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January 31, 1918 - Accidental Collisions Sink Two Royal Navy Submarines at “Battle of May Island”

Pictured - The bow of scout cruiser Fearless, almost entirely knocked away after colliding with a submarine. The accident killed 104 British sailors.

The Battle of May Island is a not a fight you will find listed in the honors of any Royal Navy ship. Nor was it an event that many people even knew about until the 1990s. On the night of January 31, 1918, a number of Royal Navy vessels traveling from Rosyth to the North Sea to participate in exercises ended up in a disastrous accident.

Two flotillas of submarines and a number of other British warships became hopelessly tangled in the Firth of Forth. Some of the submarines were K-class vessels, which were known to their crews as the “suicide club” for their poor performance and constant mechanical failures. Sure enough, when the subs had to change their course to avoid colliding with a minesweeper, the rudder of one jammed, sending it in a complete circle that ended up colliding with another submarine. The batlecruiser HMS Inflexible then plowed stricken subs.

May 11, 1917 - Russian Provisional Government Invites Petrograd Soviet into Coalition

Pictured - Prince Georgy Lvov, Russian Provisional Government Prime Minister until replaced by Kerensky in July 1917.

The Duma proposed, the Petrograd Soviet disposed. Russian remained de facto divided between two governments in the same city. The liberal members of the Duma had formed the Provisional Government, headed by Prince Georgy Lvov, but the workers and soldiers in the Soviet outside could listen or not as they chose.

May 31, 1916 - Battle of Jutland

Pictured - The 4th Battle Squadron of the Grand Fleet, including the dreadnoughts Iron Duke, Royal Oak, Superb, and Canada, steams across the North Sea toward the battle.

Both the British and German navies had sent their battle cruiser forces steaming across the North Sea in the late night of May 31.  Germany’s plan was for Franz von Hipper, commanding the lighter, faster battle cruisers, was to lure his British counterpart, Admiral David Beatty’s battle cruisers, into a battle off the Norwegian Coast, and then lure it south where the rest of Germany’s Imperial High Seas Fleet, commanded by Admiral Reinhard Scheer, would destroy it in detail before the rest of the Royal Navy’s might arrived. 

Unfortunately for the Germans, however, British intelligence had picked up and decoded German radio messages, so the Royal Navy already knew the German plan.  Admiral John Jellicoe, commanding the Grand Fleet, wanted to spring the trap, forcing the Germans into a decisive naval battle where they would be outnumbered and outgunned.  Hipper’s squadron left in the early hours of May 31.  The British, in fact, had already departed five hours earlier, with Beatty’s battle cruisers leaving from their base in the Firth of Forth, and the rest of the Grand Fleet from its home in Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands.

The smaller warships screening the movements of the fleets made contact in the North Sea off Denmark shortly after 2 PM on May 31, beginning a battle that would ultimately involve some 250 ships and 100,000 men.  The sighting came as a surprise to both Hipper, who did not know that the British had intercepted German radio transmissions, and to Beatty, who had been mistakenly informed that the Germans were still in harbor at Wilhelmshaven.

At a quarter to 4 PM, a running gun battle started between the battle cruisers squadrons of Beatty and Hipper, as Hipper tried to draw the British south towards the bulk of the High Seas Fleet, and Beatty gave chase.  However, Beatty’s signals by flag and searchlight had not been picked up the rest of the British fleet, resulting in the dreadnought squadrons being too far behind and unable to catch up to the battle for some time, shriveling the advantage in ships and firepower Britain could have had in the action’s first hour.  Beatty has also received some criticism for his preparation, as his ships were still maneuvering when the battle started.  Although Beatty’s battle cruisers outranged their German foes, they were unable to bring this advantage to bear before the Germans closed for battle.

Things went south for the British almost immediately. Whereas the Royal Navy ships struggled to find their range, Hipper’s battle crusiers started scoring hits with their first shots as the two columns of war ships began to trade fire.  Only 15 minutes into the engagement, the British battle cruiser HMS Indefatigable was hit and exploded tremendously, leaving only two survivors. HMS Lion was saved from a similar fate when a mortally wounded Royal Marine officer managed to close and flood the ship’s magazine after being hit by a German salvo. 

Indefatigable explodes after a German shell causes a magazine explosion.

