VCs of the First World War Gallipoli

by Stephen Snelling

  The next morning, Boyle decided to employ a new ‘weapon’ – deception. A dummy gun was rigged up, and was immediately used to help stop a Turkish tug towing a lighter. After an inspection revealed the cargo to be baulks of timber, she was allowed to continue, although reports of her interception could only have served to fuel Turkish anxieties. Later Boyle suffered the frustration of having to allow a convoy consisting of three full transports and one destroyer to pass because of his lack of torpedoes. A busy day ended with the E14 narrowly avoiding disaster after failing to spot a Turkish patrol boat until it was almost too late. Leading Stoker Haskins recorded: ‘At 9.10 we had to dive in a hurry. It was very dark, and before we knew what was happening an enemy destroyer appeared right on top of us. It was a near thing.’ According to Boyle, the destroyer which almost caught them napping on the surface was ‘not more than 400 yards off when sighted’. It was not the first time that the Turks had been in with a chance of catching their quarry, and Boyle was convinced that only their lack of determination spared his vessel from destruction. He noted:

  I think that 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. In the day time the atmosphere was so clear that we were practically always in sight from the shore, and these signal fires and smoke columns were always in evidence, so I think our position was always known to the patrols unless we dived most of the day.

  By 16 May provisions were running low and water was rationed to one pint per man a day. There were hopes that the submarine would be resupplied by the E11, but the following day E14 was ordered by wireless to return. On the morning of 18 May, the twenty-first day of his momentous patrol, Boyle brought his boat out of the Dardanelles. Despite having been detected at the very outset of his return trip, and again by the Turkish shore defences at Chanak, he skilfully avoided all obstacles to complete the first double passage. The E14 surfaced close to a French battleship, its decks crowded with cheering sailors. With a destroyer as escort, the submarine, sporting the ‘Jolly Roger’, entered Kephalo where, according to Haskins, ‘we had to go around the whole fleet and they certainly gave us a cheer’.

  It had been an outstandingly successful patrol, far exceeding his superiors’ hopes. As early as 14 May, Cdre. Roger Keyes had wired the Admiralty praising Boyle and outlining his record of success. Although no official recommendation for honours was made, Keyes had insisted that Boyle ‘deserved the greatest credit for his persistent enterprise in remaining in the Sea of Marmora, hunted day and night …’. In a subsequent telegraph, Vice-Admiral de Robeck stated: ‘It is impossible to do full justice to this great achievement.’ The result was one of the swiftest announcements of a VC after the action for which it was gained. News of the honour reached the Mediterranean Fleet on 19 May, two days before it was officially recorded in the London Gazette and before Boyle had compiled his own report. Even Keyes was astonished at the speed of events. ‘I was hoping they would give him a VC but rather doubted it’, he wrote to his wife. ‘That they should have done so without our official recommendation was splendid.’ In his diary entry for 19 May, Leading Stoker Haskins recorded:

  At 6.30 a.m. all hands were turned out and had to fall in on the boat. And then, reading out the citations, they inform[ed] us that our Captain had been awarded the VC and that our second and third officers had been awarded the DSC and that the remainder of the crew had been awarded the DSM each. We gave three cheers for our officers and then at 11.20 a.m. we got on the way for Mudros …

  For his part, Boyle heaped praise on his crew. He credited much of the E14’s success to the ‘untiring energy, knowledge of the boat, and general efficiency’ of his first lieutenant, Lt. Stanley, and acknowledged the intelligent hard work of his navigator, Acting Lt. Reginald Lawrence, RNR. He also selected for special mention five senior crew members, including Leading Stoker Haskins. His own Victoria Cross citation read:

  For most conspicuous bravery, in command of Submarine E14, when he dived his vessel under the enemy’s minefields and entered the Sea of Marmora on the 27th April, 1915. In spite of great navigational difficulties from strong currents, of the continual neighbourhood of hostile patrols, and of the hourly danger of attack from the enemy, he continued to operate in the narrow waters of the Straits and succeeded in sinking two Turkish gunboats and one large military transport.

