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Themistocles once said:
“He who commands the sea has command of everything,”
and the Greeks have had a long naval tradition since those days.
Which brings us to Georgios Averof—
the last-built and last-surviving armored cruiser.
To the Greeks, she's not just a monument of steel and engineering—
she's a national treasure.
And the Hellenic Navy Jack and Admirals flag
indicate that this is still a warship in commissioned service.
As a result, any passing Hellenic Navy ships are required to render honors.
Welcome to Athens!
After the unfortunate war against Turkey in 1897,
Greece was trying to upgrade their Armed Forces.
In 1907, the Greek Naval Command learned that two Pisa-class armored cruisers
were being built at the shipyards of an Italian company called "Orlando."
The Italians wanted to sell one of those cruisers.
The Turks were also interested in the ship,
but weren't able to send a request in time due to financial issues.
But we had a great advantage: we had a benefactor, Georgios Averof.
According to his will, he had left a large sum of money for that time
to the country— 8,000,000 gold drachmas.
The money was used to purchase the ship—
it was enough to cover a third of the cruiser's cost.
Thus, we were able to buy the ship
and named her after our benefactor—Georgios Averof.
For the ambitious Greek Navy, she was the mightiest ship they possessed
and became a source of pride for the Greeks
from the moment she was commissioned into service.
A snout bow is the element of the cruiser's appearance
that draws most attention.
That design feature was brought by the legacy of ancient triremes,
and it was common to all warships of the steam-powered, armor-clad fleet era.
Simply put, Averof was the last armored cruiser to be commissioned in the world.
Performance characteristics of cruiser Georgios Averof in 1911.
Length: 140.5 m. Beam: 21 m. Draft: 7.5 m.
Total displacement: 10,400 tons.
Armament. Main caliber: four 234-mm Mark X guns.
Medium caliber: eight 190-mm Mark VI guns coupled in four turrets.
Secondary armament: sixteen 76-mm guns.
The cruiser was armed with three 430-mm underwater torpedo tubes.
Armor. Belt: up to 200 mm; deck: 50 mm.
Main turrets: 200 mm; conning tower: 180 mm.
Propulsion: two steam engines and 22 Belleville boilers.
Power: 20,808 h.p.
Top speed: 24 knots. Cruising range: 2,480 miles at 17.5 knots.
The ship was commissioned into service in May 1911,
but after leaving the shipyard, she set out not to Greece, but to England.
There she would participate in the festivities
dedicated to the coronation of King George V.
After the parade, the cruiser ran aground and was sent to Plymouth for repairs.
As was common for a lot of fleets at the time,
the relationship between the officers and enlisted men wasn’t always idyllic.
But if you bear in mind that after accepting delivery,
the crew were sent not back home to Greece
to train and become a smoothly operating machine,
but to an international review.
If you then add the incident with the ship running aground,
you can imagine that tensions were starting to run a little bit high.
The cup of patience overflowed however,
one day in July 1911, when for lunch the crew were served this.
It's a Stilton, apparently,
a close relative of Roquefort and considered a delicacy.
Now, the Greek sailors,
who were a little bit more used to their native feta,
didn’t understand the sophistication involved in eating this,
and frankly I'm inclined to agree.
Angered at having been served moldy cheese, the crew rebelled.
While the rebellion was put down without the use of violence,
both the commander and the instigators of the rebellion
were recalled back to Greece.
Pavlos Kountouriotis was sent as a matter of some urgency to England,
where he was then appointed as the new CO.
The appointment of Pavlos Kunturioitis as Commander
at helm of the most modern ship of the Greek Navy was quite appropriate.
He was born into the family of a famous political figure.
At the age of 20, he started his service in the Greek Navy.
He fought in the Greco-Turkish War of 1897.
Three years later, he was the first in the Greek Navy
to cross the Atlantic Ocean while being at helm of training ship Miaulis.
Thanks to his strong-willed character
and the excellent attributes of a naval officer that he possessed,
Kountouriotis ascended the career ladder very quickly,
and in 1908, he became The Adjutant General to the King of Greece, Gergios I.
In 1912, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, and Bulgaria
declared war on the Ottoman Empire.
Kountouriotis, being Commander of the Aegean Sea Fleet at that time,
played an important role
in the approval of that decision by the Greek authorities.
Kountouriotis told Prime Minister Venizelos then:
“I'm not afraid of the Turkish Fleet,
even though its ships are more numerous than ours.
