The Dandarnelles Disaster (5 page)

Although Russia won this round, it still did not get its hands on Constantinople. As we have seen, the rival powers saw to that at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Fisher rose to command of the Mediterranean Fleet at the time of the Boer War (1899–1902) and spent some time based at Lemnos, the island south-west of the mouth of the Dardanelles that assumed so much importance in 1914–15. From there he made a detailed study of the strategic and tactical problems relating to forcing the strait and advancing on Constantinople. He concluded that the only way to do it would be to land troops to secure the Gallipoli peninsula at the same time as the attacking fleet passed into the Marmara. Armoured ships could expect to silence the forts and get through with tolerable losses, but unprotected transports, essential to sustain the fleet, would be wide open to Turkish artillerymen with their mobile German guns (and gunnery ‘advisers'): the defences had been strengthened with new German artillery pieces in 1885. He looked at the problem again when he became First Sea Lord, and saw no reason to change his view: such an undertaking would be ‘mightily hazardous'.

The Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) was set up by the British government at the end of 1902. It consisted of the Prime Minister, then the Conservative Arthur Balfour, as chairman, the Foreign Secretary, the First Lord of the Admiralty (political chief of the Royal Navy), the Secretary of State for War, a few other ministers as appropriate and naval and military advisers, principally the First Sea Lord and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff or their representatives. Its long-serving Secretary was Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Hankey (ultimately Lord Hankey), late of the Royal Marine Light Infantry, and its role was clearly defined by its title. It was a sensible response to a deteriorating world situation as anxiety began to grow about the rapid expansion of the German High Seas Fleet, a
development which had already led to an unprecedented understanding with Japan in 1902 and would soon lead to
rapprochements
with France and Russia.

One of the main worries of the CID in the opening years of the century was the possibility of war between the Far Eastern rivals Japan and Russia, which might lead the latter to send her Black Sea Fleet through the Dardanelles to reinforce, albeit circuitously, the Pacific Fleet. This would entail a breach of the international conventions mentioned above. In the event, the Russo-Japanese War fought in 1904–5 led to the even more outlandish, and ultimately disastrous, Russian decision to send their Northern Fleet from Archangel right round the Eurasian land-mass to reinforce the Pacific Fleet, both of which were then destroyed by the victorious Japanese.

At its ninety-second meeting in July 1906, ‘War with Turkey' dominated the agenda of the CID. Britain and Turkey were at odds about the border between British-controlled Egypt and Ottoman Syria; the Sultan laid claim to the Sinai Desert and the territory bordering the eastern bank of the Suez Canal. Sir Edward Grey, Foreign Secretary, declared that a decision was needed on whether it was possible to force the Dardanelles in defence of Egypt, a question originally raised by General Sir John French. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Tweedmouth, said there was no doubt that the Royal Navy could force the strait alone. But he added that it would be a costly business as the forts had powerful guns and German artillery officers were helping the Turks to man them. Ships would therefore be lost. Seizing islands commanding the mouth of the Dardanelles (Tenedos, Imbros, Lemnos, then all Turkish) might be enough to coerce the Turks. One naval adviser said the question had been considered before, but events at Port Arthur, the Russian enclave in Manchuria, in the war with Japan, had shown that forts had a natural advantage over attacking ships (although the Japanese fleet destroyed the Russians at Tsushima, near the port, the land-based guns repelled the seaborne victors and Japan had to send a large army overland to take it from the rear). The consensus at the CID was that a combined navy– army operation was the only realistic approach; but also that the current border dispute did not justify an attack on the Dardanelles.

