Gallipoli

CHAPTER THREE

SOMEWHAT more than half way down the Gallipoli Peninsula the hills rise up into a series of jagged peaks which are known as Sari Bair. Only the steepest and roughest of tracks leads to this spot, and except for an occasional shepherd and the men who tend the cemeteries on the mountainside, hardly anybody ever goes there. Yet the view from these heights, and especially from the central crest which is called Chunuk Bair, is perhaps the grandest spectacle of the whole Mediterranean.

On first reaching the summit one is quite unprepared for the extreme closeness of the scene which seemed so distant on the map and so remote in history; an illusion which is partly created, no doubt, by the silence and the limpid air. To the south, in Asia, lie Mount Ida and the Trojan plain, reaching down to Tenedos. To the east, the islands of Imbros and Samothrace come up out of the sea with the appearance of mountain tops seen above the clouds on a sunny morning; and one even fancies that one can descry Mount Athos on the Greek mainland in Europe, a hundred miles away. The Dardanelles, which split this scene in two, dividing Asia from Europe, are no more than a river at your feet.

On a fine day, when there is no movement on the surface of the water, all this is presented to the eye with the clear finite outlines and the very bright colours of a relief map modelled in clay. Every inlet and bay, every island, is exactly defined, and the ships in the sea below float like toys in a pond. From this point too the Gallipoli Peninsula is laid out before you with the intimate detail of a reef uncovered by the tide, and you can see as far as the extreme tip at Cape Helles where the cliffs fell sharply downward, their contours still visible beneath the water, into the unbelievable blue of the Ægean. It is not the flat pattern one sees from an aeroplane: Chunuk Bair is only 850 feet high, and therefore you yourself are part of the scene, slightly above it and seeing all, but still attached.

This illusion of nearness, this compression not only of space but of time, is very much helped by the fact that, through the centuries, hardly anything has been done to change the landscape. There are no new towns or highroads, no advertisements or tourist haunts, and this rocky soil can support only a light crop of wheat and olives, a few flocks of sheep and goats. Very probably this same coarse scrub covered the broken ground when Xerxes crossed the Hellespont below Chunuk Bair, and although since the siege of Troy the Scamander may have changed its windings and its name (it is now called the Mendere), it still meanders down to its ancient mouth at Kum Kale on the Asiatic side.

From our perch on Chunuk Bair the Hellespont — the Dardanelles — does not appear to be a part of the sea at all: it looks more like a stream running through a valley, an estuary scarcely wider than the Thames at Gravesend. In the course of an afternoon one might take a motor boat from one end to the other, for the distance is just over forty miles. The mouth at Cape Helles in the Mediterranean is 4,000 yards wide, but then the banks on either side open out to a distance of four and a half miles until they gradually close in again at the Narrows, 14 miles upstream. Here the passage is only 1600 yards across. Above the Narrows it again opens out to an average width of four miles until the Sea of Marmara is reached just above the town of Gallipoli.

There is no tide, but the Black Sea rivers and the melting snows create a four to five knot current, which at all times of the year sweeps down through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean. In a severe winter this current can be blocked with great chunks of floating ice. The depth of the water is easily enough to accommodate any ship afloat.

Although there is no point in the whole forty miles where a hostile vessel cannot be reached by direct or even point-blank fire from either shore, the key to the whole military position is, of course, the Narrows. It was just upstream from this point that Xerxes built the bridge of boats on which his army crossed into Europe, and here too Leander is supposed to have swum by night from Abydos to meet Hero in Sestos, on the European shore.[3]

Two ancient fortresses, one a square crenellated building in the town of Chanak on the Asiatic side, and the other an odd heart-shaped structure tilted towards the sea at Kilid Bahr on the opposite bank, stand guard over the Narrows, and it was here that the Turks established their main defences at the outbreak of war. These consisted of eleven forts with 72 guns, some of them new, a series of torpedo tubes designed to fire on vessels coming upstream, a minefield and, later on, a net of wire mesh to block submarines. They had in addition other heavier guns in forts at Kum Kale and Sedd-el-Bahr at the mouth of the straits, and various intermediate defences further upstream. After the first Allied bombardment of November 1914, the Germans made certain additions to this armament — notably eight 6-inch howitzer batteries which could change position fairly rapidly, and the number of searchlights was increased to eight. Nine lines of mines were laid in the vicinity of the Narrows. Along the whole length of the straits there were in all something like 100 guns.

