Our submarine campaign in the Sea of Marmora must also have a separate chapter to itself, not only because it is now a closed episode in the history of the War, but because it was conducted under quite unique conditions. The scene of operations was not merely distant from the submarine base, it was divided from it by an approach of unusual danger and difficulty. The channel of the Dardanelles is narrow and winding, with a strong tide perpetually racing down it, and setting strongly into the several bays. It was moreover protected, as will appear in the course of the narrative, by forts with powerful guns and searchlights and torpedo tubes, and by barrages of thick wire and netting it was also patrolled constantly by armed ships. Yet from the very first all these defences were evaded or broken through with marvellous courage and ingenuity; for nearly a year a succession of brilliant commanders took their boats regularly up and down the passage, and made the transport of Turkish troops and munitions across the Marmora first hazardous, and finally impracticable. Their losses were small; but they passed the weeks of their incredibly long patrols in continual danger, and snatched their successes from the midst of a swarm of vigilant enemies. Two126 battle-ships, a destroyer, and five gunboats fell to them, besides over thirty steamers, many of which were armed, nine transports, seven ammunition and store ships, and no less than 188 sailing-ships and dhows with supplies. The pages which follow contain notes on the cruise of every British boat which attempted the passage of the Straits; but they are far from giving an account of all their amazing feats and adventures.

Lieutenant Norman Holbrook had the honour of being the first officer to take a British submarine up the Dardanelles. He carefully prepared his boat—B. 11—for the business of jumping over and under obstacles, by devices which have since been perfected but were then experimental. The preliminary trials turned out very satisfactorily, and on Sunday, December 13, 1914, as soon as the mainland searchlights were extinguished at dawn, he trimmed and dived for Seddul Bahr.

His main idea was to put certain Rickmers steamers out of action, and perhaps the actual object of his pursuit was the Lily Rickmers. He did not get her, but he got something quite as attractive. It was 9.40 A.M., or rather more than four hours from the start, when at last he put his periscope above water, and saw immediately on his starboard beam a large two-funnelled vessel, painted grey and flying the Turkish ensign. At 600 yards he fired his starboard torpedo, put his helm hard a-starboard, and dipped to avoid remonstrances. The explosion was duly audible a few seconds later, and as B. 11 came quietly up of her own motion her commander took a glimpse through the periscope. The grey ship (she was the127 battle-ship Messudiyeh) was still on his starboard beam, and firing a number of guns. B. 11 seemed bent on dipping again, but Lieutenant Holbrook was still more bent on seeing what he had done. He got her up once more and sighted his enemy, on the port bow this time. She was settling down by the stern and her guns were no longer firing.

At this moment the man at the helm of B. 11 reported that the lenses of the compass had become fogged, and the instrument was for the time unreadable. Lieutenant Holbrook took a careful survey of his surroundings, calculated that he was in Sari Siglar Bay, and dived for the channel. The boat touched bottom and for ten minutes went hop, skip and jump along it, at full speed, until she shot off into deeper water. Her commander then brought her up again, took a sight of the European shore, steadied her by it, and ran for home. By 2 P.M. he had cleared the entrance. His feat was not only brilliant in itself; it was an act of leadership, an invaluable reconnaissance. In ten hours he had proved all the possibilities of the situation—he had forced a strongly guarded channel, surprised and sunk a battle-ship in broad daylight, and returned safely, though he had gone up without information and come down without a compass. The V.C. was his manifest destiny.

In the following spring, after the guns of the Allied fleets had failed to reduce the Turkish forts, the submarine campaign was developed. It began with a defeat—one of those defeats which turn to honour, and maintain the invincibility of our Service. On April 17, while attempting a difficult reconnaissance of the Kephez minefield, E. 15 ran ashore in the Dardanelles128 within a few hundred yards of Fort No. 8. Her crew were captured while trying to get her off, and there was a danger of her falling into the enemy’s hands in a serviceable condition. The only remedy was to blow her up. She was no sort of a mark for the battle-ships at long range; so during the night of the 18th an attack was made by two picket boats, manned by volunteer crews. The boat of H.M.S. Triumph was commanded by Lieut.-Commander Eric Robinson, who led the expedition, with Lieut. Arthur Brooke Webb, R.N.R., and Midshipman John Woolley, and that of H.M.S. Majestic by Lieut. Claud Godwin. The fort gave them over two hundred rounds at short range, mortally wounded one man and sank the Majestic’s boat; but Lieut.-Commander Robinson succeeded in torpedoing E. 15 and rendering her useless. He brought both crews off, and left even the Germans in Constantinople admiring the pluck of his little enterprise. One officer is reported by Mr. Lewis Einstein, of the American Embassy there,1 to have said, ‘I take off my hat to the British Navy.’ He was right—this midnight attack by a handful of boys in boats has all the heroic romance of the old cutting-out expeditions, and on Admiral de Robeck’s report the leader of it was promoted to commander.