At the next CID meeting in November, Admiral Sir John Fisher, the First Sea Lord, said, ‘Germany now controls the Dardanelles, and we could no longer hope to bribe the defenders to let us pass.' He was opposed to any attack on the strait, especially one by the navy alone, and hoped it would never happen. The General Staff and the Naval Intelligence Division agreed at a conference on the Dardanelles question in December 1906 that
a squadron of older armoured ships might break through to Constantinople but would be battered on the way back; and if the Turks abandoned the city there would be no real profit anyway. The army might be able to land 5,000 troops on Gallipoli for a surprise
coup de main
against the coastal artillery from the rear, but the force would be difficult to extricate and would have to hold on until heavily telegraphed, heavy reinforcements could be landed. That left the possibility of a large-scale combined operation, which could hardly expect to achieve surprise and would therefore have to make a landing opposed by strong defensive forces with modern guns – unless the fleet could somehow cover the landing in such a way as to enable the troops to seize a sufficiently large beachhead from which to launch a landward advance. Naval officers thought their army colleagues were overlooking the huge and swift recent advances in warship technology, including high explosives, rangefinders and massive long-range guns of a new standard of accuracy, but all agreed that large military and naval forces would be needed and heavy casualties were inevitable. War Office and General Staff studies in 1908 and again in 1911 reached the same conclusions.

The CID's ninety-sixth meeting in February 1907 had concluded: ‘The Committee consider that the operation of landing an expeditionary force on or near the Gallipoli Peninsula would involve great risk, and should not be undertaken if other means of bringing pressure to bear on Turkey were available.' The subject did not come up again at the CID itself in peacetime, even when Turkish territorial ambitions in the Persian Gulf appeared to threaten British interests in the region. Both the Admiralty and the War Office consistently took it as read that should it be necessary or advisable to attempt to force the Dardanelles in order to coerce the Ottoman government, a full-scale, combined naval and military operation was the only strategy. There could be no question of the Royal Navy attempting the task unaided.

Thanks to its intervention on Turkey's side in the Crimean War, the underlying motive for which was, as ever, to frustrate Russian ambitions in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, Britain enjoyed lasting prestige and even popularity in Turkey. This endured despite British inroads on Ottoman territory in Egypt, Persia, the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean plus loud public criticism of Turkish oppression of its minorities (Turkey's cavalier approach to human rights was still a bone of contention a century later). Until almost the end of the nineteenth century Turkey looked to
Britain and its navy for protection from Russian expansionism, but in the last quarter German influence began to gain ground at Britain's expense.

Yet the British naval mission, while hardly hyperactive during this period, was still in place in Constantinople. Rear-Admiral Arthur Henry Limpus led it in his official capacity as naval adviser to the Ottoman government and was personally popular among the Turks. Soon after his appointment by Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, in 1912, Limpus displayed energy in trying to revive the Turkish fleet, as part of British efforts to help the Turks recover from their setbacks in the Balkan wars. In this he was encouraged by his political chief, who was virtually alone among British ministers in favouring an alliance with Turkey. Churchill was enthusiastically supportive of the ‘Young Turks', especially when they brought down Sultan Abdul Hamid, ‘the Damned', who was personally responsible for the persecutions. Churchill met Enver, then briefly military attaché in Berlin, while officially observing German Army manoeuvres in 1909, when the Turk was aged just 27. Enver called on Churchill in London in 1910, the year he became First Lord. In September they met again when Churchill spent five days in Constantinople.

Turkey had already ordered a dreadnought battleship in 1911, to be built on Tyneside and named
Reshadieh
. The ship was launched in September 1913. There was no dock big enough for such a large vessel in Constantinople, so in December 1913, as the ship
,
23,000 tonnes and armed with ten 13.5-inch guns, was being fitted out, the Turks concluded another deal with Armstrong's and Vickers, the two shipbuilders whose close co-operation would one day lead to a merger, for shore facilities for her. The two companies were also commissioned to regenerate the neglected ships of the Ottoman fleet but had made little progress when the war broke out. In the same month Turkey successfully made an offer for another battleship, the
Rio de Janeiro,
nearing completion on Tyneside. The ship, 27,500 tonnes with 14 12-inch guns, at the time the world's longest dreadnought, had been commissioned by Brazil, which then found it could not afford the cost. She was renamed
Sultan Osman I.
Both ships were to be ready for delivery in July 1914. The contracts, which ran to a total of £6 million, were funded by nationwide public subscription and special taxes in Turkey and by Ottoman government bonds issued in London, supported by international bank loans. The Turks wanted the ships to shore up their flagging prestige – and quite possibly to recover the Aegean islands they had lost to Greece and Italy in recent years.