These defences, however, were less formidable than they sound, since barely a score of the guns were of modern design, and ammunition was in short supply. Two divisions of infantry — one in the Gallipoli Peninsula and the other on the Asiatic side — were responsible for holding all the ground from the Gulf of Saros to the Asiatic coast opposite Tenedos in the event of the Allies making a landing.

The fleet which the Allies assembled to attack these obstacles was the greatest concentration of naval strength which had ever been seen in the Mediterranean. Apart from the cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers and lesser craft, the British had contributed fourteen battleships, two semi-dreadnoughts, the Lord Nelson and the Agamemnon, the battle-cruiser Inflexible and the newly completed Queen Elizabeth. The French squadron, under Admiral Guépratte, consisted of four battleships and their auxiliaries.

Although most of these battleships had become semi-obsolete their 12-inch guns were, of course, immensely superior to anything the Turks had on shore, and the Queen Elizabeth with her 15-inch guns was a more formidable opponent still. It was quite possible for the Fleet to fire on the forts at the mouth of the Dardanelles without ever coming into the range of the Turkish batteries. The only question was just how accurate this long range fire was going to be: how many forts would be knocked out before the Allied vessels closed in, as it were, for the kill?

Admiral Carden, flying his flag in the Queen Elizabeth, deployed his force in three divisions:

The attack itself was planned in three parts: a deliberate long-range bombardment followed by a medium-range bombardment, and finally an overwhelming fire at very close range. Under the cover of this attack minesweepers were to clear the channel up to the entrance of the straits. For the moment, the rest of the Fleet which was not engaged on diversionary missions was held in reserve.

At 9.51 a.m. on February 19 (which happened to be the 108th anniversary of Duckworth’s exploit), the assault began. A slow bombardment continued all morning, and at 2 p.m. Carden decided to close to six thousand yards. Up to this time, none of the Turkish guns had replied, but at 4.45 p.m. the Vengeance, the Cornwallis and the Suffren went closer still and drew the fire of two of the smaller forts. The other batteries were enveloped in dust and smoke and appeared to be deserted. By now, however, the light was failing, and Carden sounded the general recall. Vice-Admiral de Robeck in the Vengeance asked for permission to continue the attack, but this was refused as the ships were now silhouetted against the setting sun.

The results of this short winter day were not entirely satisfactory. It was observed that the firing was not very accurate so long as the ships were moving, and only 139 12-inch shells had been used. To be really effective it was evident that the Fleet would have to go in much closer and engage the individual Turkish guns one by one with direct fire.

There was, however, no immediate opportunity of putting these tactics to the test, because the weather broke that night, and rough seas continued for the next five days. Bitterly cold sleet and snow flew in the wind. Aware of the impatience at the Admiralty in London, and a little troubled by it, Carden sent off a message which Roger Keyes, his chief-of-staff, had drafted for him: ‘I do not intend to commence in bad weather leaving result undecided as from experience on first day I am convinced given favourable weather conditions that the reduction of the forts at the entrance can be completed in one day.’

It was almost true. When the storm quietened on February 25 Vice-Admiral de Robeck in the Vengeance led the attack right up to the mouth of the straits, and the Turkish and German gunners, unable to keep up the unequal struggle any longer, withdrew to the north. During the next few days, through intermittent gales, parties of marines and bluejackets were put on shore, and they roamed at will across the Trojan plain and the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, blowing up the abandoned guns, smashing the searchlights and wrecking the enemy emplacements. There were one or two skirmishes with the Turkish rearguard, but for the most part the countryside around Cape Helles and Kum Kale was deserted. The minesweepers were having some difficulty in making headway against the current, but they penetrated for a distance of six miles into the straits without finding any mines, and although the warships were repeatedly hit by the mobile guns on shore no vessel was lost or even seriously damaged. The casualties were trifling. On March 2 Admiral Carden sent a message to London saying that, given fine weather, he hoped to get through to Constantinople in about fourteen days.

