Authors: Alan Moorehead
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.