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Updated: April 30, 2025
This success was due chiefly to the superiority of the Russian naval forces, which made it possible to precede their infantry attack with heavy preparatory artillery fire. By March 27, 1916, the Russians had advanced to the Oghene Dere River, another of the numerous small rivers flowing into the Black Sea between Rizeh and Trebizond.
As early as February 23, 1916, the right wing of the Russian army had reached and occupied the town of Ispir on the river Chorok, about fifty miles northwest of Erzerum, and halfway between that city and Rizeh, a town on the south shore of the Black Sea, less than fifty miles east of Trebizond. At the same time Russian destroyers were bombarding the Black Sea coast towns.
Hardly had the Turks recovered from this blow when their left wing in the north suffered another serious reverse through the loss of the Black Sea port of Rizeh. This event took place on March 8, 1916, and the capture was accomplished by the fresh Russian troops that had been landed a few days before at Atina, from which Rizeh is only twenty-two miles distant.
On March 1 two Russian armies were moving rapidly on Trebizond, one along the shores of the Black Sea through Rizeh, and the other in a northwesterly direction from Erzerum. The capture of Erzerum was effected in bitter wintry weather. During the assault on the fortress several Turkish regiments were annihilated or taken prisoners with all their officers. Many Turks perished from the cold.
Fourteen nuns and 101 other persons were killed or drowned March 30, 1916, when the Russian hospital ship Portugal was sunk in the Black Sea between Batum and Rizeh on the Anatolian coast by a torpedo. The Portugal had stopped and was preparing to take aboard wounded men on shore.
Under their protective fire fresh troops were landed a few days later at Atina on the Black Sea, about sixty miles east of Trebizond, which promptly occupied that town. From there they rapidly advanced southward toward Rizeh, forcing the Turks to evacuate their positions and capturing some prisoners as well as a few guns, together with rifles and ammunition.
Following the capture of Atina, the Russians took Rizeh on March 9, 1916, a city thirty-five miles east of Trebizond, an advance of forty miles in three days toward that important port. The fleet cooperated, and it was announced that the defenses of Trebizond itself were under fire and fast crumbling away.
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