This news was received with elation at the Admiralty, and in the War Council. All earlier hesitations vanished; now everyone wanted to be associated with the adventure, and Lord Fisher even spoke of going out to the Dardanelles himself to take command of the next stage of the operations: the assault on the main enemy forts at the Narrows. In Chicago the price of grain fell sharply in expectation that, on the arrival of the Allied fleet in Constantinople, Russia would soon resume the export of her wheat.

But now difficulties appeared. The Turkish soldiers on shore were beginning to recover their confidence, for they returned to Kum Kale and Cape Helles and drove off the British landing parties with heavy rifle fire. At the same time the Turks had much more success against the Fleet with their howitzers and small mobile guns; they lay low until each bombardment from the Fleet was over and then, emerging from their emplacements, moved to other hidden positions in the scrub; and so it often happened that the batteries which the British thought they had silenced in the morning had to be dealt with all over again in the afternoon. This hardly affected the battleships, but it was a serious matter for the unarmed minesweepers, especially at night in the narrow waters below Chanak where they were instantly picked up by searchlights and exposed to a harassing fire.

None of these things amounted to a definite reverse, but by March 8, when the weather worsened again, it was evident that the first impetus of the attack had spent itself. It was an exasperating position for the Admirals: they were being held up, not by the strength of the enemy, but by his elusiveness. The minesweepers could not go forward until the guns were silenced, and the battleships could not get near enough to silence the guns until the mines were out of the way. The Fleet’s seaplanes with their new wireless equipment might have solved the problem for the naval gunners by acting as spotters, but each day the sea proved either too rough or too smooth for the machines to take off. In this dilemma Carden began to hesitate and delay.

Roger Keyes, who was constantly up at the front of the attack, was convinced that it was all the fault of the civilian crews of the minesweepers who had been recruited from the North Sea fishing ports of England. Their officers told him that the men ‘recognized sweeping risks and did not mind being blown up, but they hated the gunfire, and pointed out that they were not supposed to sweep under fire, they had not joined for that’.

Well then, Keyes suggested, let us call for volunteers from the regular Navy, and in the meantime offer the civilian crews a bonus if they will go in again tonight. This was on March 10, and as soon as he had got the Admiral’s rather reluctant consent, Keyes himself went in with the flotilla under the cover of darkness. Five brilliant searchlights burst out at them directly they entered the straits, and the battleship Canopus, following behind, opened fire.

‘We were fired at from all directions,’ Keyes says. ‘One saw stabs of light in the hills and in the direction of the 6-inch battery covering the minefields on both sides of the straits, followed by the whine of little shells, the bursting of shrapnel, and the scream of heavy projectiles which threw up fountains of water. It was a pretty sight. The fire was very wild, and the Canopus was not hit, but for all the good we did towards dowsing the searchlights we might just as well have been firing at the moon.’

It was too much for the minesweepers. Four of the six passed over the minefield below Chanak without getting their kites down, and one of the remaining pair soon struck a mine and blew up. For a time a tremendous fire poured down on the survivors, and it was an astonishing thing that, with so many mines cut loose and drifting about in the darkness, only two men were wounded before the flotilla got away.

Next night Keyes tried again without the assistance of the battleship, hoping to steal up on the Turks unawares. ‘The less said about that night the better,’ he wrote later. ‘To put it briefly, the sweepers turned tail and fled directly they were fired upon. I was furious and told the officers in charge that they had had their opportunity, there were many others only too keen to try. It did not matter if we lost all seven sweepers, there were twenty-eight more, and the mines had got to be swept up. How could they talk of being stopped by heavy fire if they were not hit? The Admiralty were prepared for losses, but we had chucked our hand in and started squealing before we had any.’

