With the enemy at the Narrows, on the other hand, a critical situation had developed. Some of the guns were jammed and half buried in earth and debris, communications were destroyed between the fire control and the gunners, and those few batteries which managed to continue became more and more erratic in their fire. Fort 13 on the Gallipoli side had been obscured by an internal explosion, and it was clear to the British and the French that even though the forts were not yet destroyed the enemy gunners were for the moment demoralized. Their fire grew increasingly spasmodic until at 1.45 p.m., after nearly two and a half hours of continuous engagement, it had practically died away altogether.
De Robeck now decided to retire the French squadron with the rest of Line B and bring in his six battleships waiting in the rear. The movement began shortly before 2 p.m. and the Suffren, turning to starboard, led her sister ships out of the action along the shores of Eren Keui Bay on the Asiatic side. They were almost abreast of the Queen Elizabeth and the British line at 1.54 p.m. when the Bouvet, lying immediately astern of the Suffren, was observed to be shaken with an immense explosion, and a column of smoke shot up from her decks into the sky. She heeled over, still going very fast, capsized and vanished. It was all over in two minutes. According to one observer the vessel ‘just slithered down as a saucer slithers down in a bath’. At one moment she had been there, perfectly safe and sound. Now there was nothing left but a few heads bobbing about in the water. Captain Rageot and 639 men who were trapped between decks had been drowned.
It seemed to those who watched that the Bouvet had been struck by a heavy shell which had reached her magazine, and now the Turkish gunners, heartened by what they had seen, renewed their attack on the other ships. The next two hours were largely a repetition of the morning’s events. Moving in pairs, Ocean and Irresistible, Albion and Vengeance, Swiftsure and Majestic, came in and closed the range to ten thousand yards. Under this new barrage the heavy guns at the Narrows began firing wildly again, and by 4 p.m. they were practically silent once more.
Now at last it was time for the minesweepers to go in, and de Robeck called them forward from the mouth of the straits. Two pairs of trawlers led by their commander in a picket boat got out their sweeps and they appeared to be going well as they passed by Queen Elizabeth and the rest of A Line. Three mines were brought up and exploded. But then, as they drew forward to B Line and came under enemy fire, something like a panic must have occurred: all four trawlers turned about, and despite all the efforts of their commander to drive them back, ran out of the straits. Another pair of trawlers, which was supposed to take part in the operation, vanished without getting out their sweeps at all.
This fiasco was followed by something much more serious. At 4.11 p.m. the Inflexible, which had held her place in A line all this time, despite the fire in her foremast and other damage, was seen suddenly to take a heavy list to starboard. She reported that she had struck a mine not far from the spot where the Bouvet had gone down and now she left the battle line. She was observed to be down by the bows and still listing considerably as she steamed for the mouth of the straits, with the cruiser Phaeton attending her. It seemed likely that she would go down at any moment. The explosion of the mine had flooded the fore torpedo flat and besides killing the twenty-seven men stationed there had done other extensive damage. Flames and poisonous fumes began to spread; not only were the ship’s electric lights extinguished but the oil lamps, which had been lit for just such an emergency, failed as well. At the same time the ventilator fans stopped running and the heat below deck was intolerable. In these circumstances Phillimore, the captain, decided that it was not necessary to keep both steaming watches on duty, and he ordered one of the watches up to the comparative safety on deck. All, however, volunteered to stay below. They worked in darkness amid the fumes and the rising water until all the valves and watertight doors were closed. The remainder of the ship’s company stood to attention on the upper deck as they passed back through the rest of the Fleet. It seemed to those who saw them that none of these men had been defeated by the day’s events, or were shaken by the imminent prospect of drowning; and they got the ship back to Tenedos.
Meanwhile the Irresistible had been struck. Not five minutes after Inflexible had left the line, she too flew a green flag on her starboard yard arm, indicating that she believed she had been torpedoed on that side. She was on the extreme right of the Fleet at the time, close to the Asiatic shore, and at once the Turkish gunners began to pour their shells into her. Unable to get any answer to his signals, de Robeck sent off the destroyer Wear to render assistance, and presently the Wear came back with some six hundred of the Irresistible’s crew, several dead and eighteen wounded among them. The senior executive officers of the Irresistible had stayed on board with ten volunteers in order to make the ship ready for towing.
It was now 5 p.m., and three battleships were 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.