Scuttling of the Black Sea Fleet

On 18 June 1918 in Tsemes Bay off Novorossiysk, sailors scuttled the most modern ships the Black Sea Fleet still had: the dreadnought Svobodnaya Rossiya and several destroyers. They did not want to hand them over to the Germans, who were demanding the surrender of the fleet. The day before, the other part of the fleet, the dreadnought Volya with several destroyers, had left Novorossiysk for Sevastopol; its commanders had concluded that the government’s order told them to hand the ships over to the Germans. In this way the fleet that at the turn of April and May had slipped out of Sevastopol ceased to exist.

Two orders

From the start the Germans demanded that the ships return to Sevastopol. The government in Moscow, bound by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, could not openly refuse, and the fleet had neither fuel nor any defence on the landward side. According to most accounts, on 24 May Vladimir Lenin agreed with a report of the naval staff that the situation was hopeless and the fleet must be destroyed. At the beginning of June secret documents with this instruction were brought from Moscow to Novorossiysk, in some accounts bearing a resolution by Leon Trotsky. The fleet commander, Vice-Admiral Mikhail Sablin, went to Moscow to have it revoked, leaving the command to Captain Aleksandr Tikhmenev, commander of the Volya.

On 10 June the fleet received two telegrams from Moscow. According to participants’ accounts the German ultimatum gave a deadline of 19 June: if the ships did not return, the Germans would advance further into Russia. The open telegram therefore ordered the fleet to sail to Sevastopol and surrender the ships there, while the coded one, meant only for the command, ordered them to be scuttled. Tikhmenev revealed the content of both orders to the crews. For several days meetings went on aboard the ships, and many sailors deserted. In a vote called by the commander, according to accounts, about 900 sailors were in favour of Sevastopol, about 450 for scuttling, and still more wanted to wait or to fight. Tikhmenev announced that the crews had chosen to return. Against this decision came out a group of officers led by the commander of the destroyer Kerch, Senior Lieutenant Vladimir Kukel, for whom handing the ships to the Germans was a disgrace.

“I perish, but do not surrender”

On 16 June the people of Novorossiysk poured into the port and onto the breakwaters, begging the crews not to sail. The stokers of the Svobodnaya Rossiya refused to work and the ship could not move. On the night of 17/18 June Tikhmenev led the Volya, six destroyers and an auxiliary cruiser out to Sevastopol. Left in port were ships whose crews had mostly fled ashore. On the morning of 18 June Fyodor Raskolnikov, Trotsky’s deputy in the war commissariat for naval affairs, arrived from Moscow and, according to most accounts, directed the scuttling. The ships were led or towed out to the outer roads, where they hoisted the signal “I perish, but do not surrender”. The destroyers were scuttled by opening the seacocks and blowing up the engines. The Kerch torpedoed the destroyer Fidonisi and then the dreadnought Svobodnaya Rossiya, which capsized and went to the bottom. According to Russian studies the dreadnought and eight destroyers sank on 18 June, another destroyer had been scuttled the day before, and several transports went to the bottom in the following days. Some Western studies state that the dreadnought sank on 19 June.

The Kerch did not stay in Novorossiysk, where her crew was hated for the murder of several dozen officers in the winter of 1917/1918. She sailed to Tuapse and there on 19 June her crew scuttled her themselves. According to a tradition repeated in Russian studies, before she was scuttled the ship sent a radio message: “To all, all, all. I have perished, having destroyed part of the ships of the Black Sea Fleet, which preferred destruction to shameful surrender to Germany.”

The ships that had returned to Sevastopol were taken over by the Germans. The Soviet government could maintain that it had complied with the demand for the return of the fleet, while not having handed its most valuable part into German hands. In Soviet tradition the scuttling at Novorossiysk became an act of heroism, and the return of the Volya a betrayal.