The Dandarnelles Disaster (24 page)

Such was the turning point of the struggle for the Dardanelles.

CHAPTER 8

Heads Roll

The Turks and Germans assumed that the attack had merely been broken off for the night. Proud, dazed yet relieved that they had almost all survived, the defenders surveyed the spectacular but militarily mostly ineffectual damage – the craters, the mounds of earth, the battered ramparts, the smashed buildings – caused by the unprecedented bombardment and wondered what the next day would bring. They immediately started work on shoring up and repairing such defences as they could. Ammunition was short, but almost certainly not as deficient as British naval intelligence liked to think at the time. The armour-piercing shells most capable of doing damage to ships were more depleted than other categories. The various historical sources – British, German, Turkish – disagree on how much was left. The widely accepted ironic legend that, had the Allied ships renewed their bombardment within hours or days, the Turks and Germans would soon have been completely out of armour-piercing ammunition is clearly false. Many ashore however believed it was only a matter of time, perhaps days, before the fleet came back and broke through. They also believed that it was the batteries that had inflicted the brunt of the damage on the attackers (true for two of the three French casualties): hardly anyone knew of the
Nusret
's decisive contribution.

Major-General Jevad Pasha, Turkish commander of the straits forts, said shortly after the war:

The morale of the troops was excellent after the bombardment of March 18. They were prepared for and expected another attack. If the fleet had got through, I do not consider they [
sic
] could have done any good. They could have got through to Constantinople but we had an army there and we could have closed the straits behind them.

Just before the great bombardment, morale in Constantinople had been rather lower. A British informant in the city reported early in March that the government was preparing to move to Konya, a town on the Baghdad

Railway, some 250 miles (400 km) south-east of Constantinople in central southern Anatolia. Ministry archives had been transferred there. The Ottoman and German commercial banks evacuated their gold and cash reserves. Rich Turkish families had left the city or sought protection from German or Austrian friends. The Central Powers' ambassadors sent the families of their staff home by rail. Special trains and boats were on standby to evacuate the Sultan, ministers and other key officials. Ambassador Wangenheim had a plan to withdraw to Berlin if the Dardanelles were forced. In the other direction new guns and ammunition were pouring into the city by train from Germany via neutral Romania and Bulgaria and the Danube from the Czech munitions factories. The German crews of
Yavuz
and
Midilli
were confined to their ships, which were on short notice to move against an intrusion into the Marmara, despite the mine damage to the former. Two torpedo-boats nervously patrolled the Bosporus and the waters round the city for submarines.

Vice-Admiral de Robeck was understandably depressed on the evening of 18 March; he had lost three capital ships and another three had been incapacitated. He expected to be dismissed at once. After describing the day's events in his first report to the Admiralty on 19 March he wrote:

It therefore appears damage inflicted was due to drifting mines.

With the exception of ships lost and damaged, squadron is ready for immediate action but the plan of attack must be reconsidered and means found to deal with floating mines …

But: British casualties were fewer than 150 men (50 killed) out of some 15,000 engaged; two more old battleships, HMSs
Queen
and
Implacable
from the Channel Fleet
,
superior to the lost ships they would replace, were already on their way, approaching Malta; two more veterans,
London
and
Prince of Wales
, would follow; the French were sending the
Henri IV
, already at Suez, to replace the
Bouvet.
The Admiralty, Churchill to the fore, was still optimistic, even though (or perhaps even because) Fisher had once predicted the loss of a dozen battleships if the navy acted alone. Churchill sent the First Sea Lord a comforting message saying, ‘As long as the crews are saved, there is no cause for serious regret.' Keyes still believed a breakthrough was possible. The ‘only' obstacle was the minefield, which could surely be dealt with by a reorganisation of sweeping and more powerful and suitable sweepers – specifically adapted destroyers.

But Generals Hamilton and Birdwood, both of whom had witnessed the naval assault, were less sanguine about the navy's prospects. Hamilton telegraphed to Kitchener on the 19th:

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 landings of parties to destroy forts, it must be a deliberate and progressive military operation carried out at full strength so as to open a passage for the Navy
.

