SMS Zenta

1914

The first naval loss of the Great War Location: Adriatic Sea, off Bar, Montenegro · Coordinates: 42.08°N 19.09°E · Casualties: 173 · Survivors: ~130 · Depth: 70 m · Cause: naval gunfire — Cornered by the combined French and British Mediterranean fleet at the Battle of Antivari, off the Montenegrin port of Bar, on 16 August 1914. Outnumbered and outranged by battleships of the pre-dreadnought class. Her captain Paul Pachner refused to strike and she sank in forty-five minutes. · Fate: located · Montenegrin coast · Type: protected cruiser · Tonnage: 2,350 tons · Crew: 308 · Flag: Austria-Hungary · Launched: 1897 Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser, patrolling the Adriatic at the opening of the war. Cornered by the combined French and British Mediterranean fleet at the Battle of Antivari off Bar, Montenegro, on 16 August 1914; outnumbered and outgunned, her captain refused to strike his colours. The first naval loss of the First World War. 173 dead; around 130 picked up by Montenegrin fishermen. The Vessel SMS Zenta was an Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser of the Imperial and Royal Navy (k.u.k. Kriegsmarine), built at the Pola Naval Arsenal between 1896 and 1899 and commissioned on 28 May 1899. She was 97 metres long, 2,350 tons displacement, and armed with eight 12-centimetre primary guns (four in casemate positions along her broadside, four in deck positions on her superstructure), ten 4.7-centimetre secondary guns, and two 45-centimetre torpedo tubes. Her armour protection was light: a 25-millimetre armoured deck and minimal turret protection, consistent with her protected-cruiser rather than armoured-cruiser classification. She was the lead ship of the Zenta-class protected cruisers, a three-ship class (Zenta, Aspern, Szigetvár) that had been built during the 1890s as the Austro-Hungarian Navy's contribution to the colonial and trade-protection mission in the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and the eastern Mediterranean. Her operational role before 1914 had been the routine colonial-presence operations of the Austro-Hungarian Navy: visits to eastern Mediterranean ports, coastal survey operations, and occasional diplomatic-presence deployments to the Chinese Treaty Ports (Zenta participated in the international relief expedition during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900). By August 1914, Zenta was 15 years old and substantially obsolete by modern naval standards. Her primary armament of 12-centimetre guns was inferior to the standard 15-centimetre primary armament of contemporary Bri The Disaster Captain Pachner's tactical assessment at approximately 06:45 on 16 August 1914 was that Zenta and Ulan could not reasonably engage the Allied force. The two Austrian ships attempted to retreat northwest towards the safety of the Montenegrin coastal waters and the Austrian mainland. The Allied force pursued. At approximately 07:30 on 16 August 1914, the French cruiser Waldeck-Rousseau and the British destroyer HMS Wolverine closed to engagement range with Zenta, approximately 8 kilometres from the Austrian cruiser. The French battleship Jean Bart was approximately 12 kilometres astern of Zenta and closing. The subsequent engagement lasted approximately 50 minutes. Zenta's speed of 21 knots was inferior to the Allied pursuit force; her primary armament of 12-centimetre guns was substantially outranged by the 19.4-centimetre guns of Waldeck-Rousseau and the 30.5-centimetre primary guns of Jean Bart. Jean Bart's primary guns began engaging Zenta at approximately 08:00 at a range of approximately 9 kilometres; the 30.5-centimetre shells were straddling Zenta within approximately 3 minutes of opening fire. The first Jean Bart 30.5-centimetre shell to strike Zenta did so at approximately 08:15: the shell struck the Austrian cruiser's central superstructure and destroyed her fore-bridge. Two further 30.5-centimetre shell hits within approximately 5 minutes eliminated Zenta's fighting capability. By 08:30 the Austrian cruiser was substantially disabled: her engines were damaged, her p