But as war with Germany looked imminent it was their friend Churchill who decided to take over both ships as a last-minute, instant reinforcement for the British Grand Fleet in the North Sea. Some 500 Turkish sailors had arrived in a steamer at Newcastle upon Tyne to man the ships and take them home. Under the contracts Britain was actually entitled to commandeer them (with full financial compensation) in a national emergency. Churchill made his decision to do so on 28 July 1914 – the day before the Grand Fleet was sent in a body to Scapa Flow after a naval review at Portland on the south coast of England. This strategic move had a decisive effect on the outcome of the war because it meant that the planned naval blockade of Germany could begin without delay. Regardless of subsequent errors by himself and others, this was Churchill's most important contribution by far to ultimate victory. The Cabinet approved the seizure of the Turkish dreadnoughts on 31 July and British sailors backed by troops took them over on 1 August. The move raised the number of dreadnoughts in the Grand Fleet to 22 (with 13 building), compared with Germany's 13 (10 on the stocks):
Reshadieh
became HMS
Erin
while
Rio de Janeiro,
after only a few days as
Sultan Osman I,
was born again as HMS
Agincourt
. The instant expansion of the Grand Fleet's big-gun strength by 10 per cent understandably caused universal outrage in Turkey, swinging political and public opinion decisively towards Germany at the critical moment.

Unbeknown to the British and most of the rest of the world, the timing could not have been worse.

CHAPTER 2

The German Answer

Germany offered Russia a free run in 1875 to pursue her enduring ambition to dominate the route from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean by achieving control of Constantinople, preferably by occupying it. This was a startling departure from the usually unspoken consensus among the European powers that Russia should never be allowed unfettered access to the Mediterranean. In exchange Bismarck, intent as ever on constraining France, asked the Tsar for a free hand in western Europe. The Russians could not fail to be tempted but, no doubt anticipating trouble with Britain and other powers over such a unilateral settlement of the ‘eastern question', turned it down. This prompted an expansionist Second Reich to look eastward to extend its political power and economic interests.

From 1875 the Emperor Wilhelm I and his Chancellor, Bismarck, set out to woo the Ottoman Empire. Germany turned two blind eyes towards the brutal internal repression of Sultan Abdul Hamid which had aroused widespread protests in Britain and western Europe. When British and French banks turned down Turkish requests for loans, Germany would provide. Even though the Congress of Berlin, chaired by Bismarck, effectively dismantled Turkish rule in the Balkans in 1878, the Germans continued with some success to increase their influence in Constantinople. The German military mission was revived and extended. In 1882 Colonel Kochler was appointed deputy chief of staff of the Turkish Army, succeeded on his death in 1883 by von der Goltz; in the same year the railway route from Berlin to Constantinople was opened, with work continuing on the extension to Baghdad. The state visit of Kaiser Wilhelm II, more crudely ambitious for Germany than his father, in 1898, underpinned German domination into the twentieth century.

Enver's reward for his part in the revolution of 1908–9 included a short stint as military attaché in Berlin in 1909, which consolidated his admiration for all things German, especially the army: he became the most enthusiastic supporter of the German connection in the CUP leadership and the government. By then Baron Marschall von Bieberstein, appointed
German ambassador to Constantinople in 1897, had come to personify Germany in Turkish eyes. A bulky, Bismarck-like figure with duelling scars on his face, he exuded confidence and a certain brutal charm. He was succeeded in 1912 by Baron Hans von Wangenheim, another imposing personality in the Prussian mould but rather more polished and subtle. He worked as tirelessly as his predecessor to build up German influence in Turkey. As the threat of general war grew, he bent all his efforts to achieving a formal alliance with the Ottoman Empire. General Liman von Sanders took over, and strongly expanded, the military mission in December 1913, bringing with him 70 officers who effectively took over the Turkish Army within a few months. As war broke out, spreading to Turkey within three months, there were 800 German military advisers, who were soon to be reinforced by naval ones.