Later in the campaign, Commander C V Robinson, formerly of the Natal, and Lieutenant Bowen, who had spent two years in the Hydrographic service, both serving in the Edgar, worked with Lieutenant Park of Ark Royal to produce some remarkably accurate naval bombardment results. Bowen obtained from the Anglo-French survey (see Chapter 9) the list of coordinates of points they had fixed on both sides of the Dardanelles, so that he could fix the Edgar’s position to within twenty-five yards. He plotted these points on his chart, and used them to cut in a series of sextant angles to certain terrain features, thus obtaining good aiming points.29
There were four distinct phases of naval gunnery surveys for indirect fire, with all of which Douglas was closely involved, and which were described by him in a report written soon after the evacuation, Notes by Captain H. P. Douglas, R.N. on Methods Employed by H.M. Ships When Engaging Enemy Batteries:30
1. Queen Elizabeth on Chanak and Kilid Bahr Forts, before 25 April.
2. Battleships and cruisers against Turkish field batteries on Gallipoli Peninsula, after the landings.
3. 14-inch and 9.2-inch Monitors anchored off Rabbit Islands firing at Asiatic batteries.
4. Ships under way off west coast of Gallipoli Peninsula.
In September 1915 Douglas was promoted to Acting Captain, and when the surveying ship Endeavour (Capt. Lieutenant-Commander Edgell) arrived in October he was put in charge of all theatre hydrographic surveys. At the end of 1915 his promotion to Captain was confirmed, and he was awarded the ‘Italian Silver Medal for Military Valour’ for his services in the Mediterranean.31
Table 4: Relevant Naval Charts
Number
Notes
No. 1608
c.1 inch to mile, showing Tenedos and part of Turkish coast to east
No. 2429
(1 inch to nautical mile, or 1:72,960) The Dardanelles (Ancient Hellespont), 1871, with subsequent additions. Also edition with defence overprint.
F. 019
3 inches to a nautical mile (1:24,320) Isthmus of Boulaïr, with adjacent anchorages, 1887, reissued in early 1915.
F.064
(1 inch to nautical mile, or 1:72,960) The Dardanelles and western approaches, including inset The Narrows (2½-inches to nautical mile, or 1:29,184), issued 22 February 1915.
X.93
Dardanelles from the entrance to Nagara Kalessi, enlarged and redrawn from
2429. Also edition with defence overprint.
X.94
X.95
Notes
1. Mitchell Report, C.B. 1550 Report of the Committee Appