Castles of Steel (90 page)

On the following night, March 2, the sweepers came in under a bright moon and, nearing the minefields, were met by a hail of fire. Again, no vessel was hit, but again they retreated. The experience was repeated on March 3. As before, the trawlers heading upstream with their sweeping gear extended were too slow to make real headway against the powerful current. Nearly motionless, they were lit up by the searchlights and became helpless targets at close range for dozens of enemy guns. The night ended with the trawlers fleeing down the Straits with shells splashing around them. On March 6, the minesweepers returned, this time accompanied by two battleships and
Amethyst
to suppress the shore batteries. Once the sweepers came into the glare of the searchlights, the three warships fired repeatedly but hit nothing. When the enemy opened fire on the sweepers, the vessels retreated, unscathed.

The civilian trawler crews were as brave as fishermen anywhere, but they had no experience under fire. They were barely able to make progress against the powerful current, illuminated by searchlights at night, even more conspicuous by day, working under constant fire from scores of guns ashore: it was not surprising that their morale sagged and eventually broke. Their officers told Keyes that the men “recognised sweeping risks and did not mind being blown up but they hated gunfire and . . . were not supposed to sweep under fire and had not joined for that.” Exasperated, Keyes himself took charge of the sweeping force. He asked Carden to request Admiralty permission to offer the trawler crews a financial bonus to persevere. The Admiralty replied that the admiral could offer anything he liked. Keyes also suggested that young officers from the fleet be asked to volunteer for service in the sweepers to stiffen the crews. Carden agreed to this, but London did not approve until the twelfth.

On the night of March 10, the minesweeping flotilla made a seventh attempt, using a different approach. Theretofore, trawlers with sweeps out had been unable to make significant progress up into the current. This time they would sweep coming down. Seven trawlers—there was not room for more moving abreast in the Straits—were to steam up against the current through the minefields and past Kephez Point. There, they were to turn around, extend their sweeps, and come down with the current, sweeping as they came. Keyes, aboard the battleship
Canopus
following behind, reported what happened: “When we got into the Straits, we found five powerful searchlights operating.
Canopus
opened fire. The lights kept going out, but only for a few minutes and it seemed impossible to put them out of action. We were fired at from all directions. One saw stabs of light from the hills in the direction of the six-inch batteries covering the minefields on both sides of the Straits, followed by the whine of shells, the bursting of shrapnel, and the scream of heavy projectiles which threw up fountains of water. The fire was very wild and
Canopus
was not hit, but for all the good we did towards dowsing the searchlights we might as well have been firing at the moon.”

Even so, the seven trawlers steamed in single line over the minefields, turned, and some began to extend their sweeps. By then, however, the crews were so agitated that four of the seven did not put out their equipment. One pair of trawlers collected mines and exploded two; one trawler struck a mine and blew up, but the crew was rescued. The explosion, however, seemed to awaken the whole area. The Straits were bathed in the glare of searchlights and every gun on shore poured fire on the little ships. Two more trawlers were smothered by 6-inch howitzer shells and the effort was canceled, The remaining trawlers withdrew. One trawler had been sunk and all of the others were damaged, but somehow only two men had been wounded. The following night, Keyes tried again. The trawlers went in alone without battleship support, hoping to surprise the Turks. The result was another fiasco. “The less said about that night the better,” Keyes wrote. “To put it briefly, the sweepers turned tail and fled as soon as they were fired upon. I was furious and told the officers . . . that it did not matter if we lost all seven sweepers, there were twenty-eight more, and the mines had got to be swept up. How could they talk about being stopped by heavy fire if they were not hit?”

From London the next day, Churchill, worried, signaled the admiral:

“Your original instructions laid stress on caution and deliberate methods and we approve highly the skill and patience with which you have advanced hitherto without loss. The results to be gained are, however, great enough to justify loss of ships and men if success cannot be obtained without. . . . We do not wish to hurry you and urge you beyond your judgement but we recognize clearly that at a certain period in your operations you will have to press hard for a decision and we desire to know whether you consider that point has now been reached.” Carden received this message on the twelfth and replied on the thirteenth. He “fully concurred” that the time had come for “vigorous sustained action. . . . A final attempt [to clear the minefield],” he told the First Lord, “is to be made tonight.”