1 Inside Constantinople, p. 3. This interesting book throws much light on our submarine campaign, and gives valuable confirmation of our records.
‘The Fort gave them 200 rounds at short range.’

On April 25, A.E. 2 went successfully up and entered the Sea of Marmora; on the 29th, Lieut.-Commander Edward Courtney Boyle followed in E. 14. He started at 1.40 A.M., and the searchlight at Suan Dere was still working when he arrived there at 4 o’clock. The fort fired, and he dived, passing clean under the minefield.129
He then passed Chanak on the surface with all the forts firing at him. Further on there were a lot of small ships patrolling, and a torpedo gunboat at which he promptly took a shot. The torpedo got her on the quarter and threw up a column of water as high as her mast. But Lieut.-Commander Boyle could not stop to see more—he became aware that the men in a small steamboat were leaning over and trying to catch hold of the top of his periscope. He dipped and left them; then rounded Nagara Point and dived deep. Again and again he came up and was driven down; destroyers and gunboats were chasing and firing in all directions. It was all he could do to charge his batteries at night. After running continuously for over fifty hours, the motors were so hot that he was obliged to stop. The steadiness of all on board may be judged from the record of the diving necessary to avoid destruction. Out of the first sixty-four hours of the voyage, the boat was kept under for forty-four hours and fifty minutes.

On the afternoon of the 29th, he sighted three destroyers convoying two troopships; fired and dipped—for the destroyers were blazing at his periscope, and he had only that one left—the other had stopped a shot the day before. But even down below a thud was audible, and the depth gauges flicked ten feet; half an hour afterwards he saw through the periscope his own particular transport making for the shore with dense columns of yellow smoke pouring from her. And that was her last appearance. A few hours later he sighted A.E. 2 and spoke her. She had sunk one gunboat, but had had bad luck with her other torpedoes and had only one left. Lieut.-Commander Boyle132 arranged to meet her again next day; but next day the gallant A.E. 2 fell to a Turkish gunboat.

During these days the Sea of Marmora was glassy calm, and the patrol ships were so troublesome that Lieut.-Commander Boyle decided to sink one as a deterrent. He picked off a small mine-laying boat, and fired at a larger one twice without success, as the wake of the torpedoes was too easily seen in the clear water.

The first four days of May he spent mainly in being hunted. On the 5th, he got a shot at a destroyer convoying a transport, and made a fine right-angle hit at 600 yards, but the torpedo failed to explode. This only whetted his appetite, and for three days he chased ship after ship. One he followed inshore, but troops on board opened fire on him and hit the boat several times. At last, on the evening of May 10, after being driven down by one destroyer, he sighted another with two transports, and attacked at once. His first torpedo missed the leading transport; his second shot hit the second transport and a terrific explosion followed. Debris and men were seen falling into the water; then night came on rapidly, and he could not mark the exact moment at which she sank.

Inside Constantinople they were already telling each other yarns about E. 14, and for her incredible activity they even promoted her to the plural number. ‘One of the English submarines in the Marmora,’ Mr. Einstein wrote on May 11, ‘is said to have called at Rodosto, flying the Turkish flag. The Kaimakam, believing the officers to be German, gave them all the petrol and provisions they required, and it was only after leaving that they hoisted their true colours.’ The story will not bear examination from our side; but133 no doubt it very usefully covered a deficiency in the Kaimakam’s store account, whether caused by Germans or by the Faithful themselves.