And so too it seemed to Churchill in London. On this same day, March 11, he sent the following telegram to Carden:

‘Your original instructions laid stress on caution and deliberate methods, and we approve highly the skill and patience with which you have advanced hitherto without loss. The results to be gained are, however, great enough to justify loss of ships and men if success cannot be obtained without. The turning of the corner at Chanak may decide the whole operation… We do not wish to hurry you or urge you beyond your judgment, but we recognize clearly that at a certain point in your operations you will have to press hard for a decision, and we desire to know whether you consider that point has now been reached.’

By March 13 new crews had been assembled for some of the minesweepers — just as Keyes had anticipated there had been an immediate response to the call for volunteers — and that night the attack was renewed with great resolution. The enemy gunners waited until the trawlers and the picket boats were in the middle of the minefield and then, turning on all their searchlights together, opened up with a concentrated fire. This time the trawlers stuck to it until all but three were put out of action, and the effect of this was seen on the following morning when many mines came floating down with the current and were exploded. From this time forward it was decided that the sweeping should be done by day, and it was hoped that sufficient progress would be made for the Fleet to close in for the full scale attack on the Narrows on March 17 or 18.

Carden meanwhile had still not replied to the Admiralty’s message, and on March 14 Churchill telegraphed again. ‘I do not understand,’ he said, ‘why minesweepers should be interfered with by firing which causes no casualties. Two or three hundred casualties would be a moderate price to pay for sweeping up as far as the Narrows. I highly approve your proposal to obtain volunteers from the Fleet for minesweeping. This work has to be done whatever the loss of life and small craft and the sooner it is done the better.

‘Secondly, we have information that the Turkish forts are short of ammunition, that the German officers have made despondent reports and have appealed to Germany for more. Every conceivable effort is being made to supply ammunition, it is being seriously considered to send a German or an Austrian submarine, but apparently they have not started yet. Above is absolutely secret. All this makes it clear that the operation should now be pressed forward methodically and resolutely at night and day. The unavoidable losses must be accepted. The enemy is harassed and anxious now. The time is precious as the interference of submarines is a very serious consideration.’

To these messages Carden now replied that he fully appreciated the situation, and that despite the difficulties he would launch his main attack as soon as he could: probably March 17.

Carden was ill. Under the increasing strain of the operations he was unable to eat and he slept very little at night. He was worried about the failure of the seaplanes, about the mines and about the weather. It had taken him two days to make up his mind as to how he was to reply to Churchill’s messages, and now that he had pledged himself to this drastic all-out attack his confidence began to ebb away. He did not explicitly lose faith in the adventure, but in his weakened condition he seems to have felt that he no longer had the personal power to command it.

In fairness to Carden it ought perhaps to be remembered that it was only by chance that he had ever come to the Dardanelles at all; this was a post that should have gone to Admiral Limpus, the head of the former British Naval Mission to Turkey, the man who knew all about the Dardanelles. But at the time when Limpus left Constantinople Turkey was still a neutral, and the British did not wish to irritate the Turks by deliberately sending the man who knew all their secrets to blockade the Dardanelles. So Carden had been lifted out of his post as Superintendent of Malta Dockyard, and he had already had a long winter at sea off the straits before this action had begun. The enterprise had not been exactly thrust upon him — indeed, he himself had suggested the method of attack — but in agreeing to it in the first place one can imagine that he was influenced by the knowledge that he was going the way the young First Lord wanted him to go. And now this highly dangerous operation had built itself up around him into a tremendous thing. It had gathered an impetus out of all proportion to its beginnings, and since as yet he had fought no major action, had lost no ship and scarcely any men, he felt bound to go on. But he dreaded it.

On March 15, after another bad night, Carden told Keyes he could continue no longer. This meant the end of his career, and both Vice-Admiral de Robeck and Keyes begged him to reconsider. However, on the following day a Harley Street specialist who was serving with the Fleet announced after an examination that Carden was on the edge of a nervous collapse; he must sail for home at once.