I will be able to liberate the Aegean Sea
with the help of valor and the bravery of Greek sailors alone.”
Kountouriotis attained the rank of rear admiral,
and in the fall of 1912,
he directed a series of successful amphibious operations
that led to the capture of several key islands
and enabled the establishment of Greek Naval bases.
Averof was the most modern ship of the Greek Navy,
and even among the navies of all the opposing countries.
The reasons why she became the Greek flagship are clear.
Kountouriotis achieved fame and earned the people's love
after liberating the Greek islands.
However, having done so, the Admiral; his flagship, Averof;
and the entire Greek Fleet became the highest-priority target for the enemy,
and they didn't make the Greeks wait for too long.
On December 16, ships of the Ottoman Empire set out to sea
in order to fight off the Greek squadron that was blocking the Dardanelles.
Kountouriotis spotted the enemy at 8:20 AM.
The Admiral lined up his main forces,
comprising flagship Averof and three coastal defense battleships,
and set out towards the enemy.
The Turkish fleet, comprising two squadron battleships
armed with 280-mm main caliber guns, was stronger.
In addition, in specific conditions,
they could be supported by coastal batteries.
In the space of an hour, the Turkish ships approached the Greeks
to a distance of 10 km and fired first salvos at them.
A minute later the Greeks answered.
At a range of 9 km, these 234-mm rifles opened fire.
Built by the British firm of Armstrong,
notice the 9.2-inch— they were in common service
with the Royal Navy at the beginning of 20th century.
Averof mounted four of these guns in two twin turrets,
and the domed shape of the turrets’ roofs unveiled their British origin.
There were 18 people in the gun houses.
and they were able of servicing the rifle so quickly
that every barrel could fire around every 8 seconds.
At some point, the fight, known as the Battle of Elli,
turned into a fight that pitted Averof against the entire Turkish squadron.
Since our other ships were older and much slower than the flagship,
Kountouriotis had to speed up with his ship Averof,
leave the other ships behind,
and head into battle against the Turkish forces alone.
Accurate salvos from Averof combined with daring maneuvers by Kountouriotis,
who led the cruiser right up to the Turkish flagship
in order to split the enemy squadron in half, caught the Turks cold.
The Turkish squadron focused their fire on Averof,
but their shells failed to reach their target.
The gunmen on the Greek cruiser were more accurate.
The Turkish formation was soon broken up
and they hurried to hide in the Dardanelles.
During the battle, the ship was caught up in crossfire
between the Turkish coastal batteries and their surface vessels.
She took three hits, but none of them were serious.
Averof was pretty well protected: her main belt was 20 centimeters thick,
and she had an additional 18 centimeters
covering vital spaces such as her barbettes.
The armor was of a new cemented type, and despite being only half as thick
as the 40 centimeters of the old iron Turkish battleships,
it provided much greater protection.
Indeed, with the new armament and protection, when the ship arrived
the Greeks christened her as a thoriktó—a battleship.
That was the first victory of the Greek Navy.
Basically, it was a victory of one ship: Averof, with Kountouriotis at her helm.
A month later, on January 18, 1913,
the Turkish squadron set out to sea again, and a second battle broke out.
The second battle also turned into a duel
between Averof and the entire Turkish fleet,
but the results were even more disastrous for the Turks.
The Turkish fleet found themselves blocked in the Dardanelles,
and their ships took severe damage.
Despite the focused fire of the Turkish guns,
only two men were killed and eight wounded on board Averof.
Those men were the only crew losses
the ship suffered in the entire time of her service.
After the battle,
which would be historically known as the Battle of Lemnos,
the Turkish Fleet entirely lost its combat capabilities,
and the Greek forces, led by Averof, became the masters of the Aegean Sea.
Kountouriotis' victories over the Turkish fleet
brought the fame of a national hero for the Admiral,
and his cruiser became known as the “Menace of the Aegean Sea.”
Averof hardly took part in combat in World War I.
But in 1919, the third Greco-Turkish War broke out.
The cruiser supported allied troops
and helped evacuate the Greeks from Turkey in 1922,
when the battle met its unfortunate end.
Averof underwent a major overhaul and upgrade in France between 1925–27.
The torpedo tubes and some guns of her secondary armament
were demounted from the ship,
while a new fire-control system and anti-aircraft armament were installed.
The old propulsion remained, as the cost of replacing it
was considered to be unreasonably expensive for such an old ship.