On May 13, Lieut.-Commander Boyle records a rifle duel with a small steamer which he had chased ashore near Panidos. On the 14th he remarks the enemy’s growing shyness. ‘I think the Turkish torpedo-boats must have been frightened of ramming us, as several times, when I tried to remain on the surface at night, they were so close when sighted that it must have been possible to get us if they had so desired.’ The air was so clear that in the daytime he was almost always in sight from the shore, and signal fires and smoke columns passed the alarm continually. He had no torpedoes left and was not mounted with a gun, so that he was now at the end of his tether. On the 17th he was recalled by wireless, and after diving all night ran for Gallipoli at full speed, pursued by a two-funnelled gunboat, a torpedo-boat and a tug, who shepherded him one on each side and one astern, ‘evidently expecting,’ he thought, ‘to get me caught in the nets.’ But he adds,’did not notice any nets,’ and after passing another two-funnelled gunboat, a large yacht, a battle-ship and a number of tramps, the fire of the Chanak forts and the minefield as before, he reached the entrance and rose to the surface abeam of a French battle-ship of the St. Louis class, who gave her fellow crusader a rousing cheer. Commander Boyle reported that the success of this fine and sustained effort was mainly due to his officers, Lieutenant Edward Stanley and Acting-Lieutenant Lawrence, R.N.R., both of whom received the D.S.C. His own promotion to Commander was underlined by the award of the V.C.

134 Within twelve hours of E. 14’s return, her successor, E. 11, was proceeding towards the Straits. The commanding officer of this boat was Lieut.-Commander M. E. Nasmith, who had already been mentioned in despatches for rescuing five airmen while being attacked by a Zeppelin in the Heligoland Bight during the action on Christmas Day, 1914. He had been waiting his turn at the Dardanelles with some impatience, and as E. 11’s port engine had been put completely out of action by an accident on the voyage from Malta, he had begged to be allowed to attempt the passage into the Marmora under one engine. This was refused, but his repairs were finished in time for him to take the place of E. 14.

He made the passage of the Straits successfully, reconnoitred the Marmora and made a neat arrangement, probably suggested by the adventures of E. 14, for saving the enemy the trouble of so much hunting. He stopped a small coastal sailing vessel, sent Lieut. D’Oyly Hughes to search her for contraband, and then trimmed well down and made her fast alongside his conning-tower. Being now quite invisible from the eastward, he was able to proceed in that direction all day without interruption. At night he released his stalking-horse and returned westward.
‘Made her fast alongside his conning-tower.’

Early on the 23rd, he observed a Turkish torpedo-boat at anchor off Constantinople and sank her with a torpedo; but as she sank she fired a 6-pounder gun, the first shot of which damaged his foremost periscope. He came up for repairs, and all hands took the chance of a bathe. Five hours later he stopped a small steamer, whose crew did a ‘panic abandon ship,’ capsizing all boats but one. ‘An American gentleman then appeared135
on the upper deck, who informed us that his name was Silas Q. Swing of the Chicago Sun and that he was pleased to make our acquaintance.... He wasn’t sure if there were any stores on board.’ Lieut. D’Oyly Hughes looked into the matter and discovered a 6-inch gun lashed across the top of the fore hatch, and other gun-mountings in the hold, which was also crammed with 6-inch and other ammunition marked Krupp. A demolition charge sent ship and cargo to the bottom.

Lieut.-Commander Nasmith then chased and torpedoed a heavily laden store-ship, and drove another ashore, exchanging rifle fire with a party of horsemen on the cliff above. Altogether the day was a lively one, and the news, brought by Mr. Silas Q. Swing and his friends, shook Constantinople up severely. Mr. Einstein records that ‘the submarine came up at 20 minutes to 2 o’clock, about three hundred yards from where the American guardship Scorpion lay moored, and was immediately fired at by the shore batteries. It shot off two torpedoes; the first missed a transport by about fifty yards, the second struck the Stamboul fair, passing under a barge moored alongside, which blew up. The Stamboul had a gap of twenty feet on her water-line but did not sink. She was promptly towed toward Beshiktash to lie on the bottom in shallow water. The submarine meanwhile, under a perfect hail of fire, which passed uncomfortably close to the Scorpion, dived and got away, steering up the Bosphorus. At Galata there was a panic, everyone closing their shops; the troops, who were already on two transports, were promptly disembarked, but later re-embarked, and still later landed once more. The total damage was inconsiderable, but the moral effect was very real.’138 On the following day he adds, ‘S.’ (Swing, no doubt—Silas Q. Swing of the Chicago Sun) ‘came in with an exciting tale. On his way to the Dardanelles the steamer, which carried munitions and a 6-inch gun, had been torpedoed by an English submarine, the E. 11. They allowed the crew to leave, and then sank the ship. The English officer told him there were eleven submarines in the Marmora, and these are holding up all the ships going to the Dardanelles. They had sunk three transports full of troops, out of four which had been sunk, and various other vessels, but do not touch those carrying wounded.’

