SMS Sankt Georg

SMS Sankt Georg was the third and final armored cruiser of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. She was built at the Pola Arsenal; her keel was laid in March 1901, she was launched in December 1903, and completed in July 1905. Her design was based on the previous armored cruiser , with the primary improvement being a stronger armament. Sankt Georg, named for Saint George, was armed with a main battery of two  guns, five  guns, and four  guns.

Sankt Georg served in the training and reserve squadrons during her peacetime career, usually alternating with Kaiser Karl VI. In April–May 1907, Sankt Georg participated in the Jamestown Exposition in the United States, to commemorate the first English colony in North America. During World War I, the Austro-Hungarian fleet largely remained inactive as a fleet in being, though she did bombard the Italian coast in May 1915 following the latter's declaration of war on Austria-Hungary. In 1917, she supported the Austro-Hungarian forces that raided the Otranto Barrage; in the ensuing Battle of the Strait of Otranto, Sankt Georgs arrival on the scene was sufficient to force the combined British, French and Italian forces to break off the engagement and retreat.

By February 1918, the crews of Sankt Georg and several other warships grew weary of the war and the long periods of inactivity, which led to the Cattaro Mutiny. The mutiny was quickly suppressed, but Sankt Georg and several other ships were subsequently decommissioned. Under the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Sankt Georg was awarded as a war prize to Britain. In 1920, she was sold to Italian ship breakers and scrapped thereafter.

Design

In the late 1880s, the Austro-Hungarian Navy began experimenting with the ideas of the French Jeune École (Young School), which suggested that flotillas of cheap torpedo boats could effectively defend a coastline against a fleet of expensive battleships. The Austro-Hungarian Marinekommandant (Navy Commander) at the time, Vizeadmiral (Vice Admiral) Maximilian Daublebsky von Sterneck, led the decision to adopt the strategy, which involved building cruisers—to which he referred as "torpedo-ram cruisers"—to support the torpedo boat flotillas. But by 1891, opponents of Sterneck had coalesced and forced him to delay further cruiser construction in favor of new capital ships—what became the s—until 1895 when the cruiser  was authorized.

By 1899, the Navy had begun planning for the next armored cruiser, provisionally named "Ram Cruiser E". The initial design, prepared in July that year, amounted to a minor improvement over Kaiser Karl VI, with an extra pair of  guns in the secondary battery. By April 1900, the design staff had begun to consider the possibility of increasing the caliber of the secondary guns to , though most senior officers preferred the faster-firing 15 cm guns. Two new proposals were submitted, both of which retained the 15 cm guns; the first kept the single-gun turret arrangement of the main battery that had been used for Kaiser Karl VI, but relocated the secondary guns to a central battery on the upper deck, just aft of the conning tower, rather than the casemates of the earlier vessel. The second proposal adopted a twin-gun turret for the main battery  guns located forward and placed the secondary guns further aft.

The construction of the Italian s, which were armed with  and  guns, prompted the Austro-Hungarians to reconsider their preference for the smaller gun. Another design, which incorporated the 19 cm gun, was then submitted; as a compromise, it retained four of the 15 cm guns, which were placed in casemates in the main deck abreast of the gun turrets. The two 24 cm guns were mounted in a twin turret forward, and a single 19 cm gun was carried in a turret aft. Four more 19 cm guns were mounted in casemates amidships. This submission was approved and became the cruiser Sankt Georg. The finalized design represented a significant improvement over Kaiser Karl VI; beside the much heavier gun armament, Sankt Georg was about  heavier than her predecessor,  faster, and better-protected through the use of Krupp armor rather than the Harvey steel used in the earlier ship.

General characteristics and machinery

Sankt Georg was  long at the waterline and was  long overall. She had a beam of  and a draft of . She displaced  as designed and up to  at full load. Her crew numbered 630 officers and men. Sankt Georg was fitted with two pole masts for observation. Steering was controlled by a single rudder.

The ship's propulsion system consisted of two 4-cylinder triple-expansion steam engines that drove a pair of screw propellers. Steam was provided by twelve coal-fired Yarrow water-tube boilers that were trunked into three funnels on the centerline. The engines were rated at  and produced a top speed of . On her full-power trials, she reached  and . Coal storage amounted to  normally and up to  at combat loading. The latter allowed the ship to steam for  at a cruising speed of .

