In the early 19th century the eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean were very poorly charted; in 1832 Midshipman Thomas Spratt began his career as a naval hydrographic surveyor under the tutelage of Commander Thomas Graves who had been directed to the Greek Archipelago (the ‘Arches’) by Captain Francis Beaufort, the Hydrographer of the Navy, and in 1833 the Gulf of Saros (Xeros), lying to the north of the Gallipoli Peninsula, was surveyed by Commander Copeland. Tom Spratt was one of the hydrographers, under Graves, responsible for a crucial survey which resulted in the definitive Admiralty Chart (one-inch to a nautical mile, or 1:72,960) No. 2429, The Dardanelles (Ancient Hellespont), From the West Entrance to Cape Nagara, published in 1871. This chart was compiled from an 1840 survey by Graves, and a specific survey by Commander Spratt and others in the paddle steamer HMS Spitfire in 1855, covering The Narrows; the latter portion was separately incorporated as a larger-scale (1:29,136) inset.5 The Gulf of Saros portion had been surveyed by Copeland in 1833, and ‘The remainder from various documents in the Hydrographic Office.’
Spratt and Spitfire became ‘a sort of intelligence headquarters’ in the Black Sea during the Crimean War of 1854–6 in which Britain and France supported Turkey against Russia. He surveyed the Bay of Balaclava and the positions of ships of the Allied Fleet for the bombardment of Sevastopol, prefiguring in a remarkable way the activities of naval hydrographers at Gallipoli in 1915. Following this, he surveyed large parts of the Russian Black Sea coast. The war ended, Spratt, now promoted to Captain, resumed his Mediterranean surveys.6 This episode demonstrates the great contribution of the Navy’s hydrographers to intelligence gathering, to land mapping and to operations. The Navy continued its silent (and often forgotten) service in the Mediterranean and the ‘Arches’ up to 1914, as did the Consular Service. British yachtsmen, including the military attaché Frederick Cunliffe Owen and others such as Pirie Gordon who later became RNVR intelligence officers, explored the islands and inlets of the Aegean, the Dardanelles itself, and the Sea of Marmara.
The Calvert brothers were key figures in the Consular Service in the mid-19th century. Frederick Calvert was one of three British brothers living and trading at Chanak (modern Cannakale) on the Asiatic side of the Narrows, all antiquarians fascinated by the problem of finding the precise location of ancient Troy. He had long been associated with the Dardanelles, and was British Consul there during the Crimean War. James was the American Consul, and handed this job on to Frank, who lived closer to the mouth of the Dardanelles at In Tepe on the Asiatic Shore. Frank occupied the British and American Consulships for several decades in the second half of the 19th century, and was obsessed with finding Troy, going to the lengths of buying a field at Hissarlik from a local farmer. Here he succeeded in excavating sufficient remains to confirm Troy’s location. He and Frederick passed their knowledge on to Heinrich Schliemann who later took all the credit. In fact Frank had shown a site to Tom Spratt as early as 1839, and Spratt had duly entered it on the beautifully drawn Admiralty chart of the Troad and the Dardanelles, which was engraved and sold in England.7 To call this a chart is to understate Spratt’s land-mapping contribution, which extended to the Gallipoli Peninsula. On this map he entered many antiquities, including the name ‘Ilium Novum?’ at Hissarlik. We can see this as the origin of the ‘chart-map’ concept which underwent further development in 1915 at Gallipoli and in 1944 for D-Day.
The Allies were concerned to secure their sea-route to the Black Sea during the Crimean War and to this end in 1854–5 they occupied the town of Gallipoli, the French making an excellent 1:50,000 scale contoured reconnaissance survey, based on a triangulation, of the whole Peninsula (see Chapter 6). The Bulair Lines were created by the French and British in 1855 to defend the Peninsula from a possible Russian land attack from the north, and a report on the Lines, including a large-scale contoured map, was written in 1877 during another Russian war scare.8
Maps and reports, 1872–80
In 1872 the stretch of the Dardanelles from Nagara to Gallipoli port was surveyed by Commander W J L Wharton and others in HMS Shearwater (see Chapter 8). This new survey was duly added to the 1871 chart, and proved extremely useful a few years later, when the Balkan crisis of 1875–6, triggered by revolts against Ottoman rule in Bosnia and Serbia, followed by the Turks’ ‘Bulgarian atrocities’ in 1876, led to growing tension between Turkey and Russia, which erupted in April 1877 when Russia formally started hostilities, capturing Plevna in December. The Foreign Office was vitally interested and, in October 1876, the War Office ordered Lt-Col. Home and Captain Fraser, both Royal Engineers, to Constantinople to study the military situation, and conduct surveys (assisted by various other RE officers). They were to report on the defences of the Gallipoli Peninsula against attack from the west and prepare plans for holding the Peninsula so that the fleet could pass through the Dardanelles. The result was a ‘Strictly Confidential’ volume printed at the War Office in 1877: Reports and Memoranda relative to Defence of Constantinople and other positions in Turkey. Also on Routes in Roumelia, which contained a large number of specially surveyed maps and plans, including many of the Gallipoli Peninsula;9 these are described in Chapter 6. Though Britain was falling out of sympathy with the Ottoman Empire, the Foreign Office was still determined to support the Sublime Porte against Russian expansionism.
