Castles of Steel (88 page)

CHAPTER 24
The Minefields

The whole fourteen-mile length of the Straits from the entrance at Cape Helles up to the Narrows at Chanak was within range of different types of Turkish artillery; indeed, there was no point in this stretch of water where a hostile vessel could not be hit by direct fire. The defense was constructed in three layers. The entrance was guarded by the outer forts, old, crenellated masonry structures, built on the white cliffs of the northern or European side. The massive fort of Sedd el Bahr, built in the seventeenth century against the Venetians, housed a mixed group of guns: two 11-inch, four 10-inch, and four 6-inch guns, with ranges up to 8,000 yards; this seemed ample, as the distance across the mouth of the Straits was only 4,000 yards. Nearby, around the point, the Cape Helles fort contained two 9.4-inch guns, which could reach out to 10,000 yards. Across the Straits, on the low green banks of the southern or Asian side, the Kum Kale fort housed two 11-inch, four 10-inch, one 8-inch, and two 6-inch guns. Another fort on the Asian shore contained two 9.4-inch guns. In sum, a total of sixteen heavy and seven medium-range guns defended the entrance to the Dardanelles. Inside the entrance where the Straits widen to four and a half miles, the Turks had established an intermediate defense consisting of medium guns, mostly 6-inch, situated in five permanent batteries, one on the European side, the other four on the Asian side. After the Allied bombardment in November 1914, the Germans and Turks made additions to this intermediate defense, bringing in eight mobile 6-inch howitzer batteries of four guns each. The number of searchlight batteries covering the minefields was increased to eight.

The ultimate defense of the Dardanelles lay at the Narrows, fourteen miles upstream from the entrance. Here, where Leander supposedly swam and where Xerxes built his bridge of boats, the channel is less than a mile across. The Narrows were protected by two massive ancient fortresses, at Kilid Bahr on the European shore and Chanak Kale on the Asian. In front of each of these old citadels, just above the beach, fortifications with heavy earth parapets had recently been constructed. Here, the Turks had mounted seventy-two guns of differing ranges and calibers, ranging from 14-inch and 11-inch down to 9.2-inch. Although less than a score of these guns were of modern design and ammunition was limited, they posed a formidable obstacle. And more ominous even than the guns were the minefields laid just below the Narrows, between Kephez and Chanak. Here, 324 mines were arranged in ten lines, ninety yards apart.

To overwhelm these defenses, the Admiralty collected warships from around the world. Admiral Carden was given the new superdreadnought
Queen Elizabeth
with eight 15-inch guns, the battle cruiser
Inflexible
with eight 12-inch guns, and twelve British and four French predreadnought battleships carrying a total of fifty-six 12-inch and eight 10-inch guns. Eight of the old battleships—
Cornwallis, Irresistible, Ocean, Albion, Canopus, Vengeance, Majestic,
and
Prince George
—were scheduled for scrapping within fifteen months, but meanwhile their old 12-inch guns were to wear themselves out bombarding old Turkish forts at the Dardanelles. The Admiralty also had added
Triumph
and
Swiftsure,
the odd pair of 10-inch-gun battleships originally built for Chile, now—with Spee eliminated—free to return from the Far East. The four French battleships—
Suffren, Bouvet, Gaulois,
and
Charlemagne
—were contemporaries of the British predreadnoughts and similarly armed. Carden also had four light cruisers, fifteen British and four French destroyers, and four British and four French submarines. Lowliest, and at this time of unrecognized significance, were twenty-one British and fourteen French fishing trawlers converted into minesweepers. Two battalions of Royal Marines were assigned to serve as a temporary landing force, not to be put ashore against entrenched opposition or a superior force. Carden’s deputy was Rear Admiral John de Robeck, who was happy to be transferred from the dull assignment of commanding old cruisers patrolling against unlikely German raiders off Cape Finisterre, and Carden’s Chief of Staff was the indefatigable Roger Keyes, shifted from command of the long-range submarines based at Harwich on the North Sea. In 1906 and 1907, Keyes had served as naval attaché at Constantinople and often had hired a steamer in order to study the Dardanelles forts through his telescope. Now he was to serve under the three British admirals who, in sequence, commanded the fleet at the Dardanelles from January 1915 to January 1916.

Carden’s rear bases were Malta and Alexandria, but his advance base was established at Mudros on the Greek island of Lemnos, sixty miles southwest of the Dardanelles. Mudros was an immense natural harbor, two or three miles across and thirty to forty-five feet deep, capable of sheltering hun-dreds of vessels. Greece was not at war, but the Anglophile Prime Minister, Eleuthérios Venizélos, permitted the Allies to use the island as a base against Greece’s age-old enemy, Turkey. When Rear Admiral Rosslyn Wester Wemyss arrived on February 22 to serve as base commander at Mudros, the sleepy Aegean village was not remotely prepared to become a major naval or military base. It contained only a church and seventy or eighty small houses of stone, timber, or mud, inhabited by fishermen who also grew olives and grapes. The harbor had only a single small wooden pier. There were no materials for constructing larger piers, no facilities for loading or unload-ing ships, no shore accommodations, and not enough fresh water. When, on March 4, 5,000 Australian troops arrived from Egypt, they were forced to remain aboard their ships from where they looked out on the brilliant blue water of the harbor and, beyond, a landscape of dry grass, small gnarled trees, and bare, windswept hills.

Carden’s attack on the outer forts began in radiant sunshine on the morning of February 19. The sea was calm and there was no breath of wind when Carden’s flagship, the battle cruiser
Inflexible,
and five British and four French predreadnought battleships anchored in transparent blue water and began a slow, deliberate, long-range bombardment of the forts, 12,000 yards away. The Turks, their guns out of range, remained silent. At 2:00 p.m., Carden closed to 6,000 yards, where his battleships’ secondary armament opened heavy fire. Still, the Turkish guns did not reply. But at 4:45 p.m., when Carden sent
Vengeance, Cornwallis,
and
Suffren
in closer still—to 3,000 and 4,000 yards—the Turkish forts on both sides of the straits erupted into a hot cannonade, showing that they had not been destroyed at all. Then, with daylight fading and some of the forts shrouded in smoke and dust, Carden ordered a cease-fire. His deputy, Rear Admiral de Robeck in
Vengeance,
requested permission to prolong the attack, but Carden refused. The results of the bombardment were inconclusive. The Allied ships had fired 139 12-inch shells. The forts had been hit many times, but the Turkish guns had continued to fire back. Ultimately, the sailors learned that it was not sufficient simply to hit the forts with heavy shells; the only way to put a gun permanently out of action was to achieve a direct hit on the gun. The artillerymen serving the guns were equally hard to hit; under bombardment, they simply retreated into shelters and waited. In this respect, the day’s events had supplied a useful lesson: to be effective, it was not actually necessary to destroy individual Turkish guns with direct hits. The ships could dominate the battle simply by keeping enemy gun crews away from their guns; then the battleships could move in ever closer and eventually would be able to pulverize forts, guns, and gunners at point-blank range.