Grasping Gallipoli

by Peter Chasseaud

  Cunliffe Owen later stated that on his return from Constantinople (November–December 1914), after going via Athens (to liaise with the Greek General Staff) and Egypt, where he presumably put Maxwell and Clayton in the picture, he made himself available in London to give advice but was not consulted at any stage of the preliminary deliberations and was subsequently ignored. After training a ‘New Army’ field artillery brigade in England, he finally got his way and arrived at Hamilton’s GHQ at the end of June 1915, where he was told they already had too many ‘experts’.27 It is difficult to exonerate the War Office from culpability in this matter. Just as Limpus was exiled to Malta (where he became a key figure in intelligence gathering and dissemination) by the Admiralty, for fear of offending Turkish susceptibilities before hostilities with Turkey began, and subsequently, so Cunliffe Owen was kept in England. Although it could be argued there was a serious shortage of experienced regular officers who were needed to train the New Armies, his presence at Hamilton’s headquarters would have added invaluable local knowledge and intelligence expertise, and could have tipped the balance against the launching of the landing operations.

  Much has been made by historians of the supposition, based on Hamilton’s claims, that he was not shown Cunliffe Owen’s report, or indeed the 1906–7 (in fact 19 December 1906) joint assessment, before going to the Dardanelles. Given that the contents of both reports had permeated Naval Intelligence Department (NID) and Directorate of Military Operations (DMO) consciousness, and that the tactical details of the 1914 report were incorporated into NID intelligence summaries, and given the over-hasty nature of his briefing and departure, there is no particular reason why they should have been. They were essentially of a strategic nature, for the guidance of policy-makers in London, although they had clear operational implications. Kitchener had given Hamilton the outline of the Greek plan. Things had moved on. Churchill’s idea of a purely naval operation took over, even if the War Council and Kitchener realised that troops would be necessary. Nor, apparently, did Braithwaite see any of Cunliffe Owen’s Dardanelles reports at the War Office before sailing for the Mediterranean, or know of the 1906–7 joint-staff enquiry and report.28 Nor, apparently, did they see a review by the War Office in 1908, and another in 1911, though Callwell, who knew the content of all these, imparted their gist at the briefing. Both would, however, also have become aware of the conclusions of the joint report ‘in theatre’ via the Navy.

  Naval intelligence

  In the early months of the war, naval intelligence was particularly forthcoming. Two British steamships, the Thistleban and Wallace, passed through the Dardanelles in September, and reported to the Navy on the minefields, marker buoys and other defences. Tracings or charts showing their information in manuscript were prepared by the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron, and forwarded to the Admiralty. Admiralty Charts Nos 1198 and 2429 were used as a base to show drawings and information from HMS Itchen, obtained from the master of the SS Wallace which navigated the Dardanelles on 24 September. The zig-zag tracks through the clear, buoyed channels of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles minefields were shown. The Admiralty thereupon proposed that the Hydrographer should ‘collate this information with what we possess already and build up a new chart. Make 2 copies. Send one to V[ice] A[dmiral] Mediterranean, and one to Russian Naval Attaché. Propose in sending to V.A. Med. To desire him to consider the feasibility of a submarine attack upon Turkish fleet.’29 These copies were duly made.30

  A note, dated 14 November 1914 and signed by J F Parry, Hydrographer, on a similarly augmented chart, stated:31

  The information concerning the Dardanelles was obtained principally from reports made by two British steamships, the Thistleban and the Wallace, which passed through in September, but it must be noted that Sir L[ouis] Mallet [the Ambassador], telegraphed from Constantinople on October 3rd and 4th, saying it was presumed that [the] Germans had mined the Straits still more effectively.

  Chart No. 2429 shows:-

  (1) In red, track taken by SS Wallace, and buoys reported.

  (2) In blue, the report by SS Thistleban.

  (3) In green, approximate position of mine field laid by Turkish vessel Selanik, 4th and 5th August 1914.

  (4) Lights reported extinguished by Turkish Govt, dated 7th August.

