Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead

out of action: the
Bouvet
sunk, the
Inflexible
limping back to Tenedos and the
Irresistible
drifting towards the Asiatic shore under heavy Turkish fire. There was no clear explanation of these three disasters. The area in which the ships had been operating all day had been swept for mines
on a number of occasions before the operation began. On the previous day a seaplane had been over and had confirmed that the sea was clear—and some reliance could be placed on this report for
it had been demonstrated in tests off Tenedos that aircraft could spot mines as deep as eighteen feet in this limpid water. What then was doing the damage? It was hardly likely to have been
torpedoes. The only conclusion that remained was that the Turks were floating mines down with the current. In fact, as we shall see later, this conclusion was not correct, but it was near enough as
to make no odds, and de Robeck felt he could do no other than to break off the action for the day. Keyes was instructed to go aboard the
Wear
and proceed to the salvage of the
Irresistible
with the aid of two battleships, the
Ocean
and
Swiftsure.
In addition, a division of destroyers was ordered forward into the straits and placed under
Keyes’s command. The rest of the Fleet retired.
    One can do no better now than follow Keyes in his own account of what happened at the end of this extraordinary day. He says that salvo after salvo was hitting the
Irresistible
, and he
could see no sign of life in her when he came alongside at 5.20 p.m. He concluded, therefore, that the captain and the skeleton crew had already been taken off—and rightly so because the ship
was in a desperate condition. She had got out of the main current sweeping down the straits and a light southerly breeze was drifting her in towards the shore. With every minute as she drew nearer
to them the Turkish gunners were increasing their fire. Nevertheless, Keyes decided that he must attempt to save her and he signalled to the
Ocean
, ‘The Admiral directs you to take
Irresistible
in tow.’ The
Ocean
replied that there was not sufficient depth of water for her to do so.
    Keyes then directed the captain of the
Wear
to get his torpedoes ready for action so that he could sink the helpless ship before shefell into the hands of the
enemy; but first he wished to make quite certain that the water was too shallow for the
Ocean
to come in and take her in tow. The
Wear
then ran straight into the enemy fire to
take soundings—she came so close to the shore that the Turkish gunners could be seen around their batteries, and at that point-blank range the flash of the guns and the arrival of the shells
seemed to be simultaneous. The
Wear
, however, was not hit, and presently Keyes was able to signal to the
Ocean
that there were fifteen fathoms of water for half a mile inshore of
the
Irresistible
; and he repeated de Robeck’s order that the ship should be taken in tow. To this he got no reply. Both the
Ocean
and the
Swiftsure
were now hotly
engaged, and the
Ocean
in particular was steaming back and forth at great speed, blazing away with all her guns at the shore. It seemed to Keyes that she was doing no good whatever with
all this activity and was needlessly exposing herself. For some time the heavy guns at the Narrows had been silent, but it was quite possible that they would open up again at any minute. He
therefore signalled the
Ocean
once more: ‘If you do not propose to take the
Irresistible
in tow the Admiral wishes you to withdraw.’ With the
Swiftsure
Keyes
could afford to be more peremptory—her captain was junior to him—and he ordered her to go at once. She was an old ship and much too lightly armoured to have undertaken the salvage in
the present circumstances.
    Meanwhile things had begun to improve with the
Irresistible
; she had lost her list and although she was down by the stern she was still no lower in the water than she had been an hour
previously when the
Wear
first arrived.