Sinking of the battleship Slava

On 17 October 1917 (4 October in the Julian calendar), in the Moon Sound strait between the island of Muhu and the Estonian mainland, German dreadnoughts crippled the Russian battleship Slava, and her crew blew her up the same day. The day before, the German ships had passed through the Irbe Strait into the Gulf of Riga along a channel swept of mines and in the evening had arrived at the southern entrance to Moon Sound. The British chronology of the war records the battle and the sinking of Slava under 16 October.

The last battleship in the gulf

Slava, the last of the five Borodino-class pre-dreadnoughts, entered service in 1905, too late to sail with her sister ships to Tsushima. During the war she became the mainstay of the defence of the Gulf of Riga. In August 1915 she fought the German fleet when it tried to force its way into the gulf, and later she repeatedly shelled German positions on the Courland coast. In the winter of 1916–1917 her turrets were rebuilt so that her 305 mm guns could fire at a greater elevation, which increased their range to more than 20 kilometres. She had only four such guns, but she outranged the modern German ships, which had ten each. In March 1917 her crew did not join in the murders of officers, but here too the decisive word belonged to the ship’s committee.

After the fall of Saaremaa Slava lay at anchor off Kuivastu on Muhu, in the narrow, shallow strait of Suur väin, part of Moon Sound. Vice-Admiral Mikhail Bakhirev, commander of the naval forces of the Gulf of Riga, also had under him the old battleship Grazhdanin, formerly Tsesarevich, the armoured cruiser Bayan and destroyers. Against them Vice-Admiral Paul Behncke led two dreadnoughts, König and Kronprinz, with cruisers, torpedo boats and minesweepers. Bakhirev judged that among the shoals, minefields and batteries of Moon Sound even weaker ships could stop the Germans, and on the morning of 17 October he led them out to the south.

The Battle of Moon Sound

The Battle of Moon Sound began at about eight in the morning (German time). The Russian ships and batteries fired on the German minesweepers, and Slava opened fire on the dreadnoughts at a range of more than 20 kilometres. The German shells fell short, and König and Kronprinz, confined to a narrow swept lane between the mines, could not manoeuvre, so Behncke withdrew them out of range. Soon, however, the gear of the training mechanism in Slava’s forward turret broke and the ship could fire only from her after turret. The Russian ships withdrew briefly to the north so that the crews could eat a meal, and meanwhile the minesweepers cleared a passage north of the minefield.

Shortly after ten the German dreadnoughts passed through it at full speed and closed to firing range. With her third salvo König hit Slava with three shells. Two pierced the hull below the waterline and more than 1,100 tons of water poured into the forward compartments. The ship heeled over 8 degrees, and her draught at the bow increased to about 10 metres. Further hits started a fire by the forward funnel, which was put out after a quarter of an hour, and flooded a coal bunker. Kronprinz hit Grazhdanin twice, and one of König‘s last shells started a dangerous fire on Bayan, which was covering the battleships’ withdrawal. At about half past ten Bakhirev ordered all ships to withdraw to the north.

Slava, however, could not keep up with them. With such a draught she would not have passed through the dredged channel that led north out of Moon Sound. Her commander, Captain Vladimir Antonov, proposed that once the rest of the ships had passed she should be scuttled in the channel as a blockship, and Bakhirev agreed. The plan failed. On the orders of the ship’s committee the engine room was abandoned too early and there was no one to carry out the order to stop the engines. The ship ran aground south-east of the channel entrance, where she blocked no one’s way. Destroyers took off the crew, and at about noon the Russians blew up the magazine of the after turret. The explosion was visible from several dozen kilometres away. Three destroyers then fired six torpedoes into the wreck, of which only one exploded.

Consequences

Russian losses in men were small. The exact number is not known; the Russian researcher K. P. Puzyrevsky gave three killed and a dozen or so wounded and concussed on Slava. The German dreadnoughts were not hit. During the night the German torpedo boat S 64 sank on a mine at the entrance to Moon Sound. Bakhirev ordered several steamers to be scuttled in the channel to close the way north to the Germans, and prepared the withdrawal to the Gulf of Finland. The Germans viewed the wreck of Slava, still burning, the next day from the anchorage off Kuivastu. She lay in the shallows until the 1930s, when the Estonians broke her up for scrap.

The loss of Slava opened the way to Muhu for the Germans and sealed the withdrawal of the Russian fleet from the Gulf of Riga. Bakhirev’s ships, unlike many units on the islands, resisted to the end, and their fire was accurate, although it produced no hits on the German dreadnoughts. In Soviet historiography the Battle of Moon Sound, described among others in Valentin Pikul’s novel Moonzund, grew into a symbol of the struggle of revolutionary sailors against the German fleet.