In February 1876 Captain G E Grover RE, who in 1862 had pioneered air observation using balloons,10 executed a rapid reconnaissance survey of a route from the coast near Gaba Tepe to the Kilid Bahr Plateau, which he drew at a scale of four inches to the mile (1:15,840) in three sheets, soon lithographed at the Intelligence Branch in London. This map described the coast north of what in 1915 became Anzac Cove as ‘Steep Sandy Cliffs. Impassable’, and north of Gaba Tepe as ‘Sandy Precipitous Cliffs (Impassable)’. A ‘Coast Track Over Beach’ was shown north of Gaba Tepe, but this disappeared in the area of Anzac Cove, to reappear farther north.11 Grover included this map in a report he wrote in January 1877 on a ‘proposed landing place for troops south of Hanafart (Anafarta Lim)’.12 This included a map at the scale of 1:50,286, ‘From a French map of Gallipoli’, showing the Peninsula between Kilid Bahr and the Gulf of Edjelmar (Ece Lim), printed by the Ordnance Survey in 1877.
Grover’s covering letter from Maïdos, written on 31 January 1877, makes fascinating reading in the light of the 1915 plan for the landing at what became known as ‘Brighton Beach’ (the original destination for the Anzac Corps):
I have the honour to forward herewith sketch sheets (with general map Carte de la Presqu’Ile de Gallipoli … 1854. Photozincographed at the Ordnance Survey Office … 1876) on the scale of 4 inches to a mile, prepared, in accordance with your directions, to show the portion of the coast between Kaba Tépé [Gaba Tepe] and Suwla [Suvla] Bay, on the west side of the Gallipoli Peninsula, opposite Maïdos, which seems suitable for the landing of a force to attack, in rear, the batteries of Kilid Bahr and Boukali, as a means of land – co-operation with a naval effort to force the passage of the Dardanelles.
Extract from Grover’s 4-inches to the mile reconnaissance map 1876, ‘Sketch of Portion of the West Coast of the Gallipoli Peninsula,’ showing the area between Gaba Tepe and Anzac Cove
The selected coast is low, and affords easy access to the interior, for an extent of nearly two miles, on the west of the villages of Böjök Anafarta. It is here protected from the prevalent north-east winds, and the Admiralty Chart appears to show sufficient depth of water, and good anchorage, for the proposed operation.13
British editions of the French 1854 1:50,000 map of the Peninsula were printed in 1876 and 1880. Captain John C Ardagh RE wrote his Report on the Defences of the Dardanelles,14 which contained plans of the forts surveyed by him, in Constantinople in December 1877, and this utilised the 1876 printing. Odoni, the British vice-consul at Gallipoli, also sent despatches on the Gallipoli Defences in 1877.15 A survey was also ordered of the Bulair area, which was printed as Survey of Defensive Position near Bulair shewing the l
ines constructed by the Anglo-French Army in 1855. Sketched December 1876 by Lieut. Cockburn RE and Lieut. Chermside RE. 1:15,840 or 4 miles to 1 inch. This excellent map was close-contoured (or form-lined), with spot-heights. This map was included in a Report on the Defences of the Gallipoli Peninsula at Bulair, by Captain T Fraser RE.16
At the same time a one-inch map was made of the area north-west of Constantinople: Reconnaissance of the Chatalja Lines between the Sea of Marmora [sic] and Black Sea covering Constantinople from the westward, sketched October and November 1876 under direction of Lt Col R. Home CB, RE, by Capt. Ardagh DAQMG RE, Lieut. Cockburn RE and Lieut. Chermside RE. Shewing also works proposed by Capt. T. Fraser RE.17 The Chatalja Lines, defending Constantinople, ran across the isthmus north of the city. In January and February 1877, as part of this general survey, the road on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles from Chanak to Kum Kale was reconnoitred (in a north-easterly gale and snow) by Home and Lieutenant Hare RE, as was the coast in the Bulair region by Captain T H Anstey RE.
