Chapter XVI: The World War: the First Year (1914-1915) (2)

(d) Sweeping of a dear channel through the mine-field and advance through the Narrows; followed by a reduction of the forts further up, and advance into the Sea of Marmora.

This plan was presented at a meeting of the British War Council on January 13. It may be noted at this point that the War Council, though composed of 7 members of the Cabinet, was at this time dominated by a triumvirate--the Premier (Mr. Asquith), the Minister of War (General Kitchener), and the First Lord of the Admiralty (Mr. Churchill); and in this triumvirate, despite the fact that England's strength was primarily naval, the head of the War Office played a leading rôle. The First Sea Lord (Admiral Fisher) and one or two other military experts attended the Council meetings, but they were not members, and their function, at least as they saw it, was "to open their mouths when told to." Staff organizations existed also at both the War Office and the Admiralty, at the latter consisting of the First Lord, First Sea Lord and three other officers not on the Admiralty Board. The working of this improvised and not altogether ideal machinery for the supreme task of conducting the war is interestingly revealed in the report[1] of the commission subsequently, appointed to investigate the Dardanelles Campaign.

[Footnote 1: British ANNUAL REGISTER, 1918, Appendix, pp. 24 ff., from which quotations here are taken.]

"Mr. Churchill," according to this report, "appears to have advocated the attack by ships alone before the War Council on a certain amount of half-hearted and hesitating expert opinion." Encouraged by his sanguine and aggressive spirit, the Council decided that "the Admiralty should prepare for a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective." In view of the fact that the operation as then conceived was to be purely naval, the word "take" suggests an initial misconception of what the navy could do. The support for the decision, especially from the naval experts, was chiefly on the assumption that if Admiral Carden's first operation were unpromising, the whole plan might be dropped.

Admiral Fisher's misgivings as to the wisdom of the enterprise soon increased, owing primarily to his desire to employ the full naval strength in the home field. He did not believe that "cutting off the enemy's big toe in the East was better than stabbing him to the heart." He had begun the construction of 612 new vessels ranging from "hush-hush" ships of 33 knots and 20-inch guns to 200 motor-boats, and he wished to strike for access to the Baltic, with a threat of invasion on Germany's Baltic coast. The validity of his objections to the Dardanelles plan appears to depend on the practicability of this alternative, which was not attempted later in the war. The First Lord and the First Sea Lord presented their difference of opinion to the Premier, but it appears that there was no ill feeling; Admiral Fisher later writes that "Churchill had courage and imagination--he was a war man."

At a Council meeting on January 28, when the decision was made definite, Admiral Fisher was not asked for an opinion and expressed none. (The Investigation Commission declare that the naval experts should have been asked, and should have expressed their views whether asked or not.) But there was a dramatic moment when, after rising as if to leave the Council, he was quickly followed by Lord Kitchener, who pointed out that all the others were in favor of the plan, and induced him once more to take his seat. After the decision, Mr. Churchill testifies, "I never looked back. We had left the region of discussion and consultation, of balancings and misgivings. The matter had now passed into the domain of action."

To turn to the scene of operations, there were now assembled at the Dardanelles 10 British and 4 French predreadnoughts, together with the new battleship _Queen Elizabeth_, the battle cruiser _Inflexible_, and many cruisers and torpedo craft. On February 19, 1915, again on February 25-26, and on March 1-7, this force bombarded the outer forts at Kum Kale and Sedd-el-Bahr and the batteries 10 miles further up at Cephez Point. These were in part silenced and demolished by landing parties. Bad weather, however, interfered with operations, and there was also some shortage of ammunition. The batteries, and especially the mobile artillery of the Turks, still greatly hampered the work of mine sweeping, which at terrible hazards was carried on at night within the Straits.

In the meantime the Government, to quote General Callwell, the Director of Military Operations, had "drifted into a big military attack." But the despatch from England of the 29th Division, which was to join the forces available in Egypt, was delayed; owing to Lord Kitchener's concern about the western situation, from Feb. 22 to March 16--an unfortunate loss of time. By March 17, however, the troops from Egypt and most of the French contingent were assembled at the island of Lemnos, and General Sir Ian Hamilton had arrived to take command. His instructions included the statement that "employment of military forces on any large scale at this juncture is only contemplated in the event of the fleet failing to get through after every effort has been exhausted. Having entered on the project of forcing the Straits, there can be no idea of abandoning the scheme."

On March 11 the First Lord sent to Admiral Carden a despatch asking whether the time had not arrived when "you will have to press hard for a decision," and adding: "Every well-conceived action for forcing a decision, even should regrettable losses be entailed, will receive our support." The Admiral replied concurring, but expressing the opinion that "in order to insure my communication line immediately fleet enters Sea of Marmora, military operations should be opened at once." On March 16 he resigned owing to ill health, and his second in command, Admiral de Robeck, succeeded, with the feeling that he had orders to force the Straits.

