In his extremity Hamilton cabled once more to the War Office for more shells to be sent out. The answer came when the fighting was at its height: he was told that the matter would be considered. ‘It is important,’ the message added, ‘to push on.’
By all means Hamilton wished to push on, and he hardly needed a general in the War Office to tell him so, but by the afternoon of May 8 there was no question of his pushing anywhere. At Cape Helles he had lost 6,500 men, which was about a third of the force engaged, and his over-all casualties of British, French and Anzac troops on the two fronts were now over 20,000. Achi Baba, with a field of scarlet poppies on its crest, still stood before him unshaken on the skyline. All his reserves of men had gone. Most of his shells had been shot away. And his two bridgeheads scarcely covered five square miles between them.
Still sailing about in the Arcadian and unable to get his headquarters on shore, the General sent off a message to Kitchener saying he could do no more. ‘If you could only spare me two fresh divisions organized as a corps,’ he wrote, ‘I could push on with great hopes of success both from Cape Helles and Gaba Tepe; otherwise I am afraid we shall degenerate into trench warfare with its resultant slowness.’
It was almost an admission of defeat, and to the sailors in the Fleet who had been mortified at the sight of the Army being cut up on the shore while the warships for the most part stood by watching, motionless in the blue, it was unbearable. Roger Keyes saw a copy of Hamilton’s message soon after it was sent, and he went directly to Admiral de Robeck with a proposal that the Fleet should at once come to the aid of the Army by attacking the Narrows again.
Keyes’ talents as a persuader were given great scope during the Gallipoli campaign, for he was there from the beginning to the end, from the firing of the first shot to the last. He was always for action, always putting forward new ideas, most of which were anathema to Lord Fisher — and indeed, Fisher at this moment was saying in London, ‘Damn the Dardanelles. They will be our grave.’ But Keyes’ energies now rose to their height: he persuaded de Robeck to call a conference of all the senior admirals on board the Queen Elizabeth on May 9. And then, having sat up through the night with Captain Godfrey of the Marines, who was another enthusiast for the naval attack, he placed a new plan before them: the minesweepers and the most powerful battleships to make a direct assault on the Narrows while the older ships remained outside to support and supply the Army. This time there was to be no gradual tentative advance; the attack was to go through in a single day.
There was a curious atmosphere at the conference that gathered in de Robeck’s stateroom on May 9. All the admirals — even de Robeck — were now eager to try again and they more than half believed that they would get through. They accepted the fact that there might be heavy losses, and that half the Fleet might find itself stranded in the Sea of Marmara; nevertheless they wanted to go. De Robeck still hung back somewhat — he said he did not think that the mere appearance of the battleships in the Marmara would necessarily force Liman von Sanders to retire or Constantinople to surrender — but he agreed to put the proposal to the Admiralty. The message that was sent was not a very enthusiastic document; it said in effect, ‘We are quite ready to attack again but if we fail the consequences will be ruinous.’ Yet when the admirals rose from the conference they fully expected that the Admiralty in London would decide to take the risk and order them to go ahead.
Admiral Guépratte was all for it. He had not been summoned to the conference, but, says Keyes, ‘I knew he was of the same mind as I was, and ardently longed to renew the naval offensive; in fact, when I told him my hopes, he said, “Ah, Commodore, that would be immortalité.” He was elated, and at once telegraphed to the Minister of Marine as follows: “A fin d’assister l’Armée dans son action énergique et rude, nous méditons vive action flotte dans détroit avec attaque des forts. Dans ces conditions il me faut mes cuirassés Suffren, Charlemagne, Gaulois dans le plus bref délai possible.” ’
These messages now set the whole issue of the Gallipoli campaign ablaze in London.
On the morning of May 11 Churchill and Fisher met at the Admiralty to discuss de Robeck’s telegram, and Fisher at once made himself clear: he would have no part of any new attempt on the Narrows. Churchill’s position was more complicated. Italy was about to enter the war, and as part of her price for joining the Allies she asked that four British battleships and four cruisers should be placed under her command in the central Mediterranean. Churchill himself had been over to the Continent early in May to conduct the negotiations, and thinking at that time that de Robeck had abandoned all idea of forcing the Dardanelles, he agreed that Italy should have the ships. They were to be taken from the Dardanelles. There was, too, another issue, and it was very urgent: news had been received at the Admiralty that German submarines had reached the Mediterranean and were on their way to the Ægean. De Robeck’s fleet and the precious Queen Elizabeth were stationed in the open sea, and it did not seem practicable for him to undertake a new offensive with this new peril in his wake.
Churchill, however, was in favour of at least a limited advance; he wanted the minefields in the lower straits swept up so that the Fleet would be in a position to go through the Narrows once the Army had won the peninsula. Fisher’s answer to this was that he was opposed to any action whatsoever until the Turkish Army was defeated.
The two men were in the midst of this discussion — perhaps argument is the better word, for they were now drifting steadily apart in their ideas — when news reached them that the battleship Goliath had been sunk in the Dardanelles. It was a brilliant manœuvre on the part of the enemy. In the very early hours of May 12 a Turkish destroyer commanded by a German lieutenant had emerged from the straits and had crept up upon the battleship at her anchorage about 100 yards offshore in Morto Bay. The quartermaster aboard the Goliath hailed the strange vessel through the darkness, and when he got a reply in English no alarm was given. An instant later three torpedoes struck, and the battleship heeled over and sank in two minutes. Although the French soldiers on the coast could plainly hear the cries of the crew as they struggled in the water, more than 500 men were drowned. The Turkish destroyer dashed away up the straits proclaiming her success over her radio.
The Goliath was not an important ship — she was fifteen years old and her tonnage was less than 13,000—yet the very fact that she had been sunk and in such difficult circumstances made the presence of the U-boats seem more menacing than ever. Fisher announced that he must retire the Queen Elizabeth from the Mediterranean at once. Churchill was ready to agree to this: new monitors with anti-torpedo blisters on their sides were ready to sail, and there were other replacements which could be sent to de Robeck. But it was a very different matter with Lord Kitchener. On May 13 Churchill asked him to come to a conference at the Admiralty, and it was there that he was given the news of the withdrawal of the flagship. ‘Lord Kitchener,’ Churchill relates, ‘became extremely angry… Lord Fisher flew into an even greater fury. “The Queen Elizabeth would come home; she would come home at once; she would come home that night or he would walk out of the Admiralty then and there.” ’ Churchill did his best to mollify Kitchener by telling him of the new monitors and the other replacements, and at the breaking up of the meeting Fisher had his way. Orders were sent out recalling the Queen Elizabeth, and at the same time de Robeck was forbidden to renew his attack on the Narrows.