By this point, most fleets in the world had moved to a liquid-fuel system,
but on Averof, coal was retained.
You can imagine how pleasant it would've been in the heat
for the stokers to take the coal from the bunkers, put it into the fire boxes,
and then you had to extract the ash from underneath—
and that was extracted by use of an elevator at the top.
There were 22 of these water-filled boilers in two engine compartments
to provide a little bit of a redundancy in case of battle damage.
If you look at the facts, Averof is something of a multinational ship:
the hull and armor are Italian, the boilers and engines are French,
the generators are German, and the armament—British.
The English guns of the Greek ironclad
had their chance to serve the crown in the next World War,
which Greece entered as an ally of Great Britain.
When combat began in 1940,
the Greek fleet and its irreplaceable flagship, Georgios Averof,
escorted convoys transporting troops
and all needed supplies for the citizens of the Greek islands,
and protected the coastline from the enemy.
In April of 1941, Germany invaded Greece,
and the Luftwaffe paid particular attention to the Hellenic Navy,
sinking a number of ships at anchor, including the old battleship, Kilkis.
Averof didn’t escape their attention.
Indeed, the German attacks were so fierce
that the anti-aircraft gunners would come to call it “the deadly watch.”
The German advance was so rapid that the remnants of the fleet
were forced to relocate first to Crete, and then Alexandria.
But naval headquarters ordered Averof to be scuttled,
on the premise that she was too old to be of military value,
and there seemed little merit
in giving the enemy a trophy of the hero of the Balkan Wars.
However, the crew on their own decided to ignore this order
and made their own break for Alexandria.
At night on April 18, the cruiser's commander, Ionis Vlachopoulos,
and a few crew members approached a closed harbor boom on a row boat.
The harbor boom was used to protect the ship at its station.
Using axes and handsaws,
the sailors cut through the harbor boom so Averof could set out to sea.
On April 23, the cruiser arrived in Alexandria
and became part of the British Mediterranean Forces.
Greece capitulated on the same day, and the government left the country.
In August of 1941, the ship, now under British operational control,
was sent to the Indian Ocean for convoy service.
She remained there, based out of Bombay, until the end of 1942.
Now, at this point, the 30-year-old ship was making 12 to 16 knots,
which, for a cruiser, is an indicator as to her state.
Even though in the 1925–27 refit,
her original Belleville boilers have been replaced by new ones.
However, that didn't prevent cruiser Averof from fulfilling her combat duties.
From November 1942, she patrolled the entrance to the Suez Canal.
Once the war was over and the Germans had left Greece,
Averof, as a flagship of the Greek Navy,
transported the Greek government back from exile, here, to Phaleron.
The day following the cruiser’s arrival, on October 17, 1944,
an official ceremony of raising the Greek flag in the Acropolis was organized,
involving the prime minister of that time—Georgios Papandreou.
The flag, which was raised on the sacred mountain
and symbolized the birth of a new free Greece, was the flag of cruiser Averof.
From 1945 until 1952, Averof was stationed at Salamis Naval Base
and used for allocating the Naval HQ.
The schedule of all ships of the Greek Navy of that time
is still preserved on a barbette of the main rear turret.
Patrol ships, corvettes, auxiliary vessels,
destroyers, and submarines were marked on it.
For example, the commander had the following information:
a patrol ship, designated time of departure,
where the ship was headed, arrival, designated time of arrival,
and a signal for the ship to set out to sea.
In 1984, the cruiser was towed to her current station,
and her status was changed to that of a museum ship.
Averof still remains the flagship of the Greek Navy,
and her crew carry out actual military service.
Every day, we work to preserve the ship and keep her alive.
It requires a lot of effort and money.
But it requires love before everything else.
If you don't love what you do, you won't make much of it.
But my crew and I, we all love this ship.
In December 2017, when cruiser Averof was leaving Saloniki,
where she had taken part in the festivities dedicated to the anniversary
of liberating North Greece from the Ottoman rule,
many citizens asked the sailors to stay—
they felt safe when they saw Averof in the port.
Fate has generally smiled upon the history of this ship.
Averof survived five wars,
was originally funded by donations from private Greek citizens,
and seventy years later was again rebuilt by donations from the public.
As a result, she can rightfully be described as a national treasure.
It's hard to think of a nation with a greater maritime tradition
than that of Greece— the bond between men and the sea.
As the Greek historian and author Dimitris Fotiadis once said,
“Without the fleet, we cannot see freedom.”