In no circumstances was Hamilton to proceed until his whole force was assembled and he was not to fight on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles.
‘He toiled over the wording of his instructions,’ Hamilton says in his diary. ‘They were headed “Constantinople Expeditionary Force”. I begged him to alter this to avert Fate’s evil eye. He consented and both this corrected draft and the copy as finally approved are now in Braithwaite’s dispatch box more modestly headed “Mediterranean Expeditionary Force”. None of the drafts helps us with facts about the enemy; the politics; the country, and our allies, the Russians. In sober fact these “instructions” leave me to my own devices in the East.
‘So I said good-bye to old K. as casually as if we were to meet together at dinner. Actually my heart went out to my old chief. He was giving me the best thing in his gift and I hated to leave him among people who were frightened of him. But there was no use saying a word. He did not even wish me luck and I did not expect him to, but he did say, rather unexpectedly, after I had said good-bye and just as I was taking up my cap from the table, “If the Fleet gets through, Constantinople will fall of itself and you will have won, not a battle, but the war”.’
By now there had been assembled some thirteen officers who were to act on Hamilton’s staff. Most of these were regular soldiers, but there were one or two who, Hamilton says, had hastily put on uniform for the first time in their lives: ‘Leggings awry, spurs upside down, belts over shoulder straps! I haven’t a notion of who they all are.’ Others again who were to handle the administration and quartermastering of the headquarters he failed to meet at all, since they had not heard of their appointments as yet.
However, the paramount need now was haste, and at 5 p.m. on Friday, March 13, the party, armed with the instructions, the inaccurate map, a three-years-old handbook on the Turkish Army and a pre-war report on the Dardanelles defences, proceeded to Charing Cross station. Churchill, who had been pressing strongly for their immediate departure, had made all the arrangements; a special train was waiting to take them to Dover where they were to cross to Calais on H.M.S. Foresight. At Calais another special express would take them through the night to Marseilles, where H.M.S. Phaeton, a 30-knot unarmoured cruiser, was commissioned to convey them to the Dardanelles.
Churchill himself with his wife came down to Charing Cross to see the party off, and there was some last minute conversation on the subject of Hamilton’s reports from the front. They would all have to go directly to Kitchener, Hamilton said; to address Churchill separately at the Admiralty would be disloyal. With that he was off. As the train drew out Hamilton said to Captain Aspinall, the young officer who was to plan the operations, ‘This is going to be an unlucky show. I kissed my wife through her veil.’ Four days later the party was at the Dardanelles.
They were just in time. Next day, March 18, Hamilton watched the assault on the Narrows from the decks of the Phaeton.
So now at midnight they were all gathered in the arena: the Turks and the Germans at the Narrows preparing to make a desperate stand, the British and French sailors with their battered but still powerful fleet, and the new Allied Commander-in-Chief who had arrived without an army and without a plan.
Having satisfied himself that both the Ocean and the Irresistible were safe from the Turks at the bottom of the sea, Keyes on the night of March 18 went directly in the Jed to the Queen Elizabeth to see de Robeck. He was astonished to find the Admiral much upset. He was sure, de Robeck said, that because of his losses he would be dismissed from the command on the following day. Keyes answered with some spirit that de Robeck had judged the situation quite wrongly: Churchill would not be discouraged. He would send reinforcements at once and back them up in every way. Apart from the 639 men drowned in the Bouvet, the casualties had been amazingly smalclass="underline" not seventy men in the entire Fleet. All three lost battleships were old vessels due for scrap, and even if the Gaulois and the Inflexible were withdrawn for repairs the great power of the Fleet was substantially intact.
For a time the two officers discussed the problem of the mines, and it was agreed that they should immediately set about organizing a new force to deal with them. The civilian crews of the trawlers would be sent home, and volunteers from the lost battleships would take their place. Destroyers would be equipped with sweeping apparatus, and at the next attempt an attack would be finally driven home.
On this encouraging note the Admiral and his chief-of-staff finally went to their cabins for a few hours’ rest.
Keyes rose next morning, March 19, and having shaved, as was his custom, with a copy of Kipling’s ‘If’ propped up before him, went out to survey the condition of the Fleet, which had spent the night sheltering about Tenedos. It was clear that a day or two must elapse before the attack could be resumed — the wind was again rising to a gale and there was much to be done in organizing the new minesweeping force — but everywhere the captains and the crews were eager to renew the fight.
In the course of the morning a message arrived from the Admiralty condoling with de Robeck over his setback but urging him to press on with the attack.
His losses were to be made good by four more battleships — the Queen, Implacable, London and Prince of Wales—which would sail at once. In addition the French Ministry of Marine was replacing the Bouvet with the Henri IV.
The damage to the French squadron had been severe: Gaulois had been forced to ground herself on Rabbit Island to the north of Tenedos, and the Suffren was leaking from the effects of a plunging shell. The Gaulois, however, was soon pumped out and refloated, and with the Inflexible and the Suffren she went off to Malta for repairs. Meanwhile the organization of the new minesweeping force began. One hundred and fifteen men from the trawler crews were sent home and there was an overwhelming response from the crews of the Ocean and the Irresistible for volunteers to replace them. Kites, wire mesh, and other tackle were ordered from Malta, and at Tenedos Greek fishermen were engaged to help the British crews in equipping the destroyers as minesweepers. All day in heavy seas this work was pressed forward, and on March 20 de Robeck was able to report to the Admiralty that fifty British and twelve French minesweepers, all manned by volunteers, would soon be available. Steel nets would be laid across the straits to deal with floating mines when the attack was renewed. ‘It is hoped,’ he added, ‘to be in a position to commence operations in three or four days.’
Now too an efficient squadron of aircraft under the command of Air Commodore Samson began to arrive. With this the Navy hoped greatly to improve their spotting of the enemy guns.
De Robeck also wrote to Hamilton, who had gone to Lemnos to inspect the 2,000 marines and the 4,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers who had already arrived there. He urged Hamilton not to take these troops back to Egypt for re-grouping as he proposed to do, since it might create a bad impression in the Balkans just at the moment when the Navy was about to resume its attack. ‘We are all getting ready for another go,’ he said, ‘and not in the least beaten or down-hearted.’