The attack was now due to be bunched within forty-eight hours, and a new Commander had to be found in haste. Admiral Wemyss, the commandant of the base on the island of Lemnos, was the senior officer on the station, but he at once offered to stand down in favour of de Robeck, who had been involved in the fighting from the beginning. On March 17 Churchill cabled his agreement to this arrangement, and sent de Robeck the following message:

‘Personal and Secret from First Lord. In entrusting to you with great confidence the command of the Mediterranean Detached Fleet I presume… that you consider, after separate and independent judgment, that the immediate operations proposed are wise and practicable. If not, do not hesitate to say so. If so, execute them without delay and without further reference at the first favourable opportunity… All good fortune attend you.’

De Robeck replied that weather permitting he would attack on the following day.

There is an excitement about the attack on the Narrows on March 18, 1915, a sense of natural adventure, which sets it apart from almost any other battle in the two world wars. Those who took part in it do not remember it with horror, as one might remember poison gas or the atomic bomb, or with the feeling of futility and waste that eventually surrounds most acts of war. Instead they look back on this battle as a great day in their lives: they are delighted that the risk was taken, delighted that they themselves were there, and the vision of the oncoming ships with great fountains of spray about them, and the gunfire echoing along the Dardanelles, is still an exhilaration in their memory.

In our time most decisive naval actions have been fought far out at sea, and often in rough weather and over a large area of water so that no one man’s eye could command the whole scene. But here the land was near, the area of action very closely confined, and from morning until dusk a brilliant sun shone down on the calm sea. An observer, whether in the fighting tops of a battleship or standing on any of the hills on either side of the straits, could have seen precisely what was going on as the struggle unfolded itself from hour to hour; and even when night fell the battlefield was still illuminated by the beams of the searchlights constantly sweeping across the water.

In another sense this struggle was unusual, for it was essentially a naval attack upon an army, or at any rate upon artillery. From first to last the Turkish and German warships never appeared, and no aircraft were employed by either side. Then too, there was no element of surprise. Every fine morning had brought the Turks and the Germans the prospect of this attack. The forces on either side were very largely known — just how many ships and guns and mines — and the object of the struggle was perfectly obvious to everybody from the youngest bluejacket to the simplest private. All hung upon that one thin strip of water scarcely a mile wide and five miles long at the Narrows: if that was lost by the Turks then everything was lost and the battle was over.

De Robeck arranged his fleet in three divisions. Line A, steaming abreast, consisted of the four most powerful British ships which were to open the attack—Queen Elizabeth, Agamemnon, Lord Nelson and Inflexible—and they were accompanied on either flank by two more battleships, Prince George and Triumph.

In Line B, following about a mile astern, was the French squadron—Gaulois, Charlemagne, Bouvet and Suffren—with two more British battleships, Majestic and Swiftsure, on either side. The other six battleships and the destroyers and minesweepers which were also committed to the engagement were to wait their turn outside the straits. It was hoped that in the course of the day the forts at the Narrows would be so battered that the minesweepers would be able to clear a channel that same evening. Then with luck the battleships might pass through into the Sea of Marmara on the following day.

The morning of March 18 broke warm and sunny, and soon after dawn de Robeck gave orders for the Fleet to clear for action. Then with the crews at action stations down below and only the commanders and the men controlling the guns on deck the ships moved off from their anchorage at Tenedos.

At 10.30 a.m., when the morning haze had lifted sufficiently for the Turkish forts to be clearly seen, the first ten battleships entered the straits, and at once came under the fire of the enemy howitzers and field guns on either side. For about an hour the Queen Elizabeth and her companions steamed steadily forward under this barrage, getting in a shot with their lighter guns where they could but making no other reply. Soon after 11 a.m. Line A reached its station, a point about eight miles downstream from the Narrows, and without anchoring remained stationary, stemming the current. At 11.25 a.m. the assault began. The Queen Elizabeth’s targets were the two fortresses on either side of the town of Chanak on the Narrows, and on these she turned her eight 15-inch guns. Almost immediately afterwards the Agamemnon, Lord Nelson and Inflexible engaged three other forts at Kilid Bahr on the opposite bank.