Churchill reported on developments at the Dardanelles to the War Council on 19 March, on the basis of the first telegram from de Robeck. It was too soon for a final assessment, he said, but he was willing, if the Council agreed, to instruct the admiral ‘to use his discretion in continuing the operations'. He had been informed that the Turks were running out of ammunition and mines, he added. The 29th Division was due in Alexandria on 2 April.

Kitchener summarised what he had been told by Hamilton. He agreed with his commander on the spot that Alexandria would have to be used as the British Army's main base as it had all the facilities lacking at Mudros. The French division could use the facilities of Port Said on the Suez Canal before being shipped to Mudros. All this implied a wait of at least a month for the army to get ready. The meeting agreed that Churchill should inform de Robeck that he could continue the operations at the Dardanelles if he thought fit. The admiral's subsequent telegrams on the 20th and as late as the afternoon of the 21st showed him willing, even eager, to renew the assault as soon as possible, weather permitting. The weather however was not in permissive mood as persistent north-easterly gales blew from the 19th every day to the 24th.

On the morning of 22 March de Robeck and his staff invited Hamilton and his staff to a conference in his stateroom on the
Queen Elizabeth.
Hamilton recalled:

The moment we sat down de Robeck told us he was now quite clear he could not get through without the help of all my troops … So there was no discussion. At once we turned our faces to the land scheme.

As the army needed time to prepare and reorganise at Alexandria, and
pending the arrival of the 29th Division at the beginning of the month, there could be no full-scale land operation before 14 April.

Why had de Robeck changed his mind overnight? According to his evidence to the Dardanelles Commission, there were two factors behind his decision: the mines; and Hamilton's uncompromising advice on 22 March that success would simply not be possible unless by means of a combined operation. It is fair to add that he was profoundly affected by the losses of ships under his flag. He reported his decision to the Admiralty on 23 March: ‘Having met General Hamilton … I consider a combined operation essential.'

Predictably Keyes, who missed some of the meeting because he was visiting the minesweepers, was distraught. He implored his chief to renew the attack as soon as the minesweeping had been reorganised around eight ‘Beagle'-class coal-burning destroyers (which however would not be ready for their new role until 4 April). There were volunteers aplenty from the crews of the lost battleships. The trawlermen were being sent home. He thought the mines could be swept on or about 4 April, whereupon the Allied fleet could enter the Sea of Marmara, destroy the Turkish fleet, stop the seaborne supplies to the forts and artillery (there being no roads worthy of the name on the peninsula) … The fiery commodore did not indicate how the navy could dispose of the mobile batteries at the Narrows that had been covering the minefields so effectively. De Robeck had concluded that he could not safely land troops in enough strength inside the strait to tackle the peninsular artillery directly: this would have to be done from the southern and western coasts of the peninsula by an advance overland. But the admiral was generous enough to allow Keyes to return to London as late as October to plead for a renewed naval attack, even though the two men had disagreed fundamentally about the way forward after 18 March.

Back in London in March, Churchill, still calling for a continuation of the navy-only assault, was all but isolated. The fact that the men on the spot – admiral and general – regarded a combined operation as the only way to proceed was decisive for everyone at the Admiralty except the First Lord (and his loyal Naval Secretary, Commodore Charles de Bartolomé). Fisher, the admirals in the War Group, the Sea Lords and the staff were now totally and outspokenly opposed to the continuation of the unsupported naval assault. Even Asquith, who knew nothing at all about strategy or naval warfare, and the other ministers were opposed. Kitchener of course now
supported his man Hamilton and the latter's plan for a combined operation with the army in the lead.

