Castles of Steel (92 page)

Meanwhile, the situation aboard
Irresistible
had stabilized. She was down by the stern, but no lower in the water than she had been an hour before. Keyes decided that she would neither sink nor drift ashore for some time and that he would return to de Robeck and suggest that trawlers come in after dark to tow her back into the main current, which might then carry her out of the Straits. As he was leaving, he approached
Ocean
in order to repeat his order for her to withdraw. At just that moment, 6:05 p.m.,
Ocean
hit a mine. There was a violent explosion and the old battleship listed to starboard. At almost the same moment, a shell hit her steering gear and she began to turn in circles. As Turkish gunners now pounded this second helpless target, destroyers raced in to remove her crew.

Bringing details of these disasters, Keyes returned to de Robeck in
Queen Elizabeth
outside the Straits. Following his report, he proposed that he go back and torpedo both of the abandoned battleships,
Irresistible
and
Ocean.
De Robeck gave permission and Keyes returned in the destroyer
Jed.
Creeping into every bay, he found nothing. Now believing that both battleships were at the bottom of the sea, Keyes went back to the flagship, where he found Admiral de Robeck enormously depressed. The day, said the admiral, had been a disaster:
Bouvet
was lost,
Gaulois
was beached,
Suffren
’s injuries were so great she had to go into dry dock; of the French squadron, only
Charlemagne
remained capable of further action. In addition,
Irresistible
and
Ocean
were gone and
Inflexible,
counted on to engage
Goeben,
needed to go to Malta for extensive repair. De Robeck was sure, he said to Keyes, that having suffered three battleships sunk and three more put out of action, he would be dismissed the following day. Keyes, who had more experience of the First Lord than de Robeck did, replied that Churchill would not be discouraged; that, instead, he would respond by sending reinforcements. Apart from the 639 men lost in
Bouvet,
casualties had been moderate: sixty-one men in the entire fleet. The three lost battleships had been due for the scrapheap, and, even with three more out of action, the fleet remained powerful. De Robeck’s spirits rose and he and Keyes discussed how to deal with the minefields. The civilian trawler crews would return to England to be replaced by regular navy seamen from the lost battleships. Sweeping apparatus would be installed on destroyers. And then, when everything was ready, the navy would attack again. On this optimistic note, the admiral and his Chief of Staff ended the long day and night. Later, Keyes would write of his thoughts that night: “Except for the searchlights, there, seemed to be no sign of life [inside the Dardanelles]. I had 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. 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.” De Robeck was bolstered by Keyes’s optimism. “We are all getting ready for another go and are not in the least beaten or down-hearted,” he declared the next day to General Sir Ian Hamilton, who had just arrived from London.

On the night of March 18, Chanak, in peacetime a busy commercial town of 16,000 at the Narrows, was deserted; buildings were burning, the streets were filled with rubble, the forts were pitted by huge craters. But the bombardment had put only eight big guns permanently out of action, and the Turks and Germans had suffered only 118 men killed and wounded. The explanation was that when the shellfire became intense, the artillerymen simply left their guns and retreated into earth shelters. Nevertheless, the attack had compelled the Turkish and German gunners to fire more than half of their ammunition. At 4:00 p.m. the Chanak wireless station reported that ammunition at the Hamidieh fort, the defense’s strongest point, was running out. When the Allied ships withdrew, the Turkish heavy guns were left with only twenty-seven long-range high-explosive shells—seventeen at Fort Hamidieh, ten at Kilid Bahr. The howitzers protecting the minefields had fired half of their supply. What was to happen when the battle was renewed? Once the big guns exhausted the ammunition on hand, it would be simply a question of how long the howitzer batteries could keep the minesweepers away from the minefields; some thought one day, others two. Thereafter, in a matter of hours, the minesweepers would sweep a channel through to the Narrows. And beyond the Narrows, there was no defense.