So, between Lieut. D’Oyly Hughes and Mr. Silas Q. Swing, the E. 11 became eleven submarines, and may go down the ages like the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne. Her commander evidently hoped to create a panic, and Mr. Einstein leaves us no doubt that the plan succeeded to the full. On May 27 he writes again: ‘The Marmora is practically closed by English submarines. Everyone asks where their depot is, and how they are refurnished.’ May 28: ‘The submarines in the Marmora have frightened the Turks, and all the remaining transports, save one, lie tranquilly in the Golden Horn. Otherwise I have never seen the port so empty. One wonders where the submarines have their base, and when and how it was prepared.’ He adds, with some shrewdness: ‘Probably, if at all, in some island of the Marmora, though the newer boats can stay out a long time.’ E. 11 was far from new, as we have seen, but she was in hands that could make her stand for quality as well as quantity.

Lieut.-Commander Nasmith brought his boat safely back to Mudros on June 7. The last hour of his trip139 was perhaps the most breathless, for while rushing down by Kilid Bahr he found his trim quite abnormal, and ‘observed a large mine preceding the periscope at a distance of about twenty feet; which was apparently hung up by its moorings to the port hydroplane.’ He could not come to the surface, as the shore batteries were waiting for him; but when outside Kum Kale, he emptied his after-tanks, got his nose down, and went full speed astern, dropping the mine neatly to the bottom. This was good work, but not better than the skill shown in navigating shoal water, or ‘the resource displayed in the delicate operation of recovering two torpedoes’ without the usual derrick to hoist them in—an operation which may as well remain for the present undescribed. Admiral de Robeck, in recommending Lieut.-Commander Nasmith for the V.C., speaks of his cruise as one ‘which will surely find a place in the annals of the British Navy.’ It will—there can be no forgetting it. The very log of E. 11 deserves to be a classic. ‘Having dived unobserved into Constantinople ...,’ says her Commander soberly, and so, without a thought of it, adds one to the historic despatches of the Service.

It was now E. 14’s turn again. Commander Courtney Boyle took her up on June 10, against a very strong tide. At 9 o’clock next morning he stopped a brigantine, whose crew abandoned ship ‘and then all stood up and cursed us. It was too rough to go alongside her, so Acting-Lieut. R. W. Lawrence, R.N.R., swam off to her, climbed aboard, and ... set fire to her with the aid of her own matches and paraffin oil.’ On the 12th one of the Rickmers steamers was torpedoed. Shortly afterwards there was a big explosion close to140 the submarine. ‘And I think,’ says her commander, ‘I must have caught the moorings of a mine with my tail as I was turning, and exploded it.... The whole boat was very badly shaken.’ But Lily Rickmers and her sister were now both removed from the Turkish service, for E. 11 had evidently accounted for one of them already. Mr. Einstein writes on June 13: ‘The German Embassy approached us to cable Washington to protest about the torpedoing without warning of the two Rickmers steamers in the Marmora. One of these was said to be filled with wounded, but their note neglected to say that these had been discharged from hospital and were on their way back to the Dardanelles.’ Only a German diplomatist could speak of a ship carrying troops to the front as ‘filled with wounded’; and Mr. Einstein adds, ‘One cannot but be struck by the German inability to understand our position over the Lusitania.’ The point is plain, and goes deep. To the modern German mind all such considerations are only a matter of words, useful for argumentative purposes—that there should be any truth of reality or feeling behind them is not imaginable.

