From the autumn of 1914 the Black Sea Fleet had shelled the port and hunted Turkish ships, but it had not managed to cut this route completely.

On land the coastal front stood still throughout 1915. The Coastal Detachment (Приморский отряд), covering Batumi, had held positions on the Arhavi river since the spring of 1915, a dozen or so kilometres beyond the old Russo-Turkish border. The Lazistan coast was difficult terrain: the steep Pontic Mountains came down almost to the sea here, and their slopes were cut by deep, wooded river valleys. Each of them was a ready-made line of defence. The Russians remembered that in the war of 1877–1878 they had suffered heavy losses in these mountains.

In January 1916 General Nikolai Yudenich began the Erzurum offensive. Lyakhov was ordered to go over to the attack on the coast, to pin down the Turks there and prevent reinforcements shipped by sea to Trebizond from going to Erzurum. According to Maslovsky, his detachment then numbered 11 infantry battalions, eight militia druzhinas, two sotnias of cavalry and 24 guns. It was supported by a naval detachment at Batumi under Captain Mikhail Rimsky-Korsakov: for each operation the old battleship Rostislav was sent from Sevastopol, while the gunboats Kubanets and Donets, several destroyers, transports and minesweepers served there permanently.

Course: from the Arhavi to Rize

Arhavi and Vice (5–16 February). On the morning of 5 February the ships shelled the Turkish trenches on the western bank of the Arhavi, and the infantry forded the river while the Cossacks outflanked the position through the mountains. According to Maslovsky, the Turks were pushed off the position the same day. Allen and Muratoff write that a premature attack by the 19th Turkestan Rifle Regiment interrupted the bombardment from the sea, and the Turks abandoned their trenches only the next morning, leaving about 500 dead. The Russians lost 160 men. The same pattern was repeated in mid-February on the Vice river: all day Rostislav and the gunboats shelled the Turkish position, and on the night of 15–16 February the defenders, repulsed in a counter-attack, withdrew further west. Around 19 February the Russians reached the Büyük Dere river, a few kilometres short of the small town of Atina.

Landings at Atina and Mapavri (4–8 March). The position on the Büyük Dere was very strong, and the Turks reinforced it with battalions sent from Trebizond. Lyakhov decided to outflank it simultaneously through the mountains and from the sea. On 4 March the ships shelled the Turkish position, and in the evening two flat-bottomed coastal freighters, known as elpidifors, took on board at Batumi two battalions of plastuns, dismounted Kuban Cossacks. At dawn they put them ashore at Atina, in the Turkish rear. The defenders fled into the mountains in panic. According to Allen and Muratoff the landing party came ashore on the morning of 5 March, according to Maslovsky on 4 March (20 February by the Julian calendar). Another landing was made at Mapavri, and on 8 March the Russians entered Rize. According to Allen and Muratoff, the whole advance from the Arhavi to Rize cost Lyakhov’s detachment fewer than 300 killed and wounded.

Of and the Kara Dere (March – early April). Beyond Rize the detachment halted for several weeks in front of the Turkish positions at the small town of Of. According to Maslovsky, the Russians took Of in a three-day fight at the end of March. Around 28–30 March their infantry reached the village of Humurgan on the Kara Dere river, which flows into the sea at the small town of Sürmene. On its western bank the Turks, reinforced by battalions of the 10th Division sent from Trebizond, occupied the last strong position before the city. Allen and Muratoff estimate their strength at about 12,000 men with 20 guns. On 30 March the German submarine U-33 sank the Russian hospital ship Portugal near Rize; she was taking off wounded from this coast.

The decision to take Trebizond

Lyakhov’s rapid advance gave Yudenich the idea of taking Trebizond itself. After the fall of Erzurum the Russians had to supply an army deep in Anatolia hundreds of kilometres from the railway, and a port would allow everything to be brought in by sea. Trebizond was also needed for any further advance on Erzincan. The Stavka, the Tsar’s general headquarters, regarded the Caucasus front as secondary, but agreed to send two plastun brigades, the 1st and 2nd Kuban Plastun Brigades, back to the Caucasus.

Moving them required the help of the fleet. Admiral Andrei Eberhardt, commander of the Black Sea Fleet, was reluctant to draw ships away from their main task, the preparation of a landing on the Bosporus. According to Allen and Muratoff, on 20 March he came to Batumi for a conference with Yudenich and agreed to cover the transport of both brigades to Rize, but only for a short, strictly defined time. Meanwhile, rumours reached Lyakhov’s staff from local Greeks that divisions from Gallipoli and 5,000 Germans had arrived in Trebizond, and that the city itself was surrounded by powerful fortifications. In reality, apart from a few unfinished coastal batteries, Trebizond had no fortifications at all.

