Submarine B11 in the Dardanelles

A British chronology of the war records under 6 November 1914 that the submarine B11 went about two miles into the Dardanelles. It was one of the first, if not the first, incursions by an Allied vessel into the interior of the strait, closed by the Turks with mines and shore batteries.

The details of this action are little known and could not be confirmed in the available sources. The British official history of the war at sea mentions only, without giving a date, that before mid-December B11 had already been two miles up the strait, chasing two Turkish gunboats. This may have been that very foray.

B11 was a small, obsolete B-class boat, built in 1906 for coastal defence. After the outbreak of war she was sent with several sister boats to the Mediterranean, and after the first bombardment of the Dardanelles forts these boats kept watch at the entrance to the strait. They were to make sure that Goeben and Breslau, already formally handed over to the Ottoman navy, did not come out of the Dardanelles. B11 was commanded by the 26-year-old Lieutenant Norman Holbrook.

B11 won real fame a few weeks later. On 13 December 1914 Holbrook took the boat deep into the strait, under five lines of mines. In Sarısığlar Bay, south of Çanakkale, he found the old Turkish battleship Mesudiye, anchored as a floating battery covering the minefields. From a range of about 800 yards he hit her with a single torpedo. Mesudiye capsized and sank within about 10 minutes. Because she was lying in shallow water most of the crew were saved, but 37 men were killed.

The return through the minefields was just as dangerous, and in all B11 spent about nine hours under water. For this action Holbrook received the Victoria Cross, the first submariner in history to do so. B11’s foray showed that submarines could get through the barriers in the Dardanelles. In 1915 British and Australian submarines passed through the strait as far as the Sea of Marmara.