Scuttled to avoid capture 8 April 1918

HMS 'E1', built by Chatham Dockyard, launched 9/11/1912. Destroyed-to avoid capture at Helsingfors, 8/4/1918.

The German Battleship SMS Moltke was torpedoed by the British Submarine E1,near Riga, on the 19th August 1915. By the 21st, with too many ships sunk and damaged, the Germans call off the attacks and Riga is saved from bombardment from the sea. The city does not fall to the Germans for another two years. Lietenant Commander Laurence of E1 was told by Nicholas II, “You have saved our town of Riga.”

With the Germans ashore at Hango in Finland and moving on Helsingfors, the surviving submarines of the British Baltic Flotilla are taken to sea one at a time, blown up and scuttled off the port. Between the 4th and the 8th, 'E-1', 'E-8', 'E-9', 'E-19' and 'C-26', 'C-27', 'C-35' are denied to the Germans in this way. On 3 April 1918, one month after the Russian surrender at Brest-Litovsk, the four E-class and three C-class British submarines at Helsingfors (Helsinki) were scuttled to avoid capture by German troops coming to the aid of anti-Bolshevik White Finnish forces.