After their first few shots in reply the Turkish and German gunners at the Narrows realized that they were out of range, and the forts fell silent; and in silence they endured the fearful bombardment of the four British ships for the next half hour. All five forts were hit repeatedly, and at 11.50 a.m. there was a particularly heavy explosion in Chanak. The British meanwhile were entirely exposed to the Turkish howitzers and smaller guns which were nearer at hand, and these poured down a continuous barrage on the ships from either side. This fire could never be decisive against armour, but the unprotected superstructure of the battleships was hit again and again and a certain amount of minor damage was done.

A few minutes after midday de Robeck, who was in the Queen Elizabeth, judged that the time had come to engage the Narrows at closer range, and he signalled for Admiral Guépratte to bring the French squadron forward. This was a mission for which Guépratte had expressly asked on the ground that it was now the turn of the French, since it was de Robeck himself who had carried out the close-range attack on the outer defences.

Admiral Guépratte has a personality which refreshes the whole Gallipoli story. He never argues, he never hangs back: he always wishes to attack. And now he took his old battleships through the British line to a point about half a mile further on where he was well within the range of all the enemy guns and in constant danger of being hit. On reaching their station the French ships fanned out from the centre so as to give the British astern of them a clear field of fire, and there then ensued through the next three-quarters of an hour a tremendous cannonade.

One can perhaps envisage something of the scene: the forts enveloped in clouds of dust and smoke, with an occasional flame spurting out of the debris, the ships slowly moving through a sea pitted with innumerable fountains of water, and sometimes disappearing altogether in the fumes and the spray, the stabs of light from the howitzers firing from the hills, and the vast earthquake rumbling of the guns. Presently Gaulois was badly holed below the waterline, the Inflexible had both her foremast on fire and a jagged hole in her starboard side, and the Agamemnon, struck twelve times in twenty-five minutes, was turning away to a better position. These hits though spectacular had scarcely touched the crews — there were less than a dozen casualties in the whole fleet — and as yet no ship was seriously affected in its fighting powers.

With the enemy at the Narrows, on the other hand, a critical situation had developed. Some of the guns were jammed and half buried in earth and debris, communications were destroyed between the fire control and the gunners, and those few batteries which managed to continue became more and more erratic in their fire. Fort 13 on the Gallipoli side had been obscured by an internal explosion, and it was clear to the British and the French that even though the forts were not yet destroyed the enemy gunners were for the moment demoralized. Their fire grew increasingly spasmodic until at 1.45 p.m., after nearly two and a half hours of continuous engagement, it had practically died away altogether.

De Robeck now decided to retire the French squadron with the rest of Line B and bring in his six battleships waiting in the rear. The movement began shortly before 2 p.m. and the Suffren, turning to starboard, led her sister ships out of the action along the shores of Eren Keui Bay on the Asiatic side. They were almost abreast of the Queen Elizabeth and the British line at 1.54 p.m. when the Bouvet, lying immediately astern of the Suffren, was observed to be shaken with an immense explosion, and a column of smoke shot up from her decks into the sky. She heeled over, still going very fast, capsized and vanished. It was all over in two minutes. According to one observer the vessel ‘just slithered down as a saucer slithers down in a bath’. At one moment she had been there, perfectly safe and sound. Now there was nothing left but a few heads bobbing about in the water. Captain Rageot and 639 men who were trapped between decks had been drowned.

It seemed to those who watched that the Bouvet had been struck by a heavy shell which had reached her magazine, and now the Turkish gunners, heartened by what they had seen, renewed their attack on the other ships. The next two hours were largely a repetition of the morning’s events. Moving in pairs, Ocean and Irresistible, Albion and Vengeance, Swiftsure and Majestic, came in and closed the range to ten thousand yards. Under this new barrage the heavy guns at the Narrows began firing wildly again, and by 4 p.m. they were practically silent once more.