  Note. This is all the information received in the Hydrographic Department; it is not known if mines are laid in other areas, although it would appear probable.

  The Navy continued to watch the land for signs of Turkish defensive activity, and on 26 September a naval intelligence report32 stated that trenches and wire had appeared at Cape Helles. The Turks were fearful of a landing attempt, whether by the Greeks, the British or indeed any interested party.

  A remarkable coup occurred on 13 October 1914, when Churchill and the First Sea Lord (Prince Louis of Battenberg) were handed the German Navy cipher and signal books which had been retrieved by the Russians from the wreck of the light cruiser Magdeburg. This was the beginning of a successful attack on German ciphers. This advantage was amplified on 30 November when a British trawler hauled up a chest from a sunken German destroyer containing, in addition to squared German naval charts of the North Sea, a copy of the crucial Verkehrsbuch (traffic book), and by 3 December this was at the Admiralty,33 where cryptologists in Room 40 could now decipher all German naval signals between Constantinople and the Dardanelles on the one hand, and Berlin on the other. This was to prove a useful source of intelligence on munitions flows, ammunition shortages, etc. The Turks and Germans were, however, capable of intercepting and decrypting British naval wireless traffic.

  According to Callwell, it was around the end of October that he again conferred at the Admiralty with Churchill, Prince Louis and Commodore Lambert (Fourth Sea Lord). This meeting took place in Churchill’s room ‘where there were maps and charts available’, and ‘appears to have been almost the only occasion – if it was not actually the only occasion – when a representative of the General Staff in a responsible position was afforded an opportunity of discussing the problem of an attack on the Dardanelles with high Admiralty officials’. He appears to have forgotten the earlier meetings. Callwell wanted the Dardanelles Commission to know that ‘I did my best to throw cold water on the scheme as a whole.’34 Soon after this, Kitchener asked Callwell to investigate the feasibility of a landing at Alexandretta, using troops from Maxwell’s command in Egypt. ‘This project was fully considered by the General Staff and it was discussed with Sir H. Jackson and other Admiralty officers.’ The War Office view was that this was a feasible operation which would entail minimum use of troops, and was the best way, coupled with ‘threats’ against the Dardanelles, of dealing with Turkey.35 At this time, therefore, the War Office was clearly against landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Its attention was also diverted from the Dardanelles by the Alexandretta proposal. The other serious claims on its attention at this time – the critical situation on the Western Front during the period of the First Battle of Ypres (October–November 1914), and the Turkish threat to Egypt and the Canal, should also be borne in mind.

  In the War Office in London, Colonel B T Buckley, Northumberland Fusiliers, took over MO2 from Colonel Dallas. Changes of key personnel at this critical time were not conducive to continuity in corporate memory or a proper handling of intelligence, the flow of which continued after the outbreak of hostilities with Turkey at the end of October, following the bombardment of Odessa, Sebastopol and other Russian ports by Admiral Souchon’s Germano-Turkish squadron, which was successfully designed to force Turkey’s hand. On 2 November the Admiralty signalled:

  … latest for information of Vice Admiral [Carden, who had been appointed to command the Dardanelles Squadron in September 1914] Indefatigable only:- latest information about guns herewith, begins:- Dardanelles modification to Chart 3, N.I.D. Report 838 [Turkey Coast Defences] of May 1908.

  This signal went on to give important intelligence about new batteries, modifications to defences, etc.36


  Palmer was still at Chanak on 3 November,37 the day the British naval squadron blockading the Dardanelles bombarded the outer forts, continuing to supply intelligence, but had to evacuate as a result of the commencement of hostilities at this time, so this direct source soon dried up. By the beginning of March 1915 Palmer had found his way, now with a temporary commission as an RNVR lieutenant,38 to Athens where he provided information on the Turkish coast batteries covering the Straits.39 He was permitted to join the submarine E15 as an intelligence officer, and on 28 March was captured by the Turks and interrogated; he managed, however, to avoid giving away any information that specifically compromised the landings on 25 April.40

