Germans occupy Sevastopol

On 1 May 1918 troops of General Robert Kosch’s German corps entered Sevastopol, the main base of the Black Sea Fleet. It was the culmination of an expedition that had begun two weeks earlier with the entry into the Crimea. The city was taken without much fighting, but the prize turned out to be smaller than the German command had counted on. At the last moment the fleet’s most valuable ships slipped out of port to Novorossiysk on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, beyond the Germans’ reach. The British chronology of the war records the occupation of Sevastopol under 1 May, with a note that it took place on 30 April and 1 May.

A fleet under a foreign flag

As the Germans approached the city, panic broke out in Sevastopol. The Soviet authorities, who in April had removed Vice-Admiral Mikhail Sablin from command of the fleet, asked him to return, and the ship committees of the dreadnoughts supported the request. Sablin devised a ruse. On 29 April he ordered Ukrainian flags to be hoisted on the ships, counting on the Germans not to seize the fleet of Ukraine, their ally. That same day in Kiev Pavlo Skoropadsky was proclaimed hetman, and the mood of the crews was divided. Sablin allowed those who did not want to serve under the new ensign to leave. On the night of 29/30 April most of the destroyers and several transports carrying Red soldiers and refugees sailed for Novorossiysk.

The ruse failed. General Kosch refused to receive the delegation sent to him and declared that he needed a written request, which he would forward to his command. Meanwhile his troops occupied the northern shore of Sevastopol Bay and set up machine guns and artillery there. On the evening of 30 April Sablin ordered all seaworthy ships to leave port. The dreadnoughts Volya and Svobodnaya Rossiya left the bay under fire from German artillery. Sablin forbade returning it, so that no one could accuse Russia of breaking the peace. Svobodnaya Rossiya was slightly damaged. The destroyer Gnevny ran aground at the harbour mouth and had to be left behind, and in the confusion only one of the vessels that could not be taken out was successfully destroyed. On the morning of 1 May the destroyers that had left a day earlier reached Novorossiysk, and the dreadnoughts arrived in the evening. According to most studies two dreadnoughts and a dozen or so destroyers, the most modern part of the fleet, escaped from Sevastopol.

The German prize

The ships that could not or would not sail remained in port. According to Ukrainian studies they included seven old battleships, three cruisers, a dozen or so destroyers, submarines, seaplane carriers and many auxiliary vessels. Most of them had stood for months without full crews and in poor technical condition. The Germans seized them together with the shipyards, the arsenal and the base’s stores. The Ukrainian flags changed nothing: the German command did not recognise Ukraine’s rights to the fleet, just as it did not recognise its rights to the Crimea.

Sevastopol became a German naval base. The occupiers secured command of the Black Sea and a sea route to the Caucasus, but the question of the ships at Novorossiysk was only beginning. The Germans demanded their return to Sevastopol, and the government in Moscow, bound by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, could not refuse openly. In June some of the ships returned to Sevastopol, and the rest, among them Svobodnaya Rossiya, were scuttled by their crews in Tsemes Bay near Novorossiysk.