  Edward Courtney Boyle, one of the most distinguished submariners of his generation, was born on 23 March 1883 in Carlisle, Cumberland, the son of Lt. Col. Edward Boyle, then serving in the Army Pay Department, and Edith (née Cowley).

  Educated at Cheltenham College, he entered HMS Britannia in 1897 and became a midshipman the following year. He was an early convert to one of the Navy’s newest branches, the Submarine Service. His abilities were such that he was given his first command, a Holland boat, as a 21-year-old sub-lieutenant.

  Attractive and intelligent, if somewhat reserved, Boyle’s behaviour suggested a casual indifference which was sometimes mistaken for arrogance. To some of his colleagues he gave the impression of being bored by life in the peacetime Navy. Appearances, however, were deceptive. The long-limbed Boyle was one of those rare individuals who could accomplish with relative ease and unruffled calm what others strained to achieve. Charles Brodie, a fellow submariner in the pre-war days, remembered:

  In the period 1905–8 submarines and motor bicycles were new and fascinating if grubby toys, and specialists in both were often dubbed pirates. Boyle knew his submarine as thoroughly and rode his motor bicycle as fast as any, but was more courteous and tidy than most pirates … He did not pose, but seemed slightly aloof, ganging his own gait.

  His quiet authority and cool efficiency in handling submarines was duly noted. Promotion followed at regular intervals, and a succession of submarine commands followed. At the outbreak of war he was captaining D3 in the 8th Submarine Flotilla. His early North Sea patrols, which included what Keyes described as a ‘first class daring reconnaissance’ into the shoals inside the Amrum Bank off the north German coast, were recognised by the award of a mention in dispatches. As a further reward, Boyle was promoted lieutenant commander and given command of the E14, one of the Navy’s latest submarines. The following March, E14 was among three E-class boats sent from England to operate in the Dardanelles. It would prove to be a happy hunting ground for the modest yet quietly confident Boyle.

  Between April and August Boyle and E14 completed three successful cruises into the Sea of Marmora, each journey through the Dardanelles made more dangerous than the previous one by the ever-strengthened Turkish defences. During the return passage at the end of his third patrol, the E14 came perilously close to disaster. Having burst through a new anti-submarine net, she narrowly escaped being hit by two torpedoes fired from the shore, before scraping her way through the Turkish minefields to safety. Perhaps it was an omen. The E14 and her captain were withdrawn from the fray and given a well-earned rest.

  In all, Boyle had spent seventy days in the Marmora, and as well as enduring the prolonged strain of command in hostile waters, he had, like many of his crew, suffered bouts of dysentery and illness. The Royal Navy recognised his services by promoting him to commander, while Britain’s allies showered him with decorations. The French made him a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and the Italians gave him their Order of St Maurice and St Lazarus. But apart from the VC given for his first patrol, Boyle surprisingly received no further awards from his own country.

  He continued to serve in submarines. By 1917 he was once more operating in the North Sea, in command of the new boat J5, in a flotilla which included the Navy’s Baltic ace, Cdr. Max Horton, DSO and Bar. There were, however, reminders of his Dardanelles days. That same year, Boyle fought and lost a £31,000 ‘blood money’ claim in an Admiralty prize court for the ‘sinking’ of the Guj Djemal. Ironically, the grounds for refusing him were not t
hat the ship had survived the attack – so far as the Royal Navy was concerned, it had been destroyed – but that it was not ‘offensively armed’. Some months after the war, however, the Admiralty, still apparently none the wiser as to the true fate of the vessel, reversed their decision.

  The end of the war found him in command of the Australian Submarine Flotilla. Two years later he was promoted captain.

  During the next ten years, Boyle alternated sea-going commands with shore duties. He commanded, in turn, the cruisers HMS Birmingham and Carysfort and the aging battleship Iron Duke, while for two years he served as King’s Harbour Master at Devonport. Promoted rear-admiral in October 1932, he retired on a Good Service Pension. During the Second World War he served for a time as flag officer in charge, London.

