then want to be saddled with thousands of refugees and ordered McCully to bring no more than 250 down the Bosporus Strait in his ships. About 200 women and children were transported on Galveston and the destroyer, to Proti Island in the Sea of Marmara, with another thousand transported on American ships to the Crimea. On the morning of March 27, Galveston stood out from Novorossiysk, with 3-inch shells from Red shore batteries falling perilously close, as the beleaguered city fell to the Reds. Koehler wrote, "Several small boat trips were made from the Galveston in a last effort to rescue a few more women and children, but it was impossible to get any considerable number of them through the throng." Besides troops and refugees pouring into the Crimea, another 50,000 refugees were transported to the Bosporus on Russian ships. Koehler described the plight of those who could not flee, but instead sought to negotiate with the Bolsheviks for surrender, "The Reds promised immunity to all except malefactors, on the condition the troops would march against the Poles; but immediately on the surrender being accomplished, the Reds began the usual slaughter of officers and stripped the soldiers of their clothes. The Cossacks again took to arms, about 10,000 taking to the hills and about 2,000 escaping across the Georgian border. Unable to take them along, about 700 children were drowned at the beach by their mothers, who then took to the hills with the men." The debacle at Novorossiysk completely discredited Denikin, who fled the Crimea on March 21 and sailed to England. One of his last acts was to begrudgingly appoint General (Baron) Pyotr Wrangel as commander in chief of the White resistance. On April 4, Denikin issued a proclamation to the Don, Terek and Kuban cossack representatives dissolving the democratic government that had been formed on February 4, but making no provision for representative institutions. Wrangel, known as the "Black Baron" by the Reds, immediately locked down the Crimea as the last enclave of the White movement, ruthlessly restoring discipline by executing all looters, agitators, speculators and commissars, in one instance parading 370 men in front of him and then having them all shot. The remaining men were offered the alternative of joining the White Army. On April 10, Wrangel sailed with an expedition to Perekop in the Sea of Azov and after six days of heavy fighting