The peace of the steppes

August 1914. As Europe goes to war, the German battlecruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau run east across the Mediterranean under Admiral Souchon, bound for Constantinople, where the war party around Enver Pasha waits for exactly such a gift. In the Ionian Sea on the night of 6 to 7 August, Rear Admiral Ernest Troubridge stands across their path with four British armored cruisers. Judging the Goeben's guns too heavy for his squadron, he turns away without firing. The Germans reach the Dardanelles, the ships are theatrically sold to the Ottoman navy, and on 29 October, under the Ottoman flag, Souchon bombards Russia's Black Sea ports. Within a week the Ottoman Empire is in the war that will kill it.

In the timeline recorded here, Troubridge does not turn. At first light on the seventh his four cruisers come down out of the haze in line abreast, accepting the arithmetic his flag captain begged him to refuse. The arithmetic is as bad as promised. Two of his cruisers are wrecked in the first half hour by eleven-inch salvos fired beyond his own guns' reach. But four ships force even a giant to maneuver, and the giant is far from home with strained boilers and nowhere to coal. One British salvo finds the Goeben's after boiler rooms. Her speed falls to eight knots, and by noon, listing and escorted by the whole hunting Mediterranean Fleet, she is limping not toward Constantinople but toward internment at Malta. The gift never arrives.