  In an active retirement, Rear-Admiral Boyle, a childless widower who lived at Sunningdale Hotel, became an enthusiastic member of the local golf club. He died on 16 December 1967, as a result of injuries sustained the previous day when he was knocked down by a lorry on a pedestrian crossing.

  Twenty-one years later, members of the Boyle family provided a fitting epitaph to the life of one of the Navy’s most gifted pioneer submariners, when they presented their heroic forebear’s Victoria Cross to HMS Dolphin, headquarters of the 1st Submarine Squadron at Gosport.

  M.E. NASMITH

  Sea of Marmora, 19 May–7 June 1915

  Lt. Cdr. M. Nasmith

  In the early evening of 18 May 1915, Lt. Cdr. Martin Nasmith, captain of the submarine E11, boarded the battleship Lord Nelson in Kephalo harbour. The 32-year-old submariner, a favourite of Roger Keyes, had been invited to dine with Vice-Admiral de Robeck prior to taking his boat up the Dardanelles. It was a pleasant enough duty, but uppermost in his mind was a meeting with his friend Courtney Boyle, fresh from his triumphant patrol.

  Nasmith had already laid his own plans for his passage through the Narrows, arrangements which were greatly assisted by an aerial reconnaissance he had made. But he was eager to learn from his fellow submariner’s experiences. Boyle, weary yet evidently elated, had barely had a chance to recover from his patrol, and while able to pass on news of the latest Turkish counter-measures in the Sea of Marmora he was unable to supply many precise details about the siting of searchlights and leading marks through the Straits. Later, after the meal during which Boyle had recounted his exploits to the distinguished gathering, Nasmith received his final briefing from Keyes. The Commodore’s parting words would go down in submarine history. ‘Well then’, he told Nasmith, ‘go and run amok in the Marmora!’

  Nasmith, of all submariners, scarcely needed such exhortations. The commander who was reputed to possess the best ‘periscope eye’ in the Navy was determined to take up where Boyle had left off. He was also desperate to make up for a series of disappointments which had so far blighted his war career. The previous October he had been thwarted, first by mechanical problems and then by alerted shore defences, in his attempt to take the E11 into the Baltic. Even his journey to the Dardanelles had been beset with difficulties. Had it not been for a delay at Malta caused by having to replace his main motor, Nasmith, considered by most senior officers to be the pick of the submarine commanders despatched to the Mediterranean Fleet, would almost certainly have been the first to attempt the passage of the Straits.

  Charles Brodie wrote of him: ‘A few others might be classed with him on peace attack form, but by strength of character and sheer single-minded zeal he had won already a position among us all his own.’ A term-mate of Boyle’s at HMS Britannia, Nasmith had served as a midshipman on the Renown alongside his fellow submariner. Both combined caution with daring, but of the two Nasmith was the more natural leader. To those who knew him well, his eventual success appeared assured. What nobody could have predicted as he proceeded into the Straits at 2.45 a.m. on 19 May was the extent of that success.

  Nasmith’s extraordinary first cruise in the Sea of Marmora has justifiably entered the annals of naval history as an epic of submarine warfare. During his twenty-one-day patrol he accounted for eleven ships sunk, including a large gunboat and two transports. But, by far his most spectacular coup, was his penetration of Constantinople harbour. It was a startling attack, which has been likened to an enemy submarine venturing into the Pool of London, and had clearly been in Nasmith’s mind from the outset of his patrol. Whereas Boyle had chosen to operate mainly at the western end of the Marmora, Nasmith prowled further eastwards, to the approaches of Turkey’s ancient capital. He chalked up his first success on 23 May when, with a single torpedo, he sank the Turkish gunboat Pelenk-i-Dria, anchored off Constantinople. The crew of the sinking vessel were not short of courage. Even as their boat was going down, they succeeded in putting a shot through the E11’s forward periscope. However, Nasmith’s coolly delivered attack, within sight of the city’s tall minarets, was merely a warning of things to come.