The attack of March 18 was the crucial and, as it proved, the final action of the purely naval campaign. At this time the mines had been swept as far up as Cephez Point, and a clear channel opened for some distance beyond. During the morning the _Queen Elizabeth_ and 5 other ships bombarded the Narrows forts at 14,000 yards. Then at 12.22 the French predreadnoughts _Suffren, Gaulois, Charlemagne_, and _Bouvet_ approached to about 9000 yards and by 1.25 had for the time being silenced the batteries of the Narrows. Six British battleships now advanced (2.36) to relieve the French. In the maneuvering and withdrawal, the _Biouvet_ was sunk by a drifting mine[1] with a loss of over 600 men, and the _Gaulois_ was hit twice under water and had to be beached on an island outside the Straits. About 4 o'clock the _Irresistible_ also ran foul of a mine and was run ashore on the Asiatic side, where most of her men were taken off under fire. The _Ocean_, after going to her assistance, struck a mine and went down about 6 o'clock. Not more than 40 per cent. of the injuries sustained in the action were attributable to gunfire, the rest to mines sent adrift from the Narrows. Of the 16 capital ships engaged, three were sunk, one had to be beached, and some of the others were hardly ready for continuing the action next day.

[Footnote 1: It is stated that an ingenious device caused these mines to sink after a certain time and come back on an under-current that flows _up_ the Dardanelles, and then rise at the Narrows for recovery. This may have enabled the Turks to keep up their presumably limited supply of mines; but how well the automatic control worked is not known.]

There is some military support for the opinion that if, on the 18th or at some more suitable time, the fleet had acted in the spirit of Farragut's "Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!" and, protected by dummy ships, bumpers, or whatever other devices naval ingenuity could devise, had steamed up to and through the Narrows in column, it would not have suffered much more severely than during the complicated maneuvering below. Of such an attack General von der Goltz, in command of the Turkish army, said that, "Although he thought it was almost impossible to force the Dardanelles, if the English thought it an important move in the general war, they could by sacrificing ten ships force the entrance, and do it very fast, and be up in Marmora within 10 hours from the time they forced it."[l] Admiral Fisher estimated that the loss would be 12 ships.

[Footnote 1: Repeated by Baron van Wangenheim to Ambassador Morgenthau, prior to the attack of March 18, AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY, _World's Work_, September, 1918. See also Col. F. N. Maude, Royal Engineers, _Contemporary Review_, June, 1915.]

After such deductions, there would be no great surplus to deal with the _Göben_, which would fight desperately, and with the defenses of Constantinople. Indeed, such losses would seem absolutely prohibitive, if viewed only from the narrow standpoint of the force engaged, and without taking into fullest account the limited value of the older ships and the fact that the Government was fully committed to a prosecution of the campaign. It is of course easy to see that victory purchased by the loss of 10 predreadnoughts and 10,000 men would be cheap, as compared with the sacrifice of over 100,000 men killed and wounded and 10,000 invalided in the later campaign on land.

General Callwell has pointed out that the naval commanders were properly worried about what would happen after they got through the Straits, if the Sublime Porte should not promptly "throw up the sponge." "The communications would have remained closed to colliers and small craft by movable armament, if not also by mines. Forcing the pass would in fact have resembled bursting through a swing door. Sailors and soldiers alike have an instinctive horror of a trap, and they are in the habit of looking behind them as well as before them."[1] But according to Ambassador Morgenthau, who was probably in a better position than any one else to form an opinion, "The whole Ottoman State on the 18th day of March, 1915, was on the brink of dissolution." The Turkish Government was divided into factions and restive under German domination, and there was thus an excellent prospect that it would have capitulated under the guns of the Allied fleet. If not, then there might have been nothing left for the latter but to try to get back the way it came.

[Footnote 1: NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER, March, 1919, p. 486.]

Feeling in Constantinople during the month from February 19th to March 19th has already been suggested; it was nervous in the extreme. Neither Turks nor Germans felt assured that the Dardanelles could withstand British naval power. Plans were made for a general exit to Asia Minor, and there was a conviction that in a few days Allied ships would be in the Golden Horn. At the forts, if we may believe evidence not as yet definitely disproved, affairs were still more desperate. The guns, though manned largely by Germans, were not of the latest type, and for a month had been engaged in almost daily bombardment. Ammunition was running short. "Fort Hamadié, the most powerful defense on the Asiatic side, had just 17 armor-piercing projectiles left, while at Killid-ul-Bahr, the main defense on the European side, there were precisely 10."[2] To this evidence may be added the statement of Enver Pasha: "If the English had only had the courage to rush more ships through the Dardanelles they could have got to Constantinople, but their delay enabled us to fortify the peninsula, and in 6 weeks' time we had taken down there over 200 Austrian Skoda guns."

[Footnote 2: AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY, _World's Work_, September, 1918, p. 433, corroborating the statement of the correspondent G. A. Schreiner, in FROM BERLIN TO BAGDAD.]

