At the start of World War I in July 1914, Russia had not yet completed its s or dreadnought battleships, leaving "Rurik" and the "Bayan"-class cruisers as the core of the Baltic Fleet. These ships bore the burden of naval operations against the significantly more powerful Imperial German Navy in the Baltic. At the time, "Rurik" served as the flagship of Admiral Nikolai Ottovich von Essen, the commander of Russian naval forces in the Baltic. "Rurik"s commander was initially Captain Mikhail Bakhirev. He sortied with "Rurik" and the armored cruiser on 27 August to make a sweep into the western Baltic in the vicinity of Bornholm, Denmark, and Danzig, Germany. They failed to locate any enemy vessels, however. The operation bolstered the morale of the Baltic Fleet, but Tsar Nicholas II refused to grant Essen the freedom of maneuver he sought to force action with the German fleet. The Russians nevertheless won a major intelligence victory that month when the German cruiser ran aground in Russian territory and they were able to recover German code books, allowing the Russian Navy to decrypt German wireless signals.