  The next day proved to be the most successful of Nasmith’s first Dardanelles patrol. It began when the E11 stopped a small steamer whose passengers included an American journalist, Raymond Gram Swing. Nasmith’s first lieutenant, Lt. Guy D’Oyly-Hughes, who was sent on board with a demolition charge, gave the quick-thinking reporter a brief, impromptu interview in which he claimed the E11 to be one of eleven submarines operating in the Marmora before ordering him into the steamer’s lifeboats and firing the charge. Shortly after an explosion tore through the vessel another ship was spotted. Nasmith pursued the heavily laden store-ship into Rodosto harbour and put a torpedo into her as she lay beside the pier. Once again his periscope became the target for some accurate Turkish shooting. In his report, he noted:

  Owing to the shallowness of the water it was necessary to expose a considerable amount of periscope to rifle fire, although the boat was bumping along the bottom. One bullet struck the lower tube and made a big indentation but fortunately did not penetrate.

  Leaving Rodosto Bay, the E11 came across a paddle steamer carrying a supply of barbed wire. Hailed to stop, the vessel bravely made an attempt to ram the submarine. Nasmith successfully evaded his unlikely attacker and chased her on to a beach beneath some cliffs along the bay’s northern shore. His report continues:

  We were just preparing a demolition charge for her when a party of horsemen appeared on the cliff above and opened a hot rifle fire on the conning-tower. We were forced to beat a hasty retreat.

  From a safe distance, E11 sent a torpedo towards the grounded paddle-steamer, but it missed, passing along the vessel’s side and exploding on the shore. It had been an eventful day; two ships sunk, one forced to beach herself while the E11 had survived a ramming attempt and close-range fire from harbour guards and Turkish cavalrymen! The next twenty-four hours, however, were to see even these exploits upstaged.

  Having left Rodosto Bay on the evening of 24 May, Nasmith recharged his batteries and proceeded along the surface eastwards. He had decided this was the moment to test the Turkish defences inside Constantinople harbour. At 6.00 a.m. he dived unobserved near Oxia Island and made his way past an American guardship into the harbour which was filled with shipping. Taking care to follow a course he had seen being taken by a steamer on his previous reconnaissance two days earlier, he searched for likely targets. He picked out a large vessel lying alongside the arsenal. Just ahead of her, Nasmith observed a smaller vessel. Then, he settled into his attack:

  12.35 p.m. Fired Port Bow Tube. Torpedo failed to run. Fired Starboard Bow torpedo and observed track heading for larger vessel. Unable to observe the effect owing to being swept ashore by cross tide and the presence of what I took to be a Brennan torpedo. [It is now understood that no Brennan exists in Constantinople and it is probable that the torpedo sighted was the first one discharged which by now had blown out its tail plug and was running with a capsized Gyro.] Two explosions were heard, so it is probable that the stray torpedo found a mark as well as the one directed at the ship lying alongside the arsenal. Dived to 75 feet and turned to get out. Grounded heavily at 70 feet
and bounced quickly up to 40 feet. Further rise was checked by going full speed astern and flooding internal tanks. The Ship’s head then swung from SSE through East and North to West. It was therefore concluded that the vessel was resting on the shoal under the Leander Tower, and being turned round by the current. Her head was then brought to South and the motors started ahead, the boat bumping gently down into 85 feet of water. After bumping for some time at this depth the boat was brought off the bottom. On bringing her to the surface about 20 minutes later she was found to be well clear of the entrance.

  Later it was learned that a troop-carrying barge had been sunk by the second torpedo, the explosion severely damaging the nearby transport Stamboul which had to be run ashore. The first ‘rogue’ torpedo, having narrowly missed destroying the E11, struck a wharf, blowing away a large section. The dramatic effect of the raid was immense and immediately felt. Troopships were hastily evacuated and vast numbers of people fled into the country as rumours of an invasion circulated. The following day, as the shockwaves continued to reverberate through the city, Nasmith, his great ambition realised, allowed his crew a day off.