Tales of the Sea: Goeben, Part VI
Badly damanged by mines, Yavuz Sultan Selim required four months of repair work at Constantinople. Given Allied domination of the North Sea and the Mediterranean, Yavuz could serve no more meaningful purpose in the war. Transferred to German controlled Sevastopol, Yavuz was again placed in drydock for permanent repairs. In June, only partially repaired, Yavuz oversaw the surrender of the last remnant of the Russian fleet at Novorosiisky, although most of the ships were scuttled by the time of Yavuz’ arrival. Yavuz returned to Istanbul for further repairs, but peace interfered. Knowing that the war was coming to an end, the German crew of Yavuz transferred the ship to a Turkish crew on November 2, 1918.
British negotiators, among others, believed that the naval race between Germany and Great Britain had been critical in driving the two nations to war. In one sense, this was a narcissitic reaction on the part of the British. The nations of Europe had plenty of reasons for tension without the need for an arms race. No naval race had led to the Franco-Prussian War, and none would lead to World War II. The British, however, thought in terms of naval power; guided by Mahan, as well as centuries of tradition, they believed that the only real power was naval power. Germany without a navy would not be a threat. From the point of view of France or Russia, this obviously wasn’t true, but I don’t believe that the British ever fully understood just how vulnerable the French felt in the face of a larger, more powerful Germany. In another sense, the British interpretation was accurate, at least from a British point of view. The naval race did shape Britain’s interest and role in the First World War.
Accordingly, the German Navy was an important negotiating point between the Allies and the Central Powers. Germany was forced to turn over the elite units of the High Seas Fleet for internment. Turkey, in a separate treaty, was forced to turn over Yavuz Sultan Selim. In a grim ceremony, sixty Allied battleships escorted sixteen German dreadnoughts and associated ships from Kiel to Scapa Flow. Germany was allowed to keep a few older dreadnoughts for a couple of years, until being forced to relinquish them under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The officers and men of the German ships, fearing that peace terms would result in the transfer of the cream of the High Seas Fleet to Britain, France, Japan, and the United States, scuttled the entire fleet in June of 1919. I hear that the wrecks of the remaining ships are excellent for SCUBA diving.
Yavuz Sultan Selim, however, was not operated by a German crew. The ship was not scuttled, but was instead left in an inactive state until 1923. A nasty little conflict was taking place in Asia Minor. The Allied desire to carve up the Ottoman Empire did not end with the Empire’s Arab possessions. Greece, France, Italy, Bolshevik Russia, and the United Kingdom all sought territorial concessions within Anatolia itself. The Allies had substantial control over the rump Ottoman state, but elements within the Army, led by Mustafa Kemal, resisted the allied incursions. Through a long series of extraordinarily adroit political and military maneuvers, Kemal managed to force all the Allies out of Anatolia, although the Turks sold out Armenia to the Bolsheviks in return for arms and leverage. The Treaty of Lausanne ensured the independence of the new Republic of Turkey (under the rule of Kemal, now known as Attaturk), and provided for the return of Yavuz to the Turkish Navy In 1923, Great Britain turned Yavuz Sultan Selim over to the new Turkish government.
Yavuz was badly in need of a refit. Battleship technology had developed considerably since 1910. Yavuz Sultan Selim was no longer a powerful unit, especially as the larger navies were concerned. Yavuz sat in reserve for several years as the Turks figured out what to do with her. In the mid-1920s, the Turks scraped together the funds necessary to refit Yavuz. They were not willing to pay for a radical reconstruction of the sort that many other navies were carrying out, but they did intend a modest modernization, rendering Yavuz capable of defeating anything that the Soviet Union or Greece, Turkey’s most likely two enemies, could put to sea.
The project was a financial disaster, and brought down Turkey’s naval ministry. Turkey was on the verge of giving up on Yavuz when, in September 1928, Greece gave the Turkish Navy a wonderful gift. In an effort to intimidate Turkey, the Greeks undertook a massive naval exercise near Turkish waters. The maneuvers included Kilkis and Lemnos, the two pre-dreadnought battleships that the Greeks had acquired from the United States in 1914. Attaturk was enraged, and ordered the immediate refit of Yavuz, as well as the acquisition of modern destroyers and patrol ships. Yavuz Sultan Selim, almost completely inactive since early 1918, was granted a new lease on life. In 1930 she returned to service, flagship of the Turkish Navy.
To be continued…