  Information was still forthcoming from neutral consular agents, and of course various intelligence agents in the area, particularly Greeks. A trickle of foreign residents managed to get out of Constantinople, bringing with them important information. Sir Edwin Pears, a shipping lawyer who was also President of the European Bar at Constantinople, author of The Destruction of the Greek Empire, a friend of Aubrey Herbert, a Daily News correspondent, and had vast local knowledge through having been closely involved with the Dardanelles for decades, left Constantinople on 9 December, claiming that:

  It has been my lot as a lawyer for forty years out there to have to deal with certainly not less than from seventy to one hundred collisions or strandings in the Dardanelles or immediate neighbourhood, so that you would have some difficulty in puzzling me as to the depth of water and topography of the hills in these straits or in the Bosphorus.41

  What is more, he received a letter from Constantinople ‘by underground post’ on 24 April 1915, the day before the Allied landings. His son-in-law, Thompson, who spoke good Turkish, worked in Clayton’s Intelligence Department in Cairo with Lawrence in December 1914.42

  Following the outbreak of hostilities with Turkey, intelligence from within the Ottoman Empire naturally became harder, but not impossible, to acquire. Lawrence wrote to Hogarth from Cairo on 20 December 1914 that Turkey had ‘forbidden ingress & egress for people, merchandise and mails’. However, the Syrian Protestant College, under American auspices, was still in wireless contact with Washington.43

  The Navy kept the Dardanelles under continuous surveillance, watching among other things for the emergence of the Goeben and Breslau. New information was immediately passed to the Admiralty. Captain Godfrey (Royal Marines) of the Indefatigable submitted on 14 December a duplicated sketch map of the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula, covering the Dardanelles from the mouth to the Narrows, traced from Chart 2429 (one inch to a nautical mile or 1:72,960, The Dardanelles (Ancient Hellespont) 1871). It stated: ‘Defences placed in position since 4th August 1914 shown in RED.’ Six lines of mines, designated A to F, were shown, and in addition ‘45 mines have been laid inshore and to close channel making total of 199 of which 4 exploded whilst being laid’. Also shown were field guns and howitzers, small guns, machine guns, one 6-inch or 8-inch gun at Cape Tekke, camps on both sides of the Narrows, a hangar for hydroplanes north of Chanak, etc. Ships shown were the Lily Rickmers in Dardan Bay north of Chanak, and the Ssudiyeh moored in Sari Siglar Bay.44 The Navy also watched closely the progress of Turkish work on land defences.

  Other intelligence sources

  Certain other naval personnel were well-positioned in terms of experience and location to supply information and appreciations. Admiral A H Limpus had formerly commanded the British Naval Mission in Constantinople, and had intimate knowledge of the Turkish Navy, to which he was an adviser, and of the Dardanelles defences – he had been responsible for the siting of some of the torpedo tubes. On 22 January 1915 he signalled from Malta where, in addition to commanding the dockyard, he was in charge of the Naval Intelligence office, to Admiral Carden that he had received a telegram from Athens. This concerned the venerable Frederick Calvert, who was expelled from the Dardanelles on 22 December, left Constantinople on 12 January, and gave a report to Limpus about the Dardanelles forts, their manning by Germans, hills being entrenched on European and Asian sides, etc.45

  A further signal from Limpus to Carden, on 25 February 1915, specifically mentioned an intelligence agent. This contained details about the:

  German Admiral and the staff of the Dardanelles on the west side of Nagara side of Calvert’s Park [the Calvert family had been British Consuls at the Dardanelles since before the Crimean War], the house of Godfrey Whittall … it is suggested by our agent that torpedo tubes may have been placed on the hulk [of the Messudye]. Some of the Christian population still remain in town of Dardanelles [Chanak]. Village of Erenkeui has been cleared of the Greeks. On Gallipoli side of Straits all Greeks have been collected at Maidos …46

  which in any case had a predominantly Greek population. One of Hamilton’s staff officers, Aspinall, noted that two intelligence officers (Doughty Wylie and Deedes), sent out from the War Office in London just before Hamilton and his Staff arrived in March, provided vague information about Turkish troop numbers and dispositions, but as the district had been cleared of civilians they had not been able to get any agents into it.47