Passage through the Dardanelles
In 1877 Admiral Sir Geoffrey Hornby concentrated the British Mediterranean Fleet in Besika Bay, ready to sail through the Straits to Constantinople to demonstrate British commitment to Turkey. However, Hornby protested that the safety of his fleet would be endangered by lack of possession of the Gallipoli Peninsula, which the Russians might well occupy, cutting off his line of retreat. He proposed the landing of a British force to strengthen the Turks holding the Bulair Lines. In August 1877 his appreciation correctly identified the great problem the Navy was to face in 1915 – that though the Fleet could force the Dardanelles, the passage could not be kept open because the enemy would deploy mobile batteries on the shore of the Peninsula, which the Navy would find it ‘most difficult’ to silence.18 He finally took the Fleet through to the Marmara in a snowstorm on 13 February 1878, after an armistice between the Turks and the Russians. One of his captains on this occasion was ‘Jackie’ Fisher, later to become First Sea Lord. Fisher, with his first-hand experience of the Dardanelles, became convinced of the impossibility of any purely naval attack. The situation was resolved for the time being by the Treaty of San Stefano and the Congress of Berlin in that year. The passage of the Fleet was an opportunity for further hydrographic survey work in the Dardanelles.
John Ardagh, now a major and staff officer (DAQMG), wrote on 2 September 1880 a Memorandum on passage of Dardanelles, which outlined landing operations, and was accompanied by a new printing of the French 1854 map, together with many others. This map carried a red overprint, prepared at the Intelligence Branch in the Quarter-Master General’s Department at the Horse Guards, on the 1876 base map showing Turkish defences at Chanak Kale and on the Kilid Bahr Plateau, the Bulair Lines, a fleet anchorage off Suvla Bay, the main landing place south of Nibrunesi Point, the line of advance southwards to the Kilid Bahr Plateau, and diversionary landings on the east coast and south of Gaba Tepe. The armament of Turkish forts and batteries was also given.19 This memorandum was part of a broader 1880 paper, Seizure of the Dardanelles as a means of coercing the Porte.20
After 1880, British attention, while still keeping one eye on the ‘Eastern Question’ and on Russia’s expansion towards India, gradually became more and more focused on the growing German threat. German and Austrian cartographers became increasingly interested in the area. Kiepert produced a 1: 400,000 Karte von Kleinasien, covering the Dardanelles and the Troad, and Philippson followed this up with his 1:300,000 Topographische Karte des westlichen Kleinasien, based on Kiepert’s map. War with Turkey again threatened in 1882 over Egypt, and the unstable situation in the Balkans, coupled with British concern about Russian designs on India, combined to keep the Dardanelles at the forefront of British minds. A German Military Mission under von der Goltz appeared in Constantinople in 1883, and from 1885 the Turks reorganised their coast defence batteries and rearmed them with Krupp guns. Von der Goltz stayed until 1895, and led a further German Mission in 1908–11. The activities of the Germans were closely watched by British military attachés. The rearming of the Narrows batteries with modern, high-velocity, breech-loading rifled guns, which at the short ranges involved could punch straight through a ship’s armour, led the Admiralty to realise that a naval attack was now not a practicable proposition. Further, both services viewed with increasing pessimism the possibilities of even a combined naval and military operation.21
Shortly after joining the Intelligence Branch of the War Office in 1887, Captain Charles Callwell sailed through the Dardanelles on his way to Constantinople, visiting Chanak, from which vantage point he studied through binoculars, at close range across the narrows, the high ground of the Kilid Bahr Plateau which ‘with the numerous batteries which nestled at its foot’, struck him as being the ‘Key of the Dardanelles’.22 Careful not to offend the Turks, he did not set foot on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Nevertheless, this first-hand knowledge later proved of great value when, as a pre-war staff officer in the Directorate of Military Operations, and in 1914–15 in the same capacity, he made studies of proposed operations and eventually, in March 1915, briefed Hamilton and Braithwaite.