That night, March 13, the minesweepers, some of them with crews that included navy volunteers, made a determined effort. The battleship
Cornwallis
went first and pounded the searchlights and minefield batteries for an hour. At 2:00 a.m.,
Amethyst
and four destroyers followed and fired for another hour. Then, at 3:00 a.m., seven trawlers appeared, steaming ahead in single line. Again, their intention was to proceed up through the minefields, turn around, put out their sweeps, and sweep mines as they came down with the current. On this occasion, the Turks saw them coming and illuminated their early path with two powerful searchlights. Then, once the minesweepers had reached the middle of the minefield, the searchlights suddenly went out and “a minute later,” Keyes said, “they all flashed on again.” This was a signal: a storm of shells burst around the trawlers. The little ships pressed forward to their turning point and swung around. The fire intensified and the men working on deck amid shell bursts and flying shrapnel, columns of spray and blinding searchlight beams, attempted to put out their sweeps. Two trawlers had their sweeping gear entirely shot away. On one boat, the captain and every man on deck were killed. One trawler rammed another and the two, locked together, drifted down over the minefields, the target of concentrated fire. Astonishingly, none of the trawlers was sunk and two actually swept up several mines. The heaviest casualties that night were inflicted on
Amethyst,
waiting at the edge of the minefield to cover their retreat. The light cruiser was hit in her steering gear and, for twenty minutes, lay out of control in the Straits, a perfect target. During this time, a large shell exploded in her crowded mess deck, killing twenty-four men and wounding thirty-six; the remains were so fragmented they had to be collected in sacks.

This was Carden’s last attempt to sweep the minefields at night. Thereafter, he decided, he would reverse his tactics. Rather than attempting to sweep the minefields before the fleet silenced the Turkish guns, and using darkness as cover, the admiral decided that he must destroy or suppress the guns in the forts and along the shore by heavy naval gunfire before the mines could be swept. This operation—first, bombardment by the massed artillery of the whole fleet; then, the sweeping of the mines—could be done only in daylight. Just as Carden reached this conclusion, the beleaguered admiral received a sharp prod from an impatient First Lord:

I do not understand why minesweepers should be interfered with by firing which causes no casualties. Two or three hundred casualties would be a moderate price to pay for sweeping up as far as the Narrows. I highly approve your proposal to obtain volunteers from the fleet for minesweeping. This work has to be done whatever the loss of life and small craft and the sooner it is done the better. . . . We have information that the Turkish forts are short of ammunition. . . . German officers have appealed to Germany for more. . . . [They have] seriously considered [sending] a German or Austrian submarine. . . . All this makes clear that operation should now be pressed forward methodically and resolutely at night and day. The unavoidable losses must be accepted. Time is precious and the interference of submarines is a very serious consideration.

Carden replied that his attack would come within three days.

Churchill’s prodding stemmed from his awareness that the attack was losing momentum. By the middle of March, the glow of success created in London by Carden’s destruction of the outer forts was fading and the impression of a check at the Dardanelles was spreading. Here, in the pause created by the failure of the minesweepers, was a moment to reassess, a chance to turn back, to break off the operation if this seemed wise. In early discussions, Kitchener had pointed out that the advantage of a purely naval attack was that, if things did not go well, everything could be stopped at a moment’s notice. Later, Churchill said that this was now also Fisher’s view: “We have given the Carden plan a good trial. I never liked it much, but it has been a very good demonstration. It has fooled the Turks; it has helped the Russians; it has cost us practically nothing. Now let us break off altogether.” Churchill admitted that if the War Council were to choose this course, terminating the campaign would not be difficult: “One gesture with a wand and the whole armada assembled at the Dardanelles or moving thither—battleships, cruisers, destroyers, trawlers, supply ships, transports—would melt and vanish away. Evening would close on a mighty navy engaged in a world-arresting attack. The sun would rise on empty seas and silent shores.” There were many reasons, of course, that no wand was waved. National prestige had now been invested in the expedition; neither Britain nor France wished the enemy or the neutrals to witness the spectacle of the Entente powers retreating in the face of a setback. Further, Churchill himself passionately believed that the check was only temporary; that the minefields would be swept; that the fleet would force the Straits and topple the Ottoman empire. And for the moment at least, all of the First Lord’s colleagues agreed with him. Oddly, even Fisher, Churchill said later, “was never more resolute in his support.” The First Sea Lord, “who had a sort of feeling that the thing was rather too much for Carden,” even offered to go out to take personal command of the assault, but Churchill persuaded him to abandon the idea. The Sea Lords unanimously supported continuing the attack. So did the War Council, the War Office, the Foreign Office, and the prime minister. “Everyone’s blood was up,” said Churchill. “There was a virile readiness to do and dare.” But all of this rested on Carden; he must go forward; he must break through.

