British take Sheikh Said

On 10 November 1914 the British armoured cruiser HMS Duke of Edinburgh and transports carrying Brigadier-General Vaughan Cox’s 29th Indian Brigade arrived off the Sheikh Said peninsula, at the south-western tip of Yemen. The brigade was part of Indian Expeditionary Force “F” and was sailing from India to Egypt. On the way it received orders to make a brief detour and destroy the Turkish fortifications on the peninsula.

Sheikh Said lies on the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, opposite the small island of Perim, which belonged to the British and was a dependency of their base at Aden. The Turks, who then ruled Yemen, had built a fort there called Turba. After the outbreak of war with the Ottoman Empire the British regarded it as a threat to Perim, and therefore to the route from the Suez Canal to India. According to the British official history, however, the fort held only a few light guns. The operation was approved on condition that it would not delay the convoy by more than a day.

The cruiser shelled the fort and largely destroyed it. The planned landing place proved inaccessible because of the weather, so three battalions of the brigade, together with part of the 23rd Sikh Pioneers, went ashore a little further along, covered by fire from the ship. After a short fight the Turkish soldiers withdrew inland, abandoning their guns. On 11 November soldiers and sailors blew up the remains of the fort and the other fortifications and weapons, and then returned to the ships. The convoy sailed on to Suez.

The action was quick and successful, but its effects proved short-lived. The British left no garrison on the peninsula, because an expedition inland was considered too risky. In the summer of 1915 the Turks returned to Sheikh Said and tried to land on Perim from there. Fighting in the south of the Arabian Peninsula, especially around Aden, went on until the end of the war.