If Mr. Churchill was chiefly responsible for undertaking the campaign, he was not responsible for the delay after March 18. "It never occurred to me," he states, "that we should not go on." Admiral de Robeck in his first despatches appeared to share this view. On March 26, however, he telegraphed: "The check on March 18 is not, in my opinion, decisive, but on March 22 I met General Hamilton and heard his views, and I now think that, to obtain important results and to achieve the object of the campaign, a combined operation will be essential." This despatch, Mr. Churchill says, "involved a complete change of plan and was a vital decision. I regretted it very much. I believed then, as I believe now, that we were separated by very little from complete success." He proposed that the Admiral should be directed to renew the attack; but the First Sea Lord did not agree, nor did Admiral Sir Arthur Wilson, nor Admiral Sir Henry Jackson. So it was decided to wait for the army, and some satire has been directed at Mr. Churchill and those other "acknowledged experts in the technicalities of amphibious warfare," Mr. Balfour and Mr. Asquith, who were inclined to share his views. The verdict of the Dardanelles Commission was that, "Had the attack been renewed within a day or two there is no reason to suppose that the proportion of casualties would have been less; and, if so, even had the second attack succeeded, a very weak force would have been left for subsequent naval operations."

Once decided upon, it was highly essential that the combined operation should begin without further delay. But it was now found that the army transports had been loaded, so to speak, up-side-down, with guns and munitions buried under tents and supplies. Sending them back to Alexandria for reloading involved a six weeks' delay, though Lord Kitchener wired, "I think you had better know at once that I regard such postponement as far too long." The landing on the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which was nearest the forts in the Straits and said to be the only feasible place, actually began on April 25, and was achieved under the guns of the fleet, and by almost unexampled feats of heroism by boats' crews and the first parties on shore.

Henceforth the navy played a subordinate though not insignificant part in the campaign. "By our navy we went there and were kept there," writes Mr. John Masefield in _Gallipoli_, "and by our navy we came away. During the nine months of our hold on the peninsula over 300,000 men were brought by the navy from places three, four, or even six thousand miles away. During the operations some half of these were removed by our navy, as sick and wounded, to ports from 800 to 3000 miles away. Every day, for 11 months, ships of our navy moved up and down the Gallipoli coast bombarding the Turk positions. Every day during the operations our navy kept our armies in food, drink and supplies. Every day, in all that time, if weather permitted, ships of our navy cruised in the Narrows and off Constantinople, and the seaplanes of our navy raided and scouted within the Turk lines."

On May 12 the predreadnought _Goliath_ was torpedoed by a Turkish destroyer; and on May 25-26 the German submarine _U 23_, which had made the long voyage by way of Gibraltar, sank the _Triumph_ and the _Majestic_. It was upon a forewarning of this attack that Admiral Fisher, according to his own statement, resigned as a protest against the retention of the _Queen Elizabeth_ and other capital units in this unpromising field. British and French submarines, on the other hand, worked their way into the Sea of Marmora, entered the harbor of Constantinople, and inflicted heavy losses, including two Turkish battleships, 8 transports, and 197 supply vessels.

So almost unprecedented were the problems of a naval attack on the Dardanelles that it appears rash to condemn either the initiation or the conduct of an operation that ended in failure when seemingly on the verge of success. Clearly, the campaign was handicapped by lack of unanimous support and whole-hearted faith on the part of authorities at home. It was not thoroughly thought out at the start, and was subjected to trying delays. No advantage was ever taken of the invaluable factor of surprise. Even so, it was not wholly barren of results. It undoubtedly relieved Russia, kept Bulgaria neutral for at least five months, and immobilized 300,000 Turks, according to Lord Kitchener's estimate, for nine months' time. Nevertheless, the final failure was a tremendous blow to Allied prestige. Upon the withdrawal, in January of 1916, some of the troops were transferred to Salonika; and it is noteworthy that in Macedonia, as at Gallipoli, the army was dependent on the navy for the transport of troops, munitions, and in fact virtually everything needed in the campaign.

Aside from the Dardanelles failure, the naval situation at the end of 1915 was such as to give assurance to the Western Powers. They had converted potential control of the sea into actual control, save in limited areas on the enemies' sea frontiers. Germany had lost her cruisers and her colonies, and her shipping had been destroyed or driven from the seas. Though losses from submarines averaged 150,000 tons a month in 1915, they had not yet caused genuine alarm. The German fleet was still a menace, but, in spite of attrition warfare, the Grand Fleet was decidedly stronger than in 1914.

REFERENCES

BRITISH OFFICIAL NAVAL HISTORY, Sir Julian Corbett, London, 1920. THE GRAND FLEET, Admiral Jellicoe, London, 1918. THE BRITISH NAVY IN BATTLE, Arthur H. Pollen, London, 1919. MY MEMOIRS, Admiral van Tirpitz, 1919. THE GERMAN HIGH SEAS FLEET IN THE WORLD WAR, Vice Admiral van Scheer, 1920. U. S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PROCEEDINGS, WAR NOTES, 1914-1918. LES ENSEIGNEMENTS MARITIMES DE LA GUERRE ANTI-GERMANIQUE, Admiral Daveluy, Paris, 1919. IL POTERE MARITTIMO NELLA GRANDE GUERRA, Captain Romeo Bernotti, Leghorn, 1920. NAVAL POWER IN THE WAR, Commander C. C. Gill, New York, 1918.