The rest of this log is a record of destruction, but destruction on thoroughly un-German methods. ‘June 20.—Boarded and sank 3 sailing dhows ... towed the crew inshore and gave them some biscuit, beef, rum, and water, as they were rather wet.’ ‘June 22.—Let go passenger ship.’ 23.—‘Burnt two-master, and started to tow crew in their boat, but had to dive. Stopped two dhows: they were both empty and the crews looked so miserable that I only sunk one and let the other go.’ 24.—‘Blew up 2 large dhows: there was another one about a mile off with no boat ... and thought I saw141 two heads in the water. Turned round and found that there were 2 men in the water at least half a mile from their dhow. Picked them up: they were quite exhausted: gave them food and drink, and put them on board their ship. They had evidently seen the other two dhows blown up and were frightened out of their wits.’ There is nothing here to boast about—to us, nothing surprising. But it brings to mind inevitably the evidence upon which our enemies stand convicted. We remember the long roll of men and women not only set adrift in stormy seas, but shot and drowned in their open boats without pity and without cause. We admit the courage of the Hun, but we cannot admire it. It is too near to animal ferocity, and stained with a cruelty and callousness which are not even beast-like.

On June 21, Commander Boyle had rendezvoused with E. 12, Lieut.-Commander K. M. Bruce. ‘I got her alongside, and we remained tied up for 3 hours.’ From this time onward the reliefs were arranged to overlap, so that there were nearly always two boats operating at the same time in the Marmora. Lieut.-Commander Bruce came up on June 19, and found, like others, that the chief difficulty of forcing the passage was the heating of the main motors on so long and strenuous a run.

The one great day of his nine days’ patrol was June 25, when he brought off a hand-to-hand fight on the surface with three enemy ships. At 10.45 in the morning he sighted, in the Gulf of Mudania, a small two-decked passenger steamer. ‘She looked,’ he says, ‘rather like a tram-car, and was towing two sailing-vessels. In the distance was a sister of hers, towing three more.’ He chased, and soon stopped the nearer142 steamer. He could see, as he steamed round her, that she was carrying a lot of stores. She had no boat, and all the crew appeared to be on deck in lifebelts. He could see no sign of guns, so he ran his bow up alongside and sent his first-lieutenant, Tristram Fox, to board her. But guns are not the only risk a submarine has to take on such occasions. As the boarding party stepped on board the steamer, a Turk heaved a bomb over the side. It hit E. 12 forward, but did not explode, and no second one followed. The Turks, however, meant fighting, and they opened fire with rifles and a small gun, concealed somewhere aft. The situation was a very anxious one, especially for Lieutenant Fox and his boarding party; for they knew their own ship must open fire in return, and it was difficult to take cover on an enemy ship in action. Lieut.-Commander Bruce was in a very tight corner, but he kept his head and played his game without a mistake. He did not hesitate to open fire with his 6-pounder, but he began upon the enemy’s stern, where the gun was concealed, and having dealt with that he turned to her other end and put ten shots into her from fore to aft. His men shot steadily, though under gun and rifle fire at a range of only ten yards, and his coxswain, Charles Case, who was with him in the conning-tower, passed up the ammunition. Spare men, with rifles, kept the Turks’ heads down, and all seemed to be going well, when the two sailing-ships in tow began a new and very plucky move of their own. They came in to foul the submarine’s propellers, and at the same time opened fire with rifles, taking E. 12 in flank. But by this time the steamer was beaten, and the British rifles soon silenced those in the sailing-ships. Then, as soon as Lieut.-143Commander Bruce had cleared the steamer, he sank the three of them. The steamer had probably been carrying ammunition as well as stores, for one of the shots from the 6-pounder touched off something explosive in her forward part. In fifteen minutes she was at the bottom.

Lieut.-Commander Bruce was already thinking of the other steamer with the three sailing-ships in tow. She was diligently making for the shore, and he had to open fire at her at 2000 yards. As he closed, the fire was returned, not only from the ship but from a gun on shore; but by this time he had hit the enemy aft, and set her on fire forward. She beached herself, and as the three sailing-ships had been slipped and were also close under the shore, he had no choice but to leave them. E. 12’s injuries were miraculously slight—her commander’s account of them is slighter still. ‘I was very much hampered,’ he says, ‘in my movements and took some minutes to get clear of the fi............