  On 10 March 1915 Limpus, who was extremely familiar with the Dardanelles defences, wrote an important document, Notes on Method of Forcing the Dardanelles,48 which although dealing primarily with naval operations included recommended landing places, and four days later he wrote from Malta to Rear-Admiral Phillimore at the Admiralty:

  Seen from here, I consider the landing and seizure of the Gallipoli Peninsula to be a necessary and very tough part of the operations. I studied the matter from the inside (Turkish) point of view when I was in Constantinople and the Greeks were contemplating the same operation …49

  This document was studied closely by Kitchener. Like Kerr and Frederick Cunliffe Owen, Limpus was clearly familiar with aspects of the Greek plan.

  Like the Calverts, the Whittall family were well established in business in the Levant; Sir James W Whittall controlled J W Whittall & Co., Lloyds Agents in Constantinople.50 Edwin Whittall was associated with an extraordinary attempt in the spring of 1915 by the Director of Naval Intelligence, Admiral Sir Reginald (‘Blinker’) Hall, with the full knowledge of Fisher, the First Sea Lord, to bribe the Turks to pull out of the war and surrender the Dardanelles, with, of course, the mines removed; this failed because the British were unable to promise the Turks that Constantinople would remain in their hands – indeed the Allies had already promised the city to the Russians. Assisted by Gerald Fitzmaurice, who had been attached as Dragoman to the British Embassy to the Porte for several years, Edwin Whittall and a contractor, George Eady, who was familiar with the Levant, were secretly conducted to Dedeagach, in neutral Bulgaria on the coast of Thrace, to meet leading members of the Turkish government. On 15 March 1915, however, Fisher ordered Hall to break off negotiations. The trigger for this was the interception and decrypting by Room 40 at the Admiralty of a signal to Constantinople from Berlin revealing the crucial fact that the Dardanelles forts were short of ammunition. On 17 March, therefore, Whittall and Eady left for Salonika.51 A month later, on 16 April, Hamilton’s GHQ recorded that ‘Military Attaché Sofia and Mr Fitzmaurice left for Dedeagatch [sic] on HMS Dublin’.52 Further negotiations were in train, but with Bulgaria rather than Turkey. They were in vain; Bulgaria signed a military convention with the Central Powers on 6 September 1915.

  Pre-war reports

  The pre-war War Office and Admiralty reports, particularly NID 838 (Turkey, Coast Defences) were periodically brought up-to-date by supplements and intelligence reports before and during the war. For example, NID squared charts numbers X93, X94 and X95, published in February 1915 specifically for the Dardanelles operation, contained a summary of all the intelligence available up to December 1914.53 Copies of the reports and subsequent intelligence updates were closely studied by the CID before the war, and by the War Council (the Cabinet committee tasked with the higher direction of the war) following the outbreak of war, and were taken to the Aegean by Hamilton
and his Staff. Copies of the naval report were in the possession of the Mediterranean Fleet. These reports provided much of the intelligence foundation on which the political decisions were made and the operations were based.

  Charts X93, X94 and X95, studied in conjunction with the one-inch map, gave a good general picture of the terrain. These charts were enlargements of the 1871 Admiralty Chart which was at the scale of one nautical mile to the inch. This, like the one-inch map, drew on other sources for coastline and topography in addition to the 1854 survey of the Peninsula, particularly surveys by Graves, Spratt and other naval hydrographers (see Chapter 8). The Royal Marines ‘Special Service Force’, commanded by Brigadier-General Charles Trotman, issued orders from the Braemar Castle on 1 March 1915 which referred specifically to Charts 3 and 3a of NID 838, May 1908, but not to the new X-charts.54 The Force’s task was to complete the demolition of the forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles, and to: