British squadron joins the Italian fleet

On the morning of 27 May 1915 four British battleships, Queen, London, Prince of Wales and Implacable, entered Taranto, the main base of the Italian fleet. They were commanded by Rear-Admiral Cecil Thursby. The squadron had left Malta the day before and from then on was to operate together with the Italian fleet against Austria-Hungary. The British chronology of the war put it briefly: the British squadron joined the Italian fleet in the Adriatic.

Entering Taranto

The passage from Malta was uneventful but cautious. According to the log of Implacable, at about 4 a.m. the ships passed the lighthouse on Cape Santa Maria di Leuca, on the very “heel” of the Italian boot, and from 6 a.m. they steamed a zigzag course to make things harder for submarines. A month earlier in these waters the Austro-Hungarian U-5 had sunk the French cruiser Léon Gambetta. At about 9 a.m. the squadron anchored in the outer harbour, the Mar Grande, where an Italian official came aboard. Then Implacable passed through the channel into the inner, well-sheltered lagoon of the Mar Piccolo and at about 10 a.m. made fast to a buoy. That same day she took in 240 tons of coal from a collier.

The British light cruisers Dublin, Dartmouth, Amethyst and Sapphire, also sent from the Dardanelles, went to Brindisi, from where Italian and Allied ships were to patrol the southern Adriatic. Amethyst, which had come to Taranto with supplies for the squadron, left for Brindisi the next day. Italian cruiser squadrons and destroyer flotillas were already stationed there.

Allies under an Italian flag of command

The dispatch of the squadron followed from the naval convention that Britain, France and Italy had signed in Paris on 10 May. The convention created two fleets with separate commanders and agreed tasks. In the Adriatic the command lay with the commander-in-chief of the Italian fleet, the Duke of the Abruzzi, Prince Luigi Amedeo of Savoy, who was given the British squadron and light cruisers, as well as twelve French destroyers and as many torpedo boats, submarines and minesweepers as the French commander could spare. The main French forces of Admiral Augustin Boué de Lapeyrère remained under his own command and were to operate further south, at the mouth of the Adriatic. The British battleships were to counterbalance the forces of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, which had bombarded the Italian coast on 24 May and had modern dreadnoughts at its disposal.

The old British ships were no match for dreadnoughts, but together with the Italian battleships they gave the Allies a clear numerical superiority. No battle took place, however. After its sortie of 24 May the Austro-Hungarian battle fleet did not seek an engagement, and the Italian command had no intention of risking heavy ships in waters full of mines and submarines. Thursby’s battleships spent long months in Taranto almost idle. The light cruisers at Brindisi had more work. As early as 9 June 1915 Dublin was damaged by a torpedo from an Austro-Hungarian submarine. The British force in the Adriatic, with a changing composition and based at Taranto, remained in Italy until the end of the war.