One last hope remained:
Goeben.
The battle cruiser’s hull had two large holes—now temporarily plugged—caused by Russian mines struck off the Bosporus. She was ordered to raise steam; if the Allied ships broke through, she was to fight to the death. At 5:00 p.m. on March 18, she sailed past the Golden Horn and the Sultan’s palace, headed west toward the Dardanelles. At 6:00 p.m., a signal came that the Allied fleet was withdrawing. Through the night,
Goeben
lay in the Sea of Marmara, awaiting the renewal of the Allied attack the following day.

Meanwhile, in Constantinople, the government and the populace were convinced that the Allied fleet would break through. All Turks respected the near legendary power of the British navy; no one believed that a collection of ancient forts and guns at the Dardanelles could bar its way. Accordingly, word of the massive bombardment precipitated an exodus from the capital. The state archives were evacuated and hidden; the banks were emptied of gold; many affluent Turks already had sent their families away. The distance from Gallipoli to Constantinople was only 150 miles; most Turks expected that less than twelve hours after they entered the Sea of Marmara, British battleships would arrive off the Golden Horn.

The German and Turkish artillerymen at the Dardanelles were certain that the Allies would resume their attack in the morning. Through the night, they worked, determined to fight as long as they had ammunition. At dawn on March 19, the men were standing by their guns. When there was no sign of enemy ships, they presumed that the cause was the bad weather that had come up in the night. On the afternoon of March 19,
Goeben
was ordered to return to her base near Constantinople. Then, as the bad weather subsided, and day followed day without a sign of the Allied fleet, the defenders began to understand that they had won. They could not know, of course, of the terrible worries that had afflicted the Allied commanders because of the unexplained loss of
Bouvet, Irresistible,
and
Ocean.
The cause—as Admiral de Robeck did not know until after the war—was a single brilliant exploit: in darkness on the night of March 8, a Turkish mine expert, Lieutenant Colonel Geehl, had taken a small steamer,
Nousret,
down the Straits. Near the Asian shore, he had secretly laid a new line of twenty mines, 100 to 150 yards apart, perpendicular to the ten lines already stretching across the Straits. During the days before the massive attack of March 18, British trawler crews had never discovered these mines, nor had British airplanes spotted them from the air. For ten days, they had waited beneath the surface of the blue-green water.

After three hours’ sleep, Roger Keyes arose on the morning of March 19 and, as he often did in times of stress, shaved with a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” propped in front of him.

[ If you can keep your head when all about you

  Are losing theirs and blaming it on you . . .

  If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

  And treat those two imposters just the same . . .]

He knew nothing of the plight of the gunners at the Narrows, nor of the preparations made by the Turkish government to abandon Constantinople, yet he sensed that victory was near. Even so, it was clear that the attack could not be resumed for a day or two. A strong wind was blowing, which meant heavy seas, lowered visibility, and poor gunnery. But Keyes had no thought—nor was there any thought at the Admiralty or anywhere in the Dardanelles fleet—of not continuing. A message from the Admiralty urged de Robeck to attack again. Reinforcements would be sent; the old battleships
Queen
and
Implacable
were already on their way;
London
and
Prince of Wales
would follow soon; the French admiralty was sending the battleship
Henri IV
to replace the lost
Bouvet.
A meeting of the Cabinet War Council on March 19 authorized de Robeck to “continue the naval operations against the Dardanelles if he thought fit.” Keyes began organizing and equipping a new minesweeping force. On March 20, two days after the attack, de Robeck reported to the Admiralty that fifty British and twelve French minesweepers, manned by volunteers from the lost battleships, would soon be available. He hoped, he said, “to be in a position to commence operations in three or four days.”

It was not to be; March 18 marked both the climax and the termination of the purely naval assault on the Dardanelles. Thereafter, as the days passed and the anchored fleet was buffeted by high winds and driving rain, de Robeck resumed his brooding. Writing to Wemyss, he referred to the attack as “a disaster.” Not only had he lost a third of his battleships, he still had no idea how this catastrophe had happened and how to prevent it from happening again. He had learned that naval guns had a much easier time dealing with ancient forts of heavy masonry than with temporary field works. He now knew that, to be fully effective, the fire of long-range guns must be accurately targeted by officers who can observe the locations and effect of bursting shells. Above all, he had learned that in restricted waters, mines protected by artillery that can intimidate minesweeping constitute a formidable defense against a fleet. But it was the loss of battleships that troubled him most. It did no good for Keyes to remind him that the battleships were old and on their way to the scrap heap. Battleships were the backbone of the Royal Navy; battleships were filled with brave men; and he, John de Robeck, had lost three. And he had no way of knowing that, if he attacked again, he would not lose another three.