Yet even as the Allies were steeling themselves to persevere, the morale of the Turkish and German gunners at the Dardanelles was rising. About this time, the American ambassador to Turkey, Henry Morgenthau, visited the forts at Hamidieh near Chanak and at Kilid Bahr. At Hamidieh, he found that almost everyone was German and that German, not Turkish, was the language spoken on every side. Across the Narrows, at Kilid Bahr, the ambassador found a scene quite different from the quiet, workmanlike professionalism of the Germans at Hamidieh: “Everything was eagerness and activity. Evidently the Germans had been excellent instructors but there was more to it than [that] . . . for the men’s faces lighted up with all that fanaticism which supplies the morale of Turkish soldiers. . . . Above the shouts of all, I could hear the singsong chant of the leader, intoning the prayer with which the Moslem had rushed to battle for thirteen centuries: ‘Allah is great. There is but one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet!’ ”

The great daylight attack—the effort to overwhelm the defenses with massed battleships covering the minesweepers—was imminent when suddenly the Dardanelles campaign suffered a significant casualty: Admiral Carden became seriously ill. Six months at sea off the Straits with mounting responsibilities had destroyed his health. “My poor admiral,” Keyes noted on March 13, “is very seedy.” It did not help that the next morning Carden received another insistent message from Churchill: “I do not understand why minesweepers should be interfered with by firing which causes no casualties. . . . This work has to be done. . . . Time is precious.” By now, everything Carden swallowed made him wince with pain. Worrying about mines, about howitzers, about the weather, about the opinion of the Admiralty, he could not sleep. Each reply to a Churchill message took him several days to write. His situation was intolerable: he had promised an all-out attack, using the fleet alone, which he no longer believed in or had the resolution or energy to command. On March 15, after another bad night, Carden told Keyes he could not conduct a preattack conference with British and French admirals and captains. Giving up command at this point would mean the end of his career, and de Robeck and Keyes both urged him to reconsider. However, the following day a Harley Street specialist, serving with the fleet aboard the hospital ship
Soudan,
examined Carden and announced that the admiral had a dangerous ulcer and was on the verge of a “complete break down; he must have 3 or 4 weeks rest and freedom from all anxiety,” Keyes wrote to his wife. Carden telegraphed his resignation to the Admiralty and on March 17 departed for Malta and England on the cruiser
Minerva.

A new commander had to be found quickly. Carden’s resignation left Rear Admiral Rosslyn Wester Wemyss, the commander of the base at Mudros, as the senior British naval officer in the eastern Mediterranean and, normally, Wemyss would have succeeded Carden. But with the fleet poised for attack, Wemyss generously and sensibly offered to step aside in favor of Carden’s deputy, de Robeck, who had commanded during the actual fighting in the Straits. De Robeck was a tall, heavily built seaman of phlegmatic courage and unremarkable imagination, “a real fine fellow—worth a dozen of Carden,” in the opinion of General Birdwell, who had observed both admirals during his visit to Mudros. Churchill was less impressed with de Robeck: “One could not feel that his training and experience up to this period had led him to think deeply on the larger aspects of strategy and tactics.” But de Robeck possessed, at that moment, an overwhelming qualification: he was on the scene. Accordingly, Churchill quickly accepted Wemyss’s offer and appointed de Robeck acting vice admiral. At noon on March 17, even as Carden was leaving Mudros, de Robeck hoisted his flag on
Queen Elizabeth.
That same day, the First Lord asked the new commanding admiral for a rapid judgment: “Personal and Secret from First Lord: In entrusting to you, with great confidence, the command of the Mediterranean Detached Fleet, I presume that you consider, after separate and independent judgement, that the immediate operations are wise and practicable. If not, do not hesitate to say so. If so, execute them without delay and without further reference at the first favourable opportunity. . . . All good fortune attend you.” De Robeck replied that he accepted completely Carden’s plan and that if he had good weather, the attack would begin the following day.