The Russian Revolution and a Forgotten British Hero

This week 109 years ago, on 8 March 1917, the first Russian Revolution broke out. Clearly, it had a devastating effect on the Tsarist monarchy, but, also, on the conduct of the war on the Eastern Front. Less well-known is the impact it had on Britain’s Baltic Submarine Flotilla.

Commander Francis Cromie Royal Navy was in command of six E-class and five smaller C-class submarines in the Baltic. The submarines were there to stop the German import of iron ore from Sweden, so important for the German war effort. The E-class submarines had made the perilous journey through the shallows of the Kattegat between Denmark and Sweden, but the Germans soon prevented further reinforcement by pressuring the Danes to mine the waters. Accordingly, the Admiralty sent four smaller C-class boats overland from Murmansk to St Petersburg. It was a tremendous logistics achievement by the Russians. The submarines were remarkably successful in their operations and soon crippled the iron ore supply. Cromie’s submarine, for example, sank four ships in a day. So successful was his flotilla that the Tsar visited the flotilla’s base in Reval (now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia) and bestowed on Cromie the Order of St George, Russia’s equivalent of the VC.

I have done my best to chronicle the remarkable and gripping story of the forgotten Baltic submarine flotilla in my novel, Where the Baltic Ice is Thin, the fourth in my WW1 series. I can recommend it! However, the two revolutions of 1917, with the ensuing mutinies in the Russian Navy, left the British unable to prosecute the war at sea on their own. Iced in, bereft of the support of the Russians and with no way to resupply the flotilla overland or by sea, Cromie ceased operations and laid up the flotilla the winter of 1917/18. He was forced to sell his stores of clothing and tobacco in order to buy food for his ship’s company, and nor could he pay his men. He did, however, reject a bribe from Finnish White Russians to sell them his submarines for £5 million!

Cromie learned Russian and such was his and his flotilla’s prestige with the Russians, he exercised extraordinary influence over them, even taking command of the Russian submarine flotilla. When order in Russia collapsed and her fleet mutinied, Cromie was able to persuade the Bolsheviks to spare the lives of many of the officers they had imprisoned.

Eventually, the Admiralty and Cromie agreed that there was no point in keeping his men in Russia idle over the winter of 1917/18 and they were recalled. It was hoped that they might return in the spring to begin a new campaign of offensive operations in 1918. By this time, the flotilla had withdrawn from their base in Estonia to Finland where they hoped they would be out of reach of the Germans. In typical fashion, the proud submariners cleaned and polished their boats from end to end, even laying out clean deck cloths on the decks before laying up their submarines for the winter. The men then marched to the station to commence the long journey overland to Murmansk and the sea crossing back home, but Cromie had to inform them he had been asked to remain behind.

Thanks to his knowledge of the Russian language and good contacts, MI6 asked Cromie to remain behind as the acting Naval Attaché and he was promoted to acting captain. His task was to set up an intelligence network to spy on the Bolsheviks and a propaganda campaign to try to persuade Russia to stay in the war. His activities quickly brought him to the attention of the Russian Secret Police, the dreaded Cheka! As the Germans advanced towards Finland there was a danger that the British submarines would be captured. Evading the Cheka, Cromie returned to Finland and enlisted the help of civilian volunteers to help him tow the submarines into deep water and scuttle them, along with three British merchantmen loaded with stores of use to the invading Germans. Cromie then focused entirely on his intelligence activities, a fascinating and thrilling story about which I will be writing another day!