Course: the breakthrough on the Kara Dere

Transporting the plastuns (4–10 April). On 4 and 5 April both brigades were embarked with their artillery at Novorossiysk. On the afternoon of 5 April Rear Admiral Khomenko’s transport flotilla put to sea. Maslovsky puts it at 38 ships, while Allen and Muratoff write of ten transports and twelve elpidifors. The next morning the main force of the Black Sea Fleet joined it at sea. On the morning of 7 April Yudenich arrived at Rize. Lyakhov argued that the Turks would attack on the Kara Dere at any hour, so Yudenich demanded that the plastuns be landed further west, just behind the front line. Khomenko, however, had orders to unload at Rize, and Eberhardt, alarmed by reports of German submarines, refused and announced that after unloading the whole fleet would return to Sevastopol. Yudenich therefore loaded the 2nd Brigade onto the elpidifors of Lyakhov’s detachment and, without the fleet’s cover, landed it at Humurgan on the morning of 8 April. The 1st Brigade marched along the shore on foot and reached the front on 10 April. The same day the German-Turkish cruiser Breslau appeared off Humurgan and shelled the Russian infantry on the shore.

Battle on the Kara Dere (14 April). With the plastuns, according to Allen and Muratoff, Lyakhov had 21 battalions, about 20,000 infantry and 30 guns. The ships returned for the attack: Rostislav and Panteleimon, the former Potemkin, with several destroyers. The main blow was to fall on the left wing, in the mountains, where General Gulyga’s 1st Plastun Brigade and the 19th Turkestan Rifle Regiment were to take the hill of Ahu Dağ, the key to the Turkish position. Before dawn on 14 April scouts and the leading sotnias crossed the Kara Dere, partly on rope footbridges. According to Maslovsky, at about 10.45 a.m. the Turkestan regiment with a plastun battalion took Ahu Dağ at bayonet point. From 11 a.m. the ships shelled the Turkish trenches by the sea from the flank and rear. According to Allen and Muratoff they fired 1,220 shells that day, and at about 2 p.m. the Turks abandoned the coastal sector and began to fall back through Sürmene towards Trebizond. Allen and Muratoff regard the attack on Ahu Dağ, which cost the Russians about a thousand killed and wounded, as brave but unnecessary, because the ships’ fire would have forced the Turks to retreat anyway.

Pursuit (15–17 April). On 15 and 16 April the Russians advanced along the shore, pushing back weak rearguards. After a few rounds from the ships the Turks abandoned each successive position on the coastal streams. On 16 April Lyakhov’s leading units stood on the Kalafka stream and in the village of Dorana (Drena in Maslovsky), 11–13 kilometres from Trebizond. The battleships, having used up their ammunition, left the coast that day. Lyakhov’s troops, intermingled after the rapid pursuit, were given a day’s rest.

The occupation of Trebizond

The Turks did not defend the city. According to Allen and Muratoff, and also to Turkish studies, their troops left Trebizond on the night of 15–16 April. On 18 April a delegation of local Greeks came to the Russian lines with the news that nobody was defending the city any longer. The same morning Lyakhov’s leading units marched into Trebizond, and Yudenich arrived from the sea on a destroyer. According to Maslovsky, who accompanied him, most of the Turkish population had fled, and the Greeks and the few Armenians, led by the Greek Metropolitan Chrysanthos, greeted the Russians with flowers. Yudenich walked to the Greek cathedral, where a service of thanksgiving was held. Lyakhov brought only a few battalions into the city and sent the rest of his troops south and west. On 19 April at Cevizlik, on the road to Gümüşhane, his units clashed with a Turkish rearguard, and in the west they occupied the bay of Platana (now Akçaabat), where the fleet intended to set up its anchorage.

Losses

Full figures for the losses are lacking. According to Allen and Muratoff, on the Arhavi the Turks lost about 500 dead and the Russians 160 killed and wounded. The whole advance to Rize cost the Russians fewer than 300 men, and the fight for Ahu Dağ about a thousand. Neither Russian nor British sources give Turkish losses in the final phase.

Significance

The Trebizond offensive showed how much command of the sea mattered in fighting on a narrow coastal strip. Fire from ships on the flank and in the rear time and again forced the Turks to abandon positions that would have been hard to take from the front, and landings from flat-bottomed coastal vessels made it possible to outflank the defenders from the sea. Allen and Muratoff compare Lyakhov’s light losses with the bloody and fruitless assaults on the same mountains in 1877 and 1878. The operation, however, also exposed poor cooperation between the army and navy commands: Yudenich’s dispute with Eberhardt at Rize could have cost the Russians the whole undertaking.

The capture of Trebizond cut the shortest route from Constantinople to the Third Army and gave the Russians a port for the troops fighting deep in Anatolia. As early as May and June 1916 further plastun brigades were shipped here by sea and took part in the summer fighting. Trebizond remained in Russian hands until the disintegration of the Russian army after the revolution. The Turks returned to the city in February 1918. Of Trebizond’s former Armenian community, estimated before the war at about 30,000 people, massacred and deported in 1915 during the Armenian genocide, the Russians found only a few survivors.