Now at last it was time for the minesweepers to go in, and de Robeck called them forward from the mouth of the straits. Two pairs of trawlers led by their commander in a picket boat got out their sweeps and they appeared to be going well as they passed by Queen Elizabeth and the rest of A Line. Three mines were brought up and exploded. But then, as they drew forward to B Line and came under enemy fire, something like a panic must have occurred: all four trawlers turned about, and despite all the efforts of their commander to drive them back, ran out of the straits. Another pair of trawlers, which was supposed to take part in the operation, vanished without getting out their sweeps at all.

This fiasco was followed by something much more serious. At 4.11 p.m. the Inflexible, which had held her place in A line all this time, despite the fire in her foremast and other damage, was seen suddenly to take a heavy list to starboard. She reported that she had struck a mine not far from the spot where the Bouvet had gone down and now she left the battle line. She was observed to be down by the bows and still listing considerably as she steamed for the mouth of the straits, with the cruiser Phaeton attending her. It seemed likely that she would go down at any moment. The explosion of the mine had flooded the fore torpedo flat and besides killing the twenty-seven men stationed there had done other extensive damage. Flames and poisonous fumes began to spread; not only were the ship’s electric lights extinguished but the oil lamps, which had been lit for just such an emergency, failed as well. At the same time the ventilator fans stopped running and the heat below deck was intolerable. In these circumstances Phillimore, the captain, decided that it was not necessary to keep both steaming watches on duty, and he ordered one of the watches up to the comparative safety on deck. All, however, volunteered to stay below. They worked in darkness amid the fumes and the rising water until all the valves and watertight doors were closed. The remainder of the ship’s company stood to attention on the upper deck as they passed back through the rest of the Fleet. It seemed to those who saw them that none of these men had been defeated by the day’s events, or were shaken by the imminent prospect of drowning; and they got the ship back to Tenedos.

Meanwhile the Irresistible had been struck. Not five minutes after Inflexible had left the line, she too flew a green flag on her starboard yard arm, indicating that she believed she had been torpedoed on that side. She was on the extreme right of the Fleet at the time, close to the Asiatic shore, and at once the Turkish gunners began to pour their shells into her. Unable to get any answer to his signals, de Robeck sent off the destroyer Wear to render assistance, and presently the Wear came back with some six hundred of the Irresistible’s crew, several dead and eighteen wounded among them. The senior executive officers of the Irresistible had stayed on board with ten volunteers in order to make the ship ready for towing.

It was now 5 p.m., and three battleships were out of action: the Bouvet sunk, the Inflexible limping back to Tenedos and the Irresistible drifting towards the Asiatic shore under heavy Turkish fire. There was no clear explanation of these three disasters. The area in which the ships had been operating all day had been swept for mines on a number of occasions before the operation began. On the previous day a seaplane had been over and had confirmed that the sea was clear — and some reliance could be placed on this report for it had been demonstrated in tests off Tenedos that aircraft could spot mines as deep as eighteen feet in this limpid water. What then was doing the damage? It was hardly likely to have been torpedoes. The only conclusion that remained was that the Turks were floating mines down with the current. In fact, as we shall see later, this conclusion was not correct, but it was near enough as to make no odds, and de Robeck felt he could do no other than to break off the action for the day. Keyes was instructed to go aboard the Wear and proceed to the salvage of the Irresistible with the aid of two battleships, the Ocean and Swiftsure. In addition, a division of destroyers was ordered forward into the straits and placed under Keyes’s command. The rest of the Fleet retired.

One can do no better now than follow Keyes in his own account of what happened at the end of this extraordinary day. He says that salvo after salvo was hitting the Irresistible, and he could see no sign of life in her when he came alongside at 5.20 p.m. He concluded, therefore, that the captain and the skeleton crew had already been taken off — and rightly so because the ship was in a desperate condition. She had got out of the main current sweeping down the straits and a light southerly breeze was drifting her in towards the shore. With every minute as she drew nearer to them the Turkish gunners were increasing their fire. Nevertheless, Keyes decided that he must attempt to save her and he signalled to the Ocean, ‘The Admiral directs you to take Irresistible in tow.’ The Ocean replied that there was not sufficient depth of water for her to do so.