In 1904 Lt-Col. Thomas English, late RE, a Fellow of the Geological Society of London, conducted privately a geological survey of the Dardanelles and Aegean coast, and published a paper in the Society’s Journal in 1905.23 Intended as a reconnaissance survey of potential economic resources (Spratt had discovered coal at Erekli on the coast of Asia Minor24), this was clearly a vital source of terrain intelligence, including water supply, but appears to have been ignored in 1914–15, despite the fact that English offered his services to the War Office.25 English visited the Gallipoli Peninsula again in 1912, executing a prismatic compass survey with Lieutenant F G Hill.26
Lt-Col. Maunsell, military attaché
In 1903 a further War Office volume, Reports on the Defences of Constantinople, which did not cover the Dardanelles or the Gallipoli Peninsula but concentrated on the immediate defences of the Bosphorus and the Chatalja Lines, was prepared by Lt-Col. Francis Richard Maunsell RA (military attaché, Constantinople),27 who undertook much topographical work on the ground, and who subsequently extended his area of study to include the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli Peninsula. He drew further panoramic sketches which were included in the 1909 Report on the Defences of Constantinople, misleadingly given a name almost identical to that of the 1903 report, and probably also took some of the panoramic terrain photographs included in that Report.
Maunsell was consul at Van, in southern Armenia near the border with Persia, before going to Constantinople as military attaché in 1901–5, but fell out of favour and was exiled to the Macedonian Gendarmerie, retiring in 1906. He undertook a great deal of reconnaissance in the Gallipoli and Dardanelles region, as well as in the area closer to Constantinople, and revised the 1876 Reconnaissance of the Chatalja Lines one-inch map, which was reprinted in 1903.28 Presumably Maunsell himself undertook the corrections in 1905. He also drew two panoramic sketches in March 1904 which were added to the foot of a new edition of Cockburn and Chermside’s 1876 Bulair map (now designated TSGS 2052), which was corrected to June 1905. This map was appended to the Confidential 1905 Military Report on Eastern Turkey in Europe,29 written by Maunsell, which contained a chapter on the Gallipoli Peninsula (see Appendix I), and to the Secret 1909 Report on the Defences of Constantinople (see below), which contained a great deal about Gallipoli and the Dardanelles defences.
As military attaché, Maunsell was clearly on good terms with the Turkish authorities as he had good access to the Constantinople hinterland, to the Dardanelles and to the Gallipoli Peninsula. He was able, openly, to make maps and panoramas, and take photographs. In his introduction (dated 7 April) to the 1903 Report, he speaks of the ‘notes and sketches of the Chatalja Lines and Black Sea Coast, which I was permitted to visit last November and again a few days ago, by the Minister of War’. However, it may have been this zealous pursuit of intelligence that led to his departur
e from Constantinople to the wilds of Macedonia.
Like other military attachés, Maunsell sent his reports, after they had been vetted by the Ambassador, by diplomatic bag to the Foreign Office in London, who then forwarded them to the War Office and the Admiralty War Staff, who incorporated the information into their intelligence reports. He was a close friend of Mark Sykes, an honorary attaché at the Constantinople Embassy in Pera, and they agreed on the defence capabilities of the Turkish army, the forces they could set against any Russian invasion, and standing against the increasing German domination of Turkish policy. Following Maunsell’s retirement, Sykes was for a while made responsible for writing the intelligence reports. However, further military attachés were posted to Constantinople, and continued to supply vital intelligence.
Colonel Herbert C Surtees was appointed military attaché from 1 July 1905, being followed on 4 December 1909 by Major Gerald Ernest Tyrell. Maunsell, Tyrell and Surtees were all accredited to Athens as well as Constantinople, so they had their work cut out. During the Balkan War, two temporary military attaché appointments were made – Lt-Col. Frederick Cunliffe Owen RA on 9 November 1912 to Athens, and Lt-Col. Hamilton L Reed VC on 24 November 1912 to Constantinople. Reed seems to have been the victim of an entrapment by a blackmailing adventurer, Captain Jorge Nelcken y Waldberg, in the pay of the Turkish secret police and possibly of the Germans as an agent provocateur, who managed to get him embroiled with the military opposition to Mahmud Shevket Pasha who was assassinated on 11 June 1913. The net result of this was to discredit Britain further, and to lead to the recall of Reed, who was replaced in Constantinople by Cunliffe Owen on 26 November 1913. Captain Arthur Fitzheary Townshend was briefly Consul for the Vilayet of Adrianople from 13 April 1905 to 2 February 1906.30 He was followed at Adrianople by Major L L R Samson, later to conduct a clandestine reconnaissance of Gallipoli landing places and play a key role in British secret intelligence in the Mediterranean and Aegean during the war.
Grasping Gallipoli Page 10