British submarines enter the Baltic

On the night of 17–18 October 1914 the British submarine E1 forced its way through the Sound between Denmark and Sweden and entered the Baltic Sea. On 18 October E9 passed the same way. They were the first British warships sent to the Baltic to fight the German fleet together with the Russians.

The idea came from the British Admiralty. The Germans kept only small forces in the Baltic, but at any moment they could transfer ships from the North Sea through the Kiel Canal. The British submarines were to attack German warships in the western Baltic and at the same time threaten the shipping that carried iron ore from Sweden to Germany. The Russians needed such help, because their Baltic Fleet was weaker than the German one, and a week earlier it had lost the cruiser Pallada, sunk by a German submarine.

Through the Sound

Three boats were chosen: E1 under Lieutenant-Commander Noel Laurence, E9 under Lieutenant-Commander Max Horton and E11 under Lieutenant-Commander Martin Nasmith. On 15 October they sailed from Gorleston on the east coast of England and headed through the Kattegat towards the Sound. The passage was very difficult. The strait is shallow, in places too shallow for a submarine to proceed submerged, and German destroyers and patrol boats guarded the entrance to the Baltic. The territorial waters of neutral Denmark and Sweden also had to be respected.

Laurence went through first. In the Baltic he immediately went hunting for the Germans: on 18 October he fired a torpedo at the old cruiser Victoria Louise, but it passed under her keel. Horton, who had engine trouble, got through a dozen or so hours later, repeatedly forced to dive by German destroyers. Nasmith failed. Held up by a breakdown and by German patrols, he turned back, and the next day he mistakenly attacked a Danish submarine, which he took for a German one. Fortunately neither of the two torpedoes did it any harm. E11 returned to Harwich.

Under Russian command

E1 and E9 sailed to Libau in Courland. Fearing a German attack, however, the Russians had abandoned the base there, so the British moved to Reval, today’s Tallinn, and later also to bases in Finland. They came under the orders of the Russian commander of the Baltic Fleet. By the end of 1914 they had achieved no great successes, but their very presence forced the Germans to be more cautious in the Baltic.

The greatest successes came in 1915. In July Horton torpedoed and badly damaged the German armoured cruiser Prinz Adalbert, and in August, during the Battle of the Gulf of Riga, Laurence hit the battlecruiser Moltke. In 1915 they were joined by more British submarines, which sank many German ore ships. Horton, one of the most famous British submariners, commanded the defence of the Atlantic convoys against the U-boats in the Second World War. E1 and E9 never returned to England. In April 1918, after Russia had made peace with Germany, their crews scuttled them off Helsinki so that they would not fall into German hands.