The Germans continued to have the best of the artillery duel.  Adverse conditions and poor gunnery practices meant that the British ships were struggling to hit their targets, while the German battle cruisers started doubling up on theirs. The British sailors, however, continued to fight back ferociously under a hail of German fire, as the first gunnery officer onboard the battle cruiser SMS Derfflingler noted:

“The enemy was shooting superbly. Twice the Derfflinger came under their infernal hail and each time she was hit. But the Queen Mary was having a bad time; engaged by the Seydlitz as well as the Derfflinger, she met her doom at 1626. A vivid red flame shot up from her forepart; then came an explosion forward, followed by a much heavier explosion amidships. Immediately afterwards, she blew up with a terrific explosion, the masts collapsing inwards and the smoke hiding everything.”

Queen Mary disintegrated as German shells struck both her forward ammunition magazines, leaving only nine survivors out of a crew of 1,275.  The surviving British ships also continued to take hits.  When Princess Royal disappeared in smoke and spray after a German volley landed close by, a signalman on Beatty’s flagship Lion mistakenly reported that “Princess Royal’s blown up, Sir,” prompting the British admiral to turn to Lion’s captain and grumble “ “Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.”

Hipper’s “run to the south” continued until 4:40 PM, when Beatty sighted the dreadnoughts of the High Seas Fleet lurking menacingly in the distance.  The British sailor ordered a reversal of 180 degrees to the safety of Jellicoe’s battle squadrons, starting the phase of the battle known as the “run to the north.”

Admiral Sir David Beatty and his flagship, the battle cruiser HMS Lion.

This time, Beatty prepared to lead the whole German fleet into the jaws of the Grand Fleet, rapidly approaching from the northwest under Jellicoe.  Caught up in the chase and overjoyed by the destruction of three British ships, Hipper and Scheer failed to realize they were being led to the slaughter, until shells from Jellicoe’s dreadnoughts started flying overhead.   The main fleet action, and the only major battleship fight of the First World War, began.

Jellicoe deployed his battleships in a single line to port, hoping to “cross the T” of Scheer’s ships, which meant crossing in front of their column, allowing the British ships to bring all their guns to bear on the Germans, like the Japanese had done to the Russians at Tsushima in 1905.  Jellicoe’s dreadnoughts crossed the German T twice, pounding the German ships dreadfully.  The British battleships scored 70 hits, the Germans only two.

As light began to fade towards 6 o’clock, Scheer avoided the complete destruction of his fleet only by conducting two expert reversals under British fire.  Scheer also gambled desperately by sending his small destroyers in a mad torpedo attack on the British line, which prompted Jellicoe, perhaps over-cautiously, to turn away.  Scheer’s ships slipped away beyond the range of British guns as night began to fall.

Bataille de Passchendaele, Flandre, Belgique, 29 octobre 1917

May 16, 1916: The Sykes-Picot Agreement is ratified.

One hundred years ago today, French and British diplomats signed secret negotiations that would profoundly shape the geopolitics of the Middle East following the defeat and partition of the Ottoman Empire. The Sykes-Picot Agreement was not the singular machination by Western powers to define the post-World War I distribution of power in the Middle East; however, it has singularly come to epitomize the consequences of both the failures of the colonial past and of the strife in the following decades of continuous instability and Western interventionism. 

Over the course of approximately five months, two relatively minor British and French diplomats, Mark Sykes and François Georges-Picot, roughly outlined the future mandates of Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq. As pictured above, Sykes and Picot’s map determined that certain areas (shaded blue and pink) would become subject to complete British or French discretion, while others (regions “A” and “B”) would become regions under European spheres of influence. 

At the time of the agreement, the war was still far from over, and it was later postwar conferences and settlements that actually set in stone the basic ambitions of partition and imperial optimism outlined in Sykes-Picot. The implications of the mid-war agreement materialized in, among others, the Treaties of Sèvres (1920) and Lausanne (1923), and overall via the postwar mandate system. A wide range of geopolitical concerns, evolving over the course of war, governed the negotiation of Sykes-Picot, for example: access to the Suez Canal and Persian Gulf; the threats posed by Germany and Russia; access to regional infrastructure and finance; access to oil, in particular fields in Mosul, Iraq; of course, competing French and British claims also pushed and pulled the lines of division. 

The terms of Sykes-Picot - and contained within, the flagrant bad faith of the Western negotiators toward Arab aspirations and budding Arab nationalisms - were not known to the public until its terms leaked in full to Russian newspapers in late 1917. This was within weeks of the publication of the Balfour Declaration, which pledged British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine. 

