Fleet attack on the Dardanelles begins

On the morning of 19 February 1915 British and French ships opened fire on the forts guarding the entrance to the Dardanelles. The operation began on which the British War Council had finally decided at the end of January: the fleet was to force its way alone, without ground troops, through the straits into the Sea of Marmara and appear before Constantinople. The date was not chosen by chance. Exactly 108 years earlier, on 19 February 1807, the squadron of the British admiral John Duckworth had forced its way through the Dardanelles.

The plan for the first day

Vice-Admiral Sackville Carden, commanding the fleet, divided the operation into several stages. The first was the destruction of the four forts at the entrance to the straits. On the European side, at the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula, stood the fort of Sedd el Bahr and the battery on Cape Helles; on the Asian side, the fort of Kum Kale and the Orkanie battery. Sedd el Bahr had already suffered during the first bombardment in November 1914, when the explosion of the magazine wrecked the fort and knocked some of the guns off their mountings. The heaviest guns in the forts were of 240 to 280 millimetres calibre.

The ships were first to shell the forts from long range, beyond the reach of the Turkish guns, then close in and finish the job with fire at short range. Carden ordered that the ships should not be exposed to risk in the first phase. For the action he assigned the battlecruiser Inflexible, which flew his flag, the old British battleships Triumph, Cornwallis, Albion and Vengeance, the last flying the flag of Carden’s second-in-command, Rear-Admiral John de Robeck, and also the French battleships Suffren, flagship of Rear-Admiral Émile Guépratte, Bouvet and Gaulois.

The long bombardment

According to the British official history, the first shot was fired at 9.51 a.m. local time by the battleship Cornwallis, which took the Orkanie battery as its target. She was soon joined by Triumph, firing at the Helles battery, and by Suffren, which shelled Kum Kale with indirect fire over the cape. The Turks did not reply. The ships anchored so as to fire more accurately, but from a range of a dozen or so kilometres it was difficult to observe the fall of shot. At noon a seaplane reported that all the guns at Sedd el Bahr, Orkanie and Kum Kale were intact.

At 2 p.m. Carden judged that the forts had been sufficiently weakened and ordered the ships to close in. After 4 p.m. Suffren smothered Kum Kale with rapid fire and wrecked its southern wall. No reply came from behind the clouds of dust and smoke. At about 4.40 p.m. Carden instructed de Robeck to find out what state the forts were in. When Vengeance headed straight for the entrance to the straits, the Helles and Orkanie batteries unexpectedly opened fire, as if they had not been hit at all. De Robeck did not withdraw but took up the fight. Shells fell close beside his ship and damaged her spars and rigging. The French ships, Inflexible and the battleship Agamemnon, which had arrived that day, came to his aid.

At 5.20 p.m. Carden signalled the withdrawal. De Robeck asked for permission to finish the fight, but dusk was falling, and against the setting sun the ships were perfectly visible. Carden also wanted to save ammunition, which was short throughout the operation. As the ships drew off, Helles seemed to have been silenced, but Orkanie was still firing.

A disappointing result

No ship was hit, and the defenders’ losses were negligible. According to Turkish figures, an officer and a few men were killed on the European side, and an officer and two men in the Orkanie battery. The first day showed, however, that bombardment from long range achieved little against earthworks. A gun had to be hit directly, and that required closing the shore and accurate observation.

The following night a gale blew up. For the next few days wind and heavy seas made any action impossible, and the Turks gained time for repairs. The ships returned to the forts only on 25 February. In London the first day was nevertheless considered promising. It seemed that one more hour of good light would have been enough to destroy the forts at the entrance.