Armament and armor
Sankt Georg was armed with a main battery of two large-caliber guns and several medium-caliber pieces. She carried two  G. L/40 S. guns in a twin-gun turret on the centerline forward. These guns fired a  shell at a muzzle velocity of , at a maximum range of . Each gun, manufactured by Škoda Works, was supplied with forty high-explosive and forty armor-piercing shells. The guns were housed in electrically trained turrets that allowed elevation to 20° and depression to −4°. Five  G. L/42 guns and four  L/40 guns, all mounted individually in casemates with one of the  G. L/42 on a single turret aft, rounded out her offensive armament. Sankt Georg carried 120 rounds for each of the 19 cm guns and 180 rounds for the 15 cm pieces.

A battery of nine  L/45 guns, six  L/44 quick-firing guns (QF) and two  L/33 QF guns provided close-range defense against torpedo boats. The 7 cm guns had an actual caliber of . They had a rate of fire of twenty rounds per minute, and each gun was supplied with 400 rounds of ammunition. The 4.7 cm guns had a rate of fire of 25 rounds per minute, and were typically stocked with 500 rounds. She carried several smaller weapons, including a pair of  machine guns and two  L/18 landing guns. One Škoda 7 cm K10 anti-aircraft gun was installed in 1916. Sankt Georg was also equipped with a pair of  torpedo tubes, one on each broadside.

The ship was protected by a main armored belt that was  thick in the central portion that protected the ammunition magazines and machinery spaces, and reduced to  on either end. Transverse armored bulkheads that were  thick capped the armored belt on either end. She had an armored deck that was  thick. Her two gun turrets had 210 mm thick faces, and the conning tower had  thick sides.

Service history
On 11 March 1901, the keel for Sankt Georg was laid down at the Pola Arsenal. She was launched on 8 December 1903, and completed on 21 July 1905. Starting from her commissioning, Sankt Georg frequently served in the training squadron, along with the three s, though she alternated in the squadron with the armored cruiser Kaiser Karl VI. Once the summer training schedule was completed each year, the ships of the training squadron were demobilized in the reserve squadron, which was held in a state of partial readiness.

In April 1907, Sankt Georg and the protected cruiser  were sent to the United States to represent Austria-Hungary at the Jamestown Exposition, the commemoration of the 300th anniversary of the Jamestown colony, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. In addition to the celebration at Jamestown, Sankt Georg also visited Annapolis and New York City while on the trip. In addition to the Austro-Hungarian delegation, the international fleet consisted of warships from Great Britain, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, and several other nations. The event started on 26 April, and over the following two weeks, the crews from many of the ships, including Sankt Georg, competed in various sailing and rowing races. Of eighteen races, Sankt Georgs crew placed in six, winning two.

World War I
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated in Sarajevo; the assassination sparked the July Crisis and ultimately the First World War, which broke out a month later on 28 July. The German battlecruiser , which had been assigned to the Mediterranean Division, sought the protection of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, and so Admiral Anton Haus sent the fleet, including Sankt Georg, south on 7 August to assist his German ally. Goebens commander, Admiral Wilhelm Souchon, intended to use the Austro-Hungarian move as a feint to distract the British Mediterranean Fleet which was pursuing Goeben; Souchon instead took his ship to Constantinople in the Ottoman Empire. Their decoy mission complete, Sankt Georg and the rest of the fleet returned to port without engaging any British forces.

Following the Italian declaration of war against the Central Powers on 23 May 1915, the entire Austro-Hungarian fleet sortied to bombard Italian coastal targets. Sankt Georg took part in the operation; escorted by a pair of torpedo boats, she shelled the city of Rimini. She damaged a railroad bridge and was not engaged by Italian forces. Thereafter, the Austro-Hungarians returned to their strategy of serving as a fleet in being, which would tie down Allied naval forces. Haus hoped that torpedo boats and mines could be used to reduce the numerical superiority of the Italian fleet before a decisive battle could be fought. For most of the war, Sankt Georg was assigned to the Cruiser Flotilla and based at Cattaro, though she was too slow to operate with the newer s that carried out the bulk of offensive operations.