On March 22, a group of senior Allied commanders gathered on board the
Queen Elizabeth
to confer about the next step. The moment the conference began, Admiral de Robeck dramatically announced that the fleet could not force the Dardanelles on its own. At this, one of the figures seated at the table nodded. General Sir Ian Hamilton, sent out by Kitchener to command the growing ground force assigned to “reap the fruits” of the navy’s success, agreed with the admiral. Hamilton had arrived at the Dardanelles on March 17, just in time to witness the fleet’s massive March 18 attack on the Narrows forts. He had been impressed by the mighty cannonade, but he had also seen
Inflexible
creeping away, her bridge burned out, her foretop destroyed, her bow low in the water. He had seen destroyers with decks crowded with hundreds of men from sunken or abandoned battleships. To Hamilton, it was clear that the Turkish guns, particularly the concealed howitzer batteries that were preventing British trawlers from sweeping mines, could not be completely destroyed or suppressed by naval gunfire. This, he believed, would have to be done by troops on the ground. On March 19, the day after the naval assault, he had signaled Kitchener: “I am being most reluctantly driven to the conclusion that the Straits are not likely to be forced by battleships as at one time seemed probable and that if my troops are to take part, it will not take the subsidiary form anticipated. The Army’s part will be more than mere landing parties to destroy the forts; it must be a deliberate and progressive military operation carried out at full strength, so as to open a passage for the navy.” Kitchener, who ten weeks before had adamantly opposed all ground operations at the Dardanelles, now replied to Hamilton, “You know my view that the Dardanelles passage must be forced, and that if large military operations on the Gallipoli peninsula by your troops are necessary to clear the way, those operations must be undertaken . . . and must be carried through.”

This exchange of messages was on Hamilton’s mind as he listened to de Robeck on
Queen Elizabeth.
Hamilton liked de Robeck, whom he described as “a fine-looking man with great charm of manner,” and he understood the admiral’s concern. Suppose the fleet, followed by the army’s troopships, managed to get through the Dardanelles with the loss of another old battleship or two. With the Turks still holding both sides of the Straits, how long could the fleet remain isolated in the Sea of Marmara starved of coal and ammunition? What would happen to Hamilton’s troopships and the thousands of men on board if their supply lines ran through a narrow strait dominated by enemy guns? And what about
Goeben
? With
Inflexible
damaged, de Robeck would have only the old battleships, none of which were fast enough to catch the German battle cruiser.
Queen Elizabeth
might do it, but how likely was it that the Admiralty would permit the prize superdreadnought to be exposed to the dangers involved in entering the Sea of Marmara?

Originally, Hamilton had hoped that the army would not have to land on Gallipoli and that a purely naval offensive could achieve the Allied objectives. “Constantinople must surrender within a few hours of our battleships entering the Marmara,” he had written in his diary, “when her rail and sea communications were cut and a rain of shell fell upon the penned-up populace from de Robeck’s terrific batteries. Given a good wind, that nest of iniquity would go up like Sodom and Gomorrah in a winding sheet of flame.” But now the admiral had said that this prospect was an illusion: that his battleships could not go through without help. And de Robeck, for his part, now grasped that Hamilton had come with Kitchener’s blessing to provide exactly that kind of help. The two men understood each other and no further dis-cussion was needed. Unanimously, the conference on the
Queen Elizabeth
resolved that the naval attack should be postponed. Nothing more was to be done by the fleet until the army that Hamilton was to command was ready to act. Because the troops and their equipment were scattered across the eastern Mediterranean, they must be assembled and organized to force an opposed amphibious landing against an entrenched enemy. The general estimated that he would need about three weeks.