Sinking of the cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth

On 2 November 1914, when the Japanese siege artillery had been shelling Tsingtao for several days, the crew of the Austro-Hungarian cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth scuttled their ship in the harbour. The cruiser had fired off almost all her ammunition and could neither fight on nor break out of the blockade. The only ship of Austria-Hungary in the Far East went to the bottom five days before the fall of the fortress.

Kaiserin Elisabeth was an old protected cruiser, launched in 1890 at Pola. She had a long record of service in distant waters. In 1892–1893 Archduke Franz Ferdinand made a voyage round the world aboard her, and in 1900 her sailors took part in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion in China. In the summer of 1914 the ship was at German Tsingtao, and that is where the war found her. After some hesitation Vienna decided that the cruiser would take part in the defence of the fortress, and on 25 August Japan and Austria-Hungary found themselves at war.

From the start of the siege the ship fought alongside the Germans. She was commanded by Richard Makoviz (also spelt Makovicz in the sources). Some of her guns were taken off and set up ashore as a battery named “Elisabeth” after the ship. The cruiser herself, together with the German gunboat Jaguar, shelled the Japanese positions from the bay, and on 6 September she was the target of an attack by Japanese seaplanes from the ship Wakamiya, regarded as the first air raid in history by aircraft launched from a ship. The bombs missed.

When the great Japanese bombardment began on 31 October, the fortress’s fate was sealed. The cruiser’s ammunition was running out, and there was no way out of the harbour. On 2 November the crew scuttled the ship so that she would not fall into Japanese hands. The sailors went ashore and fought on in the ranks of the defenders, among other places at the guns of the “Elisabeth” battery, until the surrender of Tsingtao.

Together with the Germans, the Austro-Hungarian sailors went into Japanese captivity. They returned home only in 1920, more than a year after the collapse of the monarchy under whose flag they had fought.