Battle of the Strait of Otranto

During the Battle of the Strait of Otranto on 15 May 1917, Sankt Georg was deployed to support the three light cruisers commanded by Captain Miklós Horthy—, , and —that had raided the Otranto Barrage in the southern Adriatic. After completing their attack on the Allied defenses, the three cruisers turned north before being engaged by British and Italian warships, including the British cruiser . Horthy called for reinforcements, which led Sankt Georg to sortie, accompanied by two destroyers and four torpedo boats. The Austro-Hungarians hoped that Sankt Georg might cut off the weaker Allied cruisers and destroy them.

While Sankt Georg was steaming to join the battle, Novara was hit by shells from Dartmouth that damaged her boilers, significantly reducing her speed. She soon broke down but at the same time, shortly after 11:00, most of the Allied warships broke off the engagement, having spotted smoke on the horizon from Austro-Hungarian reinforcements. By that time, Sankt Georg was still about  away. While Dartmouth and the other Allied ships were withdrawing, several Italian destroyers closed to attack the stricken Novara and her sister ships. Heavy Austro-Hungarian fire drove them off and by 12:07 they had retreated with the rest of the Anglo-Italian ships. Sankt Georg arrived and Saida took Novara under tow for the voyage back to port. The four cruisers assembled in line-ahead formation, with Sankt Georg the last vessel in the line, to cover the other three ships. Later in the afternoon, the old coastal defense ship  and three more torpedo boats joined the ships to strengthen the escort.

Cattaro Mutiny

By early 1918, the long periods of inactivity had begun to wear on the crews of several warships at Cattaro, including Sankt Georg. At this time, Sankt Georg was the flagship of the Cruiser Flotilla, commanded by Konteradmiral (Rear Admiral) Alexander Hansa. On 1 February, the Cattaro Mutiny broke out, starting aboard Sankt Georg. An enlisted man shot the ship's executive officer in the head, badly injuring him, when mutineers seized control of the ship. They then rapidly gained control of Kaiser Karl VI and most of the other major warships in the harbor. There was some resistance to the mutiny by crewmembers; the wireless operators aboard Sankt Georg prevented a message announcing the mutiny from being sent to the rest of the fleet and the crews of the more active vessels tended to oppose the rebellion. A tense stand-off began between the rebel and loyalist ships in the harbor: the destroyer  steamed out and trained her torpedo tubes at Sankt Georg, before being recalled by Hansa's chief of staff. Helgolands commander, Erich Heyssler, also moved to prepare his ship's torpedoes but Sankt Georgs gunners aimed their 24 cm guns at Helgoland, which convinced Heyssler to back down.

The mutineers issued a lengthy list of demands, that ranged from longer periods of leave to and end to the war, based on the United States President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points. The following day, many of the mutinous ships abandoned the effort and rejoined loyalist forces in the inner harbor; first the light cruisers and most of the torpedo boats escaped from the guns of the mutineers, followed by several of the other larger vessels. By late in the day, only the men aboard Sankt Georg and a handful of destroyers and torpedo boats remained in rebellion. Only on the morning of 3 February, after the arrival of the s of the III Division, were the last of the mutineers convinced to surrender. Trials on the ringleaders commenced quickly, and four men were executed, including the sailor who had shot Sankt Georgs executive officer.

Fate
In the aftermath of the Cattaro Mutiny, most of the obsolete warships of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, including Sankt Georg, were decommissioned to reduce the number of idle warships. On 3 November 1918, the Austro-Hungarian government signed the Armistice of Villa Giusti with Italy, ending their participation in the conflict. After the end of the war, Sankt Georg was ceded as a war prize to Great Britain, under the terms of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. She was then sold to ship breakers in Italy and broken up for scrap after 1920.

See also
Euro gold and silver commemorative coins (Austria), one of which commemorates Sankt Georgs visit to the United States.

Footnotes

References

Further reading

 

Cruisers of the Austro-Hungarian Navy
Ships built in Pola
1903 ships
World War I cruisers of Austria-Hungary