January 9th 1916: Gallipoli campaign ends

On this day in 1916, during World War One, the Gallipoli campaign ended with the final evacuation of Allied troops. The plan was the brainchild of British Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill, who intended to weaken the Ottoman war effort by opening another front in the Dardanelles, forcing Germany to split their army and send troops to aid their Turkish allies. Churchill’s proposal was risky, underestimating the ability of the Turkish army, and was hastily pushed through the War Office. The initial naval attack in the Dardanelles in February 1915 had some success, but British and ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) troops were soon called in to push inland and capture Constantinople. The landings began on April 25th, with Allied troops deployed at separate beaches. One of the most famous landings were the ANZAC forces at Anzac Cove, where they faced fierce resistance from the Turks. The British fared little better at Cape Helles, and by May, 20,000 of the 70,000 men deployed suffered causalities. The campaign continued for months, with Allied soldiers living under Turkish fire and shelling, and suffering poor conditions in the trenches. Eventually, fierce critics of the operation began to speak out, and in December and January the Allied forces were evacuated from Gallipoli. The campaign was a disaster for the Allies, who lost around 45,000 men, and failed to make any strategic gains. While the Turkish successfully and bravely defended their country, it proved a Pyrrhic victory as they lost 86,000 soldiers in the campaign. The campaign is commemorated in Australia and New Zealand on April 25th as Anzac Day, in honour of the over 10,000 soldiers who died during the Gallipoli campaign representing their countries as independent nations.

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives…you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours.” - Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who fought at Gallipoli, on the ANZAC dead in 1934

The Harvest is Ripe.

British officers amongst the ruins of Gommecourt, March 1917.

Female British ambulance drivers on the Western Front, during World War I.

The Battling Badassery of Flora Sandes,

Flora Sandes was not your average Edwardian Era British woman.  Born to an Irish family in Yorkshire, she had a spark of individuality and boldness that was atypical of young women of the times.  Morever was the lifestyle she led, as her favorite childhood hobbies were fencing, horesback riding, racecar driving, and shooting.

When World War I began in 1914 she volunteered for the war effort by becoming a nurse.  At the age of 38, she was placed on detached service with the Serbian Red Cross, aiding the Serbian Army in the fight against the attacking Austro-Hungarian Empire.  After one particularly bloody battle in which the Serbian Army was forced into a chaotic retreat, Sandes was separated from her unit.  Rather than return to nursing, Sandes did something unthinkable for an early 20th century British woman, she volunteered for service with a Serbian combat unit on the frontlines.

The Serbians during World War I are especially noted for being the toughest and most ruthless soldiers of the war.  After all Serbia was a small nation being invaded by a large empire.  Outgunned and outnumberd 10 to 1, the Serbians relied upon toughness and ruggedness in order to survive the Austro-Hungarian onslaught.  Flora was no exception; she could drink, cuss, and brawl with the best of them.  Gaining a reputation as a fierce combat soldier, she was particularly noted for being an excellent shot with a revolver and a deadly master of bayonet fighting. She was also assigned to an elite unit called the “Iron Regiment”, one can probably assume that you have to be one hell of a badass to join a combat unit called the “Iron Regiment”. As the war progressed, she advanced in rank from private, to corporal, sergeant, then finally to sergeant-major, the highest non-commissioned rank in the army. When she wasn’t busy fighting in the trenches, she wrote letters back home to British newspapers detailing the plight of Serbia, asking for aid from the British people. In one instance, she was able to raise enough money to replace her regiment’s tattered uniforms with new clothing and buy new weapons.

In 1916 at the Battle of Bittola, after a particularly bloody bought of hand to hand combat, Sandes was severely wounded by a grenade blast.  The wound was bad enough that she was unable to resume combat service, in fact she barely survived the year long recovery period from her grievous wounds.  For her actions at Bittola Sandes was awarded the Order of the Karađorđe’s Star, the highest Serbian award for courage and gallantry. 

After recovering from her wounds, Sandes spent the rest of the war running her own hospital and raising money for the Serbian cause.  After the war ended in 1918, she was well enough that she resumed her military career.  To her surprise, she was given an officers commission with the rank of captain and assigned command of the Iron Regiment.  Sandes retired in 1922 with the rank of major, married a Russian White Army general in 1927, published an autobiography, and traveled the world giving lectures on her wartime experiences.  When the Germans invaded Yugoslavia during World War II Sandes was recalled to military service, but the Germans overran the country before she could be mobilized.  She and her husband were briefly interned before being released on parole. She returned to England where she lived out the rest of her life, passing in 1956 at the age of 80.

Ypres Salient, Dawn, February 1918 - Louis John Ginnett, 1918.