ABSTRACT
Against all the odds, the British at the end of 1918 retained a presence on the Caspian following the ignominious retreat of Dunsterforce from Baku. Dunsterville himself became a scapegoat for the setback of September and lost his command, but his contingent was renamed ‘Norperforce’, and rapidly regrouped around the Persian port of Enzeli. Moreover, the efforts of Royal Navy personnel from the East Indies Squadron were to ensure that the UK, despite considerable logistical obstacles, was now about to gain a true fleet-in-being upon the Caspian Sea for the first time. Under the efforts of Captain Washington and Engineer-Commander O’Dogherty, the port facilities at both Enzeli and Krasnovodsk were scoured and used to convert several recently purchased merchant ships into improvised gunboats. Before long a small naval force under Commodore Norris, comprising the recently named Venture, alongside the Allaverdi, Emile, Nobel, Asia, Bibiabat, Zoroaster and Slava, was ready to make to sea. These ships were slow-moving, light-draught vessels which had been stripped down and had their decks retrofitted with antiquated 4.7 inch naval guns, the latter transported painstakingly by land over the tough mountain roads of north-west Persia. Compared with both the gunboats of the Russian Caspian Sea Flotilla, and the potential menace of the Bolshevikcontrolled Baltic Fleet, which could theoretically enter the Caspian via the Volga river, the British naval flotilla was a tactically weak force. Nonetheless its very existence, and the bold manner in which it was employed, kept the British contingent as a valid political presence in the region for several months to come.2
