On 30 October 1918, Admiral Sir Somerset Gough-Calthorpe, Commander-in-Chief of British naval forces in the Mediterranean, concluded an armistice with representatives of the Ottoman Empire at Mudros, the island off the Dardanelles that had served as a British base since the operations in 1915. Marines and Indian troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula and occupied the fortifications that had defied the British and French in 1915 and minesweepers set to work to clear channels through the formidable minefields. Finally, on 12 November at midday, Calthorpe, flying his flag in the dreadnought Superb in company with her sister ship Temeraire, the semi-dreadnoughts Lord Nelson and Agamemnon, 5 British cruisers and 18 destroyers (3 Australian), led a British squadron through the Dardanelles. The British were followed at half-hourly intervals by a French squadron (5 battleships, 2 armoured cruisers, 6 destroyers), an Italian squadron (2 battleships, a cruiser, 3 destroyers) and a Greek squadron (armoured cruiser, 3 destroyers). The British and Indian troops occupying the forts were paraded as the allied ships passed. The Allied Fleets cruised through the Sea of Marmora during the night and anchored off Constantinople at 08.00 Local Time on 13 November. The British quickly left for the Gulf of Ismid which would be their main base for the present.

Calthorpe and the Allies were immediately faced with the problem of what lay beyond Constantinople and the Bosphorus in the Black Sea. A week after their arrival off Constantinople on Admiralty orders British and Allied warships began to fan out to ports along the Black Sea to show the flag and to take steps to expedite carrying out the naval provisions of the armistice with Turkey and Germany. The collapse of Russia and the Bolshevik seizure of power in late 1917 had led to German and Austrian forces penetrating deeply into Russian territory including the occupation of the Crimea and major naval base of Sevastopol. The fate of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, once a relatively formidable force that had enjoyed a fair measure of success in the Black Sea until the revolution and collapse, had been a matter of concern to the Allies who feared the Germans and their Allies would seize some or all of the ships and employ them in the Mediterranean.