Naval battle off Gotland

On the morning of 2 July 1915 (19 June in the Julian calendar), in the Baltic Sea off the eastern coast of Swedish Gotland, four Russian cruisers under Rear-Admiral Mikhail Bakhirev caught in fog a German force returning from minelaying. The badly damaged German minelayer Albatross ran herself aground on the coast of neutral Sweden. A few hours later a British submarine torpedoed a German armoured cruiser sent to help.

An intercepted signal

The Russians had put to sea on 1 July with quite a different intention: they wanted to bombard the German port of Klaipėda, then Memel. At the same time a German force under Commodore Johannes von Karpf, with Albatross, the cruisers Roon, Augsburg and Lübeck and torpedo boats, was laying a minefield at the entrance to the Gulf of Finland. In the evening Karpf reported by radio that the task was complete and gave his position. Russian listening stations intercepted and read the signal, because since August 1914 the Russians had held the German codebooks found by the wreck of the cruiser Magdeburg. Bakhirev was ordered to intercept the Germans instead of bombarding Memel, and the fleet staff passed him their course as it came in.

Albatross off Östergarn

At about 6.30 a.m. the cruisers Admiral Makarov, Bayan, Bogatyr and Oleg opened fire on Augsburg, Albatross and three torpedo boats. The fast Augsburg escaped to the south, and Karpf ordered the slow minelayer to seek shelter in Swedish waters. All four Russian ships fired at Albatross, which took more than twenty hits. Although she had entered Swedish territorial waters, the Russians went on firing at her for a quarter of an hour or so. Burning and listing, the ship grounded shortly after 8 a.m. on the shallows near the village of Herrvik in Östergarn parish. Twenty-seven sailors were killed and about 50 wounded. Local people, who had watched the fight from the hills, came to help, doctors arrived from Visby, and the wounded were placed in a makeshift hospital at Roma. In the evening 26 of the dead were buried in a common grave by the church at Östergarn.

On their way back north the Russian cruisers also clashed with the approaching cruisers Roon and Lübeck, and later the Russian armoured cruiser Rurik made contact with the German force. Both exchanges of fire, conducted in fog, were indecisive. In the afternoon, off Rozewie, the British submarine E9 of Lieutenant-Commander Max Horton, one of those that had broken into the Baltic in the autumn of 1914, torpedoed the armoured cruiser Prinz Adalbert, which had left Danzig to help Karpf. Ten sailors were killed, but the ship stayed afloat and turned back.

A dispute over neutrality

Firing in Swedish waters was a violation of neutrality. Sweden protested, and the Russian government expressed its regret and gave assurances that the incident would not be repeated. In the afternoon the war ensign was lowered on Albatross. In accordance with the law of naval warfare, the Swedes interned the ship and more than two hundred sailors of her crew until the end of the war. In Russia the clash was hailed as a victory, although with so great an advantage Bakhirev had put out of action only one auxiliary enemy vessel.