A squadron of the German Imperial Navy under the eye of a Zeppelin off the North Sea island and port of Helgoland.
Deutscher Geschwader vor HelgolandGerman squadron off HeligolandLogo, bottom left: M Dieterle, Kielbottom right: PH 125Handwritten: 1915Reverse:Verlag: M Dieterle, Kiel.
"The fighting spirit of the crew has sunk so low that we would be delighted to get a torpedo in the belly. It's what we would all like to see happen to our despicable officers. If anyone had been heard wishing any such thing a year and a half ago he would have received a good thrashing. There is an evil spirit loose among us and it is only our good upbringing that stops us imitating what happened in the Russian Baltic fleet.[1] We all recognize that we have more to lose than our chains."
Journal entry from November 7, 1915 by German Seaman Richart Stumpf on board SMS Helgoland sailing through the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal to the Baltic Sea. Trapped by the British blockade, and fearful of defeat by the British Royal Navy, the German Imperial Navy stayed in port through much of the war, its inactivity damaging the morale of the seamen. Our source, Peter Englund, footnotes Stumpf's entry: '[1] Stumpf's reference is to the mutiny on the Russian battleship Potemkin in 1905. His memory, however, fails him on this: the Potemkin belonged to the Russian Black Sea Fleet not the Baltic fleet.'
The Beauty and the Sorrow: An Intimate History of the First World War by Peter Englund, page 177, copyright © 2009 by Peter England, publisher: Vintage Books, publication date: 2012
1915-11-07, 1915, November, Kiel,