Keyes then directed the captain of the Wear to get his torpedoes ready for action so that he could sink the helpless ship before she fell into the hands of the enemy; but first he wished to make quite certain that the water was too shallow for the Ocean to come in and take her in tow. The Wear then ran straight into the enemy fire to take soundings — she came so close to the shore that the Turkish gunners could be seen around their batteries, and at that point-blank range the flash of the guns and the arrival of the shells seemed to be simultaneous. The Wear, however, was not hit, and presently Keyes was able to signal to the Ocean that there were fifteen fathoms of water for half a mile inshore of the Irresistible; and he repeated de Robeck’s order that the ship should be taken in tow. To this he got no reply. Both the Ocean and the Swiftsure were now hotly engaged, and the Ocean in particular was steaming back and forth at great speed, blazing away with all her guns at the shore. It seemed to Keyes that she was doing no good whatever with all this activity and was needlessly exposing herself. For some time the heavy guns at the Narrows had been silent, but it was quite possible that they would open up again at any minute. He therefore signalled the Ocean once more: ‘If you do not propose to take the Irresistible in tow the Admiral wishes you to withdraw.’ With the Swiftsure Keyes could afford to be more peremptory — her captain was junior to him — and he ordered her to go at once. She was an old ship and much too lightly armoured to have undertaken the salvage in the present circumstances.

Meanwhile things had begun to improve with the Irresistible; she had lost her list and although she was down by the stern she was still no lower in the water than she had been an hour previously when the Wear first arrived. Keyes now decided to go full speed to de Robeck and suggest that trawlers might be brought back after dark to tow her into the current so that she would drift out through the straits. He was actually on his way and was drawing close to the Ocean so that he could repeat the order for her to withdraw when the next disaster occurred. A violent explosion shook the water and the Ocean took a heavy list. At the same time a shell hit her steering gear and she began to turn in circles instead of escaping down the straits. The destroyers which had been standing by for the last two hours raced in and took off her crew. Now the Turkish gunners had a second helpless target close at hand.

With this bad news Keyes returned to de Robeck in the Queen Elizabeth which was lying just outside the straits. The captains of both the Irresistible and the Ocean had already been taken off their ships and were with the Admiral when Keyes arrived. A sharp discussion ensued. Keyes said exactly what he thought about the loss of the Ocean and her failure to take the Irresistible in tow, and he asked for permission to go back and torpedo the Irresistible. The Ocean, he thought, might be salvaged. De Robeck agreed, and after a quick meal Keyes set off again in one of the Queen Elizabeth’s cutters. It was now dark and he was unable to find the Wear but fell in with the Jed instead, and in this destroyer he steamed back into the straits.

The scene in the Dardanelles now was extremely eerie. All was silent on either shore, and except for the Turkish searchlights that kept sweeping back and forth across the water there was no sign of life anywhere. For four hours the Jed cruised about hunting for the two lost battleships. She crept close in to the Asiatic shore, and with the aid of the enemy searchlights probed into every bay where the Irresistible and the Ocean might have gone aground. But there was nothing to be seen or heard: nothing but this extraordinary silence, the utter lassitude of the battlefield after the day’s fighting is done. To Keyes it was an exhilarating experience.

‘I had,’ he wrote later, ‘a most indelible impression that we were in the presence of a beaten foe. I thought he was beaten at 2 p.m. I knew he was beaten at 4 p.m. — and at midnight I knew with still greater certainty that he was absolutely beaten; and it only remained for us to organize a proper sweeping force and devise some means of dealing with the drifting mines to reap the fruits of our efforts. I felt that the guns of the forts and batteries and the concealed howitzers and mobile field guns were no longer a menace. Mines moored and drifting must, and could, be overcome.’

In the early hours of the morning Keyes, in this uplifted state of mind, steamed back to the Queen Elizabeth.