page_title: British campaign in the Baltic (1918–19)
section_title: Main actions
hierarchical_section_title: British campaign in the Baltic (1918–19) / Naval forces involved / Main actions
context_page_description: The British campaign in the Baltic 1918–19 was a part of the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. The codename of the Royal Navy campaign was "Operation Red Trek". The intervention played a key role in enabling the establishment of the independent states of Estonia and Latvia but failed to secure the control of Petrograd by White Russian forces, which was one of the main goals of the campaign.
context_section_description: British forces denied the Bolsheviks the ability to move by sea, Royal Navy ships bombarded the Bolsheviks on land in support of Estonian and Latvian troops, and provided supplies.
  On the night of 4 December, the cruiser HMS Cassandra struck a German-laid mine while on patrol duties north of Liepāja, and sank with the loss of 11 of her crew.
  On 26 December, British warships captured the Bolshevik destroyers Avtroil and Spartak, which at the time were shelling the port of Tallinn. Both units were presented to the Estonian Provisional Government and, as Lennuk and Vambola, formed the nucleus of the Estonian Navy. Forty Bolshevik prisoners of war were executed by the Estonian government on Naissaar in February 1919 despite British protests. The new Commissar of the Baltic Fleet—Fedor Raskolnikov—was captured onboard Spartak. He was exchanged on 27 May 1919 for 17 British officers captured by the Soviets and later appointed Commissar of the Caspian Flotilla by Trotsky. In the Baltic, Raskolnikov was replaced by Nikolai Kuzmin.
  In April 1919, Latvian Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis was forced to seek refuge on board the Saratov under the protection of British ships.
  In the summer of 1919, the Royal Navy bottled up the Red fleet in Kronstadt. Several sharp skirmishes were fought near Kotlin Island. In the course of one of these clashes, on 31 May, during a Bolshevik probing action to the west, the  battleship Petropavlovsk scored two hits on the destroyer HMS Walker from a distance of 14,000 yards (12,802 m), when a flotilla of British destroyers attempted to catch the outgunned Bolshevik destroyer Azard. Walker, which acted as a lure, suffered some damage and two of her crew were wounded, while the other British destroyers eventually disengaged when they came too close to Bolshevik coastal artillery and minefields. Admiral Cowan soon realised that Tallinn was not an ideal base of operations and sought a base closer to Kronstadt. On 5 June Cowan and his naval units arrived at the new anchorage at Björkö Sound, which proved ideal for actions against Kronstadt. However, on 9 June the Soviet Navy's destroyers Gavril and Azard launched a raid on the location, and the submarine HMS L55 was sunk with all hands in the aftermath, apparently after being cornered in a British-laid minefield by the Soviet warships. The action prompted the British to lay several new obstacles and minefields to protect the anchorage. Cowan also requested that Finland allocate a squadron of ships to provide additional protection for the anchorage as well as to take part in the security and patrol duties in the area. The Finnish Navy complied and sent several gun and torpedo boats as well as motor minesweepers to Björkö.
  A flotilla of British Coastal Motor Boats under the command of Lieutenant Augustus Agar raided Kronstadt Harbour twice, sinking the cruiser Oleg and the depot ship Pamiat Azova on 17 June as well as damaging the battleships Petropavlovsk and Andrei Pervozvanny in August, at the cost of three CMBs in the last attack. The British claim that the motor boats damaged the Petropavlosk is dismissed by Soviet records. The first raid was intended to support a significant mutiny at the Krasnaya Gorka fort which was eventually suppressed by the 12 in (300 mm) guns of the Bolshevik battleships. In early July the British  received reinforcements which included the aircraft carrier HMS Vindictive whose aircraft carried out bombing and strafing runs against gun and searchlight installations at Kronstadt.
  In the autumn of 1919, British forces—including the monitor HMS Erebus—provided gunfire support to General Nikolai Yudenich's White Russian Northwestern army in its offensive against Petrograd. The Russians tried to disrupt these bombardments by laying mines using the Orfey-class destroyers Azard, Gavril, Konstantin, and Svoboda. The latter three ships were sunk in a British minefield on 21 October 1919, during an attempt to defect to Estonia. The White army's offensive failed to capture Petrograd and on 2 February 1920, the Republic of Estonia and Bolshevis
caption: Fore turret of the battleship Petropavlovsk (1925)
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