Churchill tried to persuade de Robeck to press ahead without waiting for the army, but his notorious overbearing style did not work as well by wireless as it did in person. (Fisher, not a shy figure, complained that he would take a clear, well-buttressed opinion into a meeting with Churchill and emerge with his mind changed, a fact which he usually rued afterwards. In his
Room 40
Patrick Beesly cites a revealing anecdote from Admiral Sir Reginald Hall, Director of Naval Intelligence in 1914–18, about Churchill's power of persuasion, so extraordinary ‘that again and again tired Admiralty officials were hypnotised … into accepting opinions which differed vastly from those they normally held'. Hall dealt with this as follows: ‘I began to mutter to myself, “my name is Hall, my name is Hall …”' Challenged by Churchill to explain, Hall replied: ‘I am saying to myself that my name is Hall because if I listen to you much longer, I shall be convinced it's Brown.')

Hall had taken a direct hand in the Dardanelles campaign by sending two agents to Bulgaria in January 1915 to try to bribe Talaat Bey, the CUP Minister of the Interior and close ally of Enver, through intermediaries to break the German connection and give the Royal Navy free passage through the Dardanelles. The agents were empowered to offer £3 million, with leeway to go up to £4 million (multiply by about 65 for today's values). The Turks politely strung the agents along and made encouraging noises; but when Hall told Churchill and Fisher what he was doing, Fisher ordered him to desist. After the defeat of 18 March the Cabinet suggested Hall try again, but Albion, thief of dreadnoughts, was now classified as incurably perfidious by the Turks and it was too late.

The First Lord wrote a lengthy memorandum to de Robeck which amounted to an order to continue, rather than an argument in favour, but given the general opinion of the War Council, the unanimous opposition of both commanders on the spot and all senior naval officers concerned (except Keyes), he did not send it. On 28 March Churchill (unintentionally prophetic) asked de Robeck what would happen if the army failed. The admiral had no answer beyond saying that the fleet would still be very much in being and could mount another attack: he could not however afford to let the strait be closed behind him by the Turks and therefore needed the army to keep it open by suppressing enemy artillery.

Kitchener and Hamilton were henceforward in charge of both strategy and timetable. The army was calling the shots, and de Robeck accepted that the fleet would fulfil only a secondary, supporting role until further notice. The War Council met briefly on 6 April to hear Churchill read from de Robeck's full report; the First Lord again pressed for an early resumption by the fleet without waiting for the soldiers. Five weeks later, on 9 May, de Robeck reported in effect that the army had failed: should the fleet try again? Nobody in London said yes, not even Churchill, who finally gave up on the navy-only approach. The War Council's next full meeting was only on 15 May, the first in two months. Churchill announced that he and Fisher had sent de Robeck a message (their last jointly signed telegram) on the 13th saying that ‘the moment for a renewal of a naval attempt to force the Dardanelles had past [
sic
] and was not likely to arise again'. Such was Churchill's personal admission of defeat. He told the Council:

If we had known three months ago that an army of from 80 to 100,000 men would now be available for the attack on the Dardanelles, the naval attack would never have been undertaken. Three months ago, however, it was impossible to foresee this.

Kitchener was both defensive and disingenuous in his reply:

When the Admiralty proposed to force the passage of the Dardanelles by means of the fleet alone, I doubted whether the attempt would succeed, but was led to believe it possible by the First Lord's statements of the power of the
Queen Elizabeth
and the Admiralty staff paper showing how the operations were to be conducted …

I considered that, though there was undoubtedly risk, the political advantages to be gained by forcing the Dardanelles were commensurate … I realised that if the fleet failed … the army would have to be employed to help the navy through. I regret I was led to agree in [
sic
] the enterprise by the statements made, particularly as to the power of the
Queen Elizabeth
, of [
sic
] which I had no means of judging.

By this time, the army was already bogged down on the Gallipoli peninsula. Kitchener complained that the Admiralty had withdrawn the
Queen Elizabeth
to her allotted place in the Grand Fleet some weeks after 18 March: ‘I never for a moment thought it possible that, if the army was employed on the Gallipoli Peninsula to help them, the Admiralty would withdraw
the principal naval unit on which they and we relied.' This was a strange complaint, given that the army was ashore precisely because the biggest naval guns of their time had proved incapable of doing the job! But we are getting ahead of ourselves.