The Dandarnelles Disaster (4 page)

Like hyenas scenting moribund flesh, the Balkan states erupted in the hope of gaining territory from the ailing Turks. Tiny Montenegro was the first to declare war on 8 October 1912; ten days later, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria followed suit. The Turks gained a partial respite on the same day, when a diplomatic settlement was reached with Italy, which was allowed to keep the Libyan territories but agreed to return the Dodecanese – a promise never fulfilled. Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, convened a conference of the leading powers in London in a bid to settle the Balkan wars. Despite the many rivalries among their governments, the diplomats worked constructively and eventually succeeded in producing the 1913 Treaty of London. Turkey signed ceasefire agreements with Bulgaria and Serbia on 3 December 1912, but the Greeks and the Montenegrins continued to fight. At the beginning of 1913 Bulgaria attacked again,
aiming to capture Edirne in Thrace, the historic city that had been the Ottoman capital until the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

This prompted the leading figures in the CUP, Enver Pasha, Jemal Pasha and Talaat Bey, to unseat Grand Vizier Kemal Pasha a second time with the false claim that he was planning to give in to the Bulgarians. Talaat Bey had been the head of the Turkish postal service until he led this last putsch by the Young Turks in January 1913 against Kemal Pasha. A deceptively affable giant, he was also much more shrewd than he looked, and ruthless, not least against the Armenians, and was the iron fist of the CUP as Minister of the Interior. He, Enver and Jemal were a minority in the Cabinet, united in their determination to take Turkey to war on the side of their German friends once Enver had won the other two over.

Mahmud Sevket Pasha was appointed Grand Vizier on 23 January. Even so the Bulgarians took Edirne on 26 March. Peace talks led to an armistice and then the London treaty on 30 May. Turkey may thus have arrived at a precarious peace at the cost of yet more territory, including Albania and southern Thrace (the area round Salonica – now Thessaloniki – which went to Greece), but her erstwhile Balkan enemies now fell out and fought each other. Sevket Pasha was assassinated in June 1913, but the CUP remained in the saddle, banishing or executing its political opponents. Bulgaria attacked Serbia and Greece on 29 June; 11 days later Romania attacked Bulgaria. The dashing, not to say reckless, Lieutenant-Colonel Enver saw his opportunity to profit from these quarrels by leading a column to reoccupy Edirne on 22 July. Turkish honour was thus, to a degree, salvaged by Enver who, unfortunately for himself and his country, now developed an exaggerated opinion of his own ability as a military commander. The entire Balkan imbroglio was brought to a close on 10 August by the Treaty of Bucharest. The Ottoman Empire was left with nothing in Africa and a reduced, modest foothold in Europe around Edirne and Constantinople, while retaining the Turkish heartland of Anatolia as well as the Levant and Arabia, Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine.

As the world's leading naval power, Britain might deploy her squadrons in all manner of places. The Admiralty however had no war staff in the modern sense until just before the outbreak of conflict in 1914, and was committed to a ‘Two-Power Standard' (to be as strong as the next two naval powers combined), which meant that contingency plans were rare to non-existent. Until Fisher became First Sea Lord in 1904, the Royal Navy's posture was reactive, prompted mainly by what the actual or potential
enemies of the day did. But the main preoccupation of the Admiralty from the eve of the twentieth century onward was inevitably Germany with its rapidly growing battlefleet: Germany plus 50 per cent was the new guideline, and war with Germany was the great contingency for which Fisher made coherent plans. The Royal Navy's long-standing focus on the traditional enemy, France, from ports on the south coast of England was dramatically shifted to Germany at the dawn of the century, when Rosyth in the Firth of Forth was built up as a naval base. Before the end of the first decade the great natural anchorage of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands was earmarked in the event of war for the newly expanded and expensively modernised Grand Fleet, while the Cromarty Firth was chosen as an advance base for the fast new battlecruisers that would lead the battleships into action. Eastern and northern Scotland became the Royal Navy's centre of gravity. Destroyers and submarines were based at Harwich on England's east coast and the Channel was to be guarded by more destroyers of the Dover Patrol. This strategic shift came as close as possible to a guarantee that any German attempt at an invasion of England would be thwarted. The admirals – and the general public as war approached – looked to the navy to win a new Trafalgar in the North Sea within weeks of the opening of hostilities.

