Tower and Town, June 2017

  (view the full edition)

Rescuing The Romanovs

The sixth HMS Marlborough was laid down during the naval race with imperial Germany before the First World War as an Iron Duke class battleship and commissioned in the summer of 1914. They were popularly known as 'dreadnoughts' after the first ship which made a dramatic break from previous practice. Firstly all their guns were of the same calibre (13½" in the case of HMS Marlborough) which made the fall-of-shot uniform and so the aim easier to adjust. Secondly all the gun laying, firing and corrections were commanded from an armoured fire control station high in the superstructure. Thirdly they were driven by steam turbines (not reciprocating [piston] engines) and very much faster than their predecessors. Fourthly their boilers were fired by oil not coal, making replenishment simpler and the boiler rooms cleaner. She joined the Grand Fleet and fought at Jutland in 1916, but after the war moved to the Mediterranean Fleet.

After the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917, its takeover by the Bolsheviks the following year and the Civil War that followed, the imperial royal family was moved East from Moscow. Britain and other powers intervened in the civil war between the Bolshevik 'reds' and the 'whites', both in the north around the Baltic and in the south around the Black Sea (indeed my father-in-law in 2nd Bn DCLI was sent to guard the railway over the mountains between the Black Sea (Baku) and the Caspian Sea (Batum) ). HMS Marlborough was ordered to Sevastopol and then on to Yalta.

The reason for HMS Marlborough being sent to the Black Sea in 1919 was to provide an escape route for the Romanov imperial family if they could flee to the coast. This was in spite of the deep reservations of our King George V who was very wary of bringing them to Britain as they were not popular here and their presence could inflame revolutionary and republican enthusiasms. In the event the principal members of the imperial family were all murdered at Ekaterinburg and HMS Marlborough only brought off some 80 people; These included the Dowager Empress, the Grand Duke Nicolas and other lower members of the imperial family - plus several hundred cases of luggage. The Dowager Empress took over the Captain's cabin, and another 34 officers' cabins were taken over by the Russian party. All were taken to Malta and put ashore.

HMS Marlborough served in various roles until scrapped under the terms of the London Naval Treaty of 1930.

Alexander Kirk-Wilson