the same force would have been any more successful. The
war staff had not risen to the height of the First Lord's con-
ception and the First Lord had no conception of the technical
difficulties involved. This was the end of the purely naval
enterprise and should have been the end of the whole project.
But Lord Kitchener, who had hung back at the critical moment,
now pressed forward when it was too late. Both at the Ad-
miralty and the War Office the lack of a competent staff was
painfully evident. On March 23, after a conference with Gen.
Sir Ian Hamilton, Sir John de Robeck abandoned the attempt.
A month elapsed before the army could make their attack, and
Gen. Liman von Sanders converted the peninsula into a fortress.
It was now the task of the navy to prepare to support the landing. This did not take place till April 25. The naval force acting in support numbered 18 battleships, 12 cruisers, 29 destroyers and 8 submarines, and there gradually collected at Port Mudros in Lemnos a great armada of transports, supply ships, munition ships and auxiliary craft. The whole shore was carefully surveyed. Six beaches were chosen for the landing on the 12-m. strip of coast stretching northwards from Sedd-el- Bahr (on the north side of the entrance to the Straits) to Gaba Tepe. S beach was in Morto Bay inside the Straits a mile or so east of Sedd-el-Bahr. Then following the coast from Sedd-el- Bahr to the west and north came V beach just under the old castle at Sedd-el-Bahr and between it and the high lighthouse of Cape Helles; a mile or so further on came W beach between Cape Helles and Cape Tekeh; then X beach just north of Cape Tekeh, and Y beach close to it, and then at last 10 m. to the north came Z beach near Gaba Tcpe, christened in its baptism of fire with the new and splendid name of Anzac. It is only possible to give the names of the ships which supported the landings. The landings at the nose of the peninsula, that is at S, V, W, X and Y, were under Rear-Adml. Rosslyn Wemyss with seven battleships, the " Lord Nelson," " Swiftsure," " Implacable," " Cornwallis," " Vengeance," " Albion " and " Prince George," and four cruisers, the " Euryalus " (Capt. R. Burmester, 20 2, 12 6-in.), " Talbot " (Capt. F. Wray, n 6-in.), " Minerva " (Capt. P. Warleigh, n 6-in.) and "Dublin" (Capt. J. D. Kelley, 8 6-in.). The landing at Anzac was under Rear-Adml. Cecil Thursby with five battleships, the " Queen " (flag., Capt. H. A. Adam), " Prince of Wales " (Capt. R. Bax), " London " (Capt. J. Armstrong), " Triumph," " Majestic," and one old cruiser the " Bacchante " (Capt. Hon. Algernon Boyle, 29 2, 12 6-in.). All six left Port Mudros on the after- noon of the 24th, and the ships and transports went their respective ways.
At Gaba Tepe by a fortunate accident the landing was made at Sari Bahr a mile and a half farther north. Four thousand troops were ashore in an hour; the Australians rushed the Turks up the hills and out of them. At Y beach the troops were heavily attacked and had to be reembarked. At X beach the captain of the "Implacable" (Capt. Norman Lockyer, R.N.) dropped anchor close in, veered till the ship was almost aground, then let go with all her guns just over the beach, raising such smoke and dust and din that the troops landed there with scarcely any casualties. W was a beach about 300 yd. long, bristling with wire to the water's edge, flanked by steep cliffs honeycombed with guns. The " Euryalus " supported the landing here, but her 6-in. guns were too light to make any impression on the entanglements and the Lancashire Fusiliers had a terrible time. V beach, about 500 yd. long, just under the old castle of Sedd-el-Bahr, was another fortress, and there things were even more desperate. The old collier " River Clyde " had been prepared for the landing and it had been arranged to run her ashore and push a bridge of lighters out from her side on to the beach. But the lighters broke adrift though Comm. Unwin with his gallant companions made heroic efforts to get them into place. At S beach in Morto Bay the landing was made in trawlers covered by a heavy fire from the " Cornwallis " and " Lord Nelson " and the 2nd South Wales Borderers got ashore with a very few casualties. Such was the famous landing at Helles, but another danger was looming on the horizon.
Otto Hersing, one of the most skilful German commanders, was on his way out in Uai. Already on May i3th the " Goliath " (Capt. T. L. Shelford), anchored in Morto Bay just inside Sedd- el-Bahr, had been attacked by a Turkish destroyer, the " Mua- venet-i-Millet," which came down on her in the mist, and hit by three torpedoes she had sunk in a few minutes with a loss of over 500 men. Lord Fisher now insisted on the recall of the " Queen Elizabeth," and in the ill-advised decision of the War Council on May 24 to persist in the campaign he saw his great alternative scheme doomed. Faced with the progressive frustra- tion of his plans, he left the Admiralty and Adml. Sir Henry Jackson took his place as First Sea Lord. On May 25 Otto Hersing made his presence felt. The " Vengeance " was fired at and missed. The " Triumph " was hit and capsized in twelve minutes and on the 2yth the " Majestic " suffered the same fate. The movements of ships were now severely restricted but the fleet successfully maintained the army's passage by sea and remained its " father and mother " right up to the amazing night of Jan. 8 1916 when swiftly and silently it gathered into its arms the men of those tremendous legions and bore them home. But the passage of the Dardanelles, impenetrable to big ships, had been made by submarines though not without severe loss. All together nine British and three French submarines passed the Straits, of which four British and the three French never returned. From July 1915 to the end of the year there were usually two British submarines working in the Sea of Marmora which seriously interfered with Turkish transports and supply.
The end of the year saw the end of the great crusade, leaving behind a trail of glory and bitter disappointment, for there can be little doubt that it had in it the elements of a splendid success had it been properly handled from the beginning. But there was no real staff at the Admiralty or War Office to grip the fundamental aspects of the problem, the Grand Fleet and the army in France were urgent in their insistency, and Lord Fisher unfortunately clung persistently to his Baltic plan, which was a far more extravagant conception than that of the Dardanelles. It was based on the idea of a big landing on the German coast near Rugcn, and on the far-fetched assumption that the Russian general staff could be persuaded to cooperate in the scheme. The War Office would not listen to it. From a naval point of view it must be regarded as impracticable. It might have been possible with a specially trained and constituted force to force the Great Belt. But what was to be done then? The same question confronted the British at the Dardanelles. The Great Belt stretches for 80 m. and is only 10 to 15 m. wide; farther on come the narrow Fehmarn and Cadet channels with the impregnable fortress of Kiel only 30 m. on their flank, and any attempt to maintain a passage through these waters must sooner or later have developed into an investment or blockade of Kiel, where there would only be German granite to bite instead of Gallipoli sand. And yet it must be confessed that the assistance given the Russians in the Baltic was not very great. There, as in the Dardanelles, British assistance was limited to submarines, which did magnificent work after their kind but could do no more. It is certain that at the beginning of the war any rumour of an attack in the Baltic sent a quiver of trepi- dation through the German Admiralty. The Sound was not passable to big ships, and Germany at the beginning of the war had agreed with Denmark to the closure of the Great Belt by Danish minefields at the northern and German at the southern end. The defence of the Baltic had been entrusted to the older German ships, but in the East Baltic the Germans did not have it all their own way, and the Russians from first to last showed themselves no mean antagonists.
In the summer of 1915 after the capture of Libau, German naval forces were engaged supporting the army as it closed round Warsaw. At attempt was first made on June 28 to land troops at Windau (Courland) under an escort of old battle- ships, four cruisers and torpedo craft, but the opening bom- bardment was ineffectual, and while the troops were landing, a swarm of Russian destroyers appeared, and drove off the supporting ships and transports, bringing the operation to an