On the high seas, away from the North Sea arena, the main threat was the IGN's sole ‘blue water' formation, the cruiser squadron led by Vice-Admiral Maximilian Graf von Spee and based at Tsingtao, the port of the German enclave of Kiaochow on the north-east Chinese coast. The two heavy and up to four light cruisers were thought in London (and would soon prove) to be capable of operating anywhere in the Pacific, Indian and south Atlantic oceans, which meant that groups of British and allied ships had to be allocated to key areas in all three in order to counter them and protect commerce.

In the Mediterranean the French Navy, supported by the British Mediterranean Fleet, was responsible for meeting any threat from the small but strong Austrian Navy, the German Navy's Mediterranean Division of just two ships (although one of them was the most powerful ship afloat in that ocean), and the considerable Italian fleet, should Italy go to war alongside her German and Austrian allies. Turkey was expected to remain neutral, its decrepit fleet dismissed as of no account in the Mediterranean theatre, even though two of the latest dreadnoughts (‘all-big-gun' ships introduced by Britain in 1907 and rendering all earlier battleships obsolete) were nearing completion for the Ottoman Navy in Tyneside shipyards.

Even so, consideration had on several occasions in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries been given at the Admiralty, the War Office and in the Committee of Imperial Defence to the problem of capturing Constantinople should the need ever arise, though no plan was drawn up. Only the Russians were in a position to do this from the north and east, using the short route via the Bosporus; a western attacker would have to approach from the south-west, passing through the Dardanelles strait into the Sea of Marmara and sailing some 140 miles to reach the Golden Horn on which Constantinople stood.

The precedent to which both sides of the desultory British debates on the practicability of an attack on Constantinople via the Dardanelles paid close attention occurred in 1807, in the context of what was really the first
world
war, against Napoleonic France and its allies. Russia had asked the British for a move against Turkey, to take the pressure off her in the Black Sea area – an appeal she would repeat in 1915. Turkey, influenced by France, had closed the Bosporus and the Dardanelles at either end of the Sea of Marmara to Russian shipping. In October 1806 Admiral Lord Collingwood, commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, sent three ships of the line to reconnoitre the defences of the Dardanelles in case the Royal Navy should be required to attack them. In late November Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Louis entered the Dardanelles, politely exchanged gun salutes with the entrance forts, left two of his three ships of the line and a frigate at anchor off Chanak (now Çannakale) on the Asian side and sailed on to Constantinople in his flagship, HMS
Canopus
, escorted by another frigate. He stayed for a month. Just after Christmas he returned in his flagship, collecting the other two ships of the line on the way out and leaving a frigate behind at the Golden Horn to be at the disposal of the British ambassador, Arbuthnot. Louis brought the Russian ambassador out with him as Turkey had once again broken off relations with St Petersburg. The lone British frigate cut her cables and slipped away the next night with the British envoy aboard as the crisis deepened.

Collingwood meanwhile had received orders from the Admiralty to be ready to go to war against Turkey. Vice-Admiral Sir John Duckworth was to command the squadron detailed for the purpose. General Sir John Moore, second-in-command of British troops then in Sicily, wanted troops earmarked for Alexandria in Egypt to go with the navy to the Dardanelles instead, to make sure of their capture, but his advice was ignored. The order to go ahead reached Collingwood off Cadiz in mid-January and Duckworth sailed in the
Royal George
. Linking up with Louis off the island
of Tenedos, Duckworth assembled eight ships of the line with auxiliaries. His objective was to destroy or capture the Turkish fleet and to bombard Constantinople if Turkey refused to surrender the ships. Louis reported that the forts and their guns were in poor condition, while much of the Turkish fleet lay idle in the Golden Horn apart from a squadron based to the north of the Narrows. To forestall traditional Ottoman time-wasting tactics Duckworth, on Arbuthnot's advice, was determined to allow no negotiation with the Turks to last longer than half an hour.

While waiting for some weeks for a favourable wind, Duckworth reported to Collingwood that the Turks, with French assistance, had set up new batteries on the shores of the Dardanelles. ‘We are to enter a sea environed with enemies,' he warned in a report, ‘without a possible resource but in ourselves; and when we are to return, there cannot remain a doubt but that passage will be rendered as formidable as efforts of the Turkish Empire, directed and assisted by their allies the French, can make it.' Substitute ‘Germans' for ‘French' in the foregoing and it becomes a perfect description of the position of the Allied fleet off the Dardanelles in February and March 1915. Duckworth promised he would do his best.

