Sinking of the battleship Barbaros Hayreddin

At dawn on 8 August 1915 in the Sea of Marmara, off the shores of the Bulair isthmus, which links the Gallipoli peninsula with the mainland, the British submarine E11 torpedoed the Turkish battleship Barbaros Hayreddin. The ship capsized and sank. About 250 men were killed. It happened on the third day of the great Allied August offensive at Gallipoli, when the British were landing at Suvla Bay and assaulting the Sari Bair ridge, and the Turks were bringing everything they could to the peninsula.

Barbaros Hayreddin was the former German battleship Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm of the Brandenburg class, built in the early 1890s. In 1910 the Turks bought her together with a sister ship, which was renamed Turgut Reis, and named her after the sixteenth-century admiral Hayreddin Barbarossa. This pre-dreadnought of about 10,000 tons displacement, armed with six 28 cm guns, was already obsolete, but still ranked among the most powerful ships of the Ottoman fleet. In the spring of 1915 the two battleships took turns to take station in the strait and fire over the peninsula at Allied ships and bridgeheads, including Anzac Cove. From the second half of May, when British submarines were already hunting in the Sea of Marmara, the British did not see them in action.

E11 of Commander Martin Nasmith, who had been awarded the Victoria Cross for his first patrol in the Sea of Marmara in May, broke through the Dardanelles for the second time on 5 August. Beyond Nagara Point she became entangled in an anti-submarine net, but after a few minutes broke through it, and that same morning torpedoed a transport at the Akbaş landing. The next day she met E14 of Lieutenant-Commander Edward Boyle. The two commanders were to watch the road from Constantinople to the peninsula, along which the Turks were marching reinforcements on foot, being afraid to carry them by sea. First, however, they caught up with a Turkish warship, and E11 torpedoed her off Silivri. The British recorded that she was the torpedo gunboat Berk-i Satvet; Turkish sources speak of the torpedo cruiser Peyk-i Şevket. The damaged ship managed to beach herself. On 7 August both submarines shelled with their guns Turkish columns marching along the road across the Bulair isthmus, until Turkish field artillery drove them off.

Early on the morning of 8 August Nasmith saw through his periscope a battleship steaming west, towards Gallipoli and the strait, escorted by one smaller ship. According to Turkish sources, Barbaros Hayreddin was to relieve Turgut Reis at her station in the strait and was carrying ammunition for the troops at Gallipoli, including thousands of artillery shells, some of them in crates on deck. At about 5 a.m. (4.40 a.m. according to Turkish records) a torpedo from E11 struck her amidships. The battleship took a heavy list, turned towards the shore and opened furious fire at the periscope, so a second shot was impossible. According to the British account, after about 20 minutes there was a violent explosion aboard, after which the battleship slowly capsized and sank. Turkish studies state that she rolled over to starboard after a few minutes, when the ammunition crates on deck shifted.

The number of victims varies by source: 253 killed is most often given, Turkish studies give 250 to 258, including about 20 officers. The escort and nearby ships rescued about 400 men. Barbaros Hayreddin was the second armoured ship the Turks lost to a British submarine’s torpedo. The first was the old Mesudiye, sunk by B11 in December 1914. That same day E14 also torpedoed a supply ship of about 5,000 tons, which grounded near Doğan Arslan, and both submarines set her on fire with their guns. The sinking of the battleship together with her cargo of ammunition was one of the most valuable successes of British submarines in the whole Dardanelles campaign.