On 14 February, just after a dispatch vessel had sailed with Duckworth's letter to his chief, HMS
Ajax,
a third-rate, 74-gun ship of the line, succumbed to an accidental fire and sank with the loss of 250 men. But five days later a favourable, south-west wind took Duckworth's squadron up the straits. Gunfire from the entrance forts proved ineffectual, but the shooting, at shorter range, from the Narrows forts was more effective. The ships gave as good as they got and damage to them was light, with only six British sailors killed and about 50 wounded. On emerging from the Narrows into the Marmara, Rear-Admiral Sir Sydney Smith, commanding the rearguard, took on the Turkish squadron there after it opened fire on Duckworth's line, and all but destroyed it: one 64-gun ship, four frigates and three corvettes were sunk while one corvette was captured. But a brig was able to escape and warn Constantinople that the British were coming. Royal Marines and sailors went ashore and spiked about 30 guns sited at the entrance to the Dardanelles.

Duckworth's squadron sailed on into the Marmara, progressing slowly so that the ships arrived at Princes Island some eight miles from Constantinople at about ten p.m. on 20 February, where he was halted by adverse winds. An exchange of letters between Arbuthnot and the Ottoman authorities led nowhere as the Turks, egged on by Napoleon's agent, General Sebastiani, beefed up the defences by deploying more artillery and
such of their ships as were still seaworthy. They set up a battery on the island of Prota between Princes Island and the city; Admiral Louis sent a landing party to destroy it but it was repelled. The Dardanelles defences were also hastily reinforced with new batteries.

After nine days Duckworth drew up his line and offered battle to the five Turkish ships and four frigates facing him. The challenge was ignored; so the British commander withdrew to a point about six miles above the Narrows on 1 March, having waited more than a week for a favourable wind. On the 3rd a frustrated Duckworth led his ships out of the strait before their retreat was completely cut off by the rapidly strengthening defensive artillery. He politely fired a salute of 13 guns as he passed the forts guarding the Narrows, only to be affronted by a bombardment in earnest, which caused considerable damage to his ships and over 160 casualties. The result of the botched foray was a humiliation, reducing British standing in the eyes of their Russian allies, who soon gave up and made peace with Napoleon at Tilsit. On urgent orders from the Admiralty, Collingwood himself essayed a brief attack on the Dardanelles, in concert with Admiral Senyavin's Russian squadron, which attacked the Bosporus at the same time, but both were repelled. Neither admiral had troops at his disposal to land and attack the shore defences from the rear.

Britain and Turkey concluded the Treaty of the Dardanelles in 1809, which
inter alia
declared the Dardanelles and the Bosporus to be open to all merchant shipping. This principle was reinforced by the London Straits Convention of 1841, under which Britain, France, Russia, Austria and Prussia also agreed that Turkey, while at peace, had the right to bar foreign warships from the straits, although the Sultan could admit friendly visits by individual ships coming to ‘show the flag'. These provisions were repeated in the Treaty of Paris ending the Crimean War in 1856, and reaffirmed once more at Berlin in 1878. Further, if Turkey remained neutral in a European war, she was required to exclude foreign warships, and to give any belligerent vessel twenty-four hours' notice of expulsion or internment if it was inside the straits when a war broke out. These restrictions were punctiliously observed until August 1914.

The next British admiral after Duckworth and Collingwood to sail to the Dardanelles was Sir Geoffrey Phipps Hornby, commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, in 1877, during the Russo-Turkish war of that time in which Britain was neutral. One of his battleship captains was John Arbuthnot Fisher, the future First Sea Lord, who, like his flag officer at the time,
concluded that there could be no forcing of the Dardanelles without troops: a combined operation was the only realistic possibility. Hornby did not become involved in hostilities and his ships were not fired upon; he withdrew peacefully. He noted to the Admiralty: ‘There seems to be an idea that this fleet can keep the Dardanelles and Bosporus open. Nothing can be more visionary. Not all the fleets in the world can keep them open for unarmoured ships.' One of the dangers he identified was the presence of easily hidden, mobile gun batteries on both sides of the strait, particularly the European, where the rough terrain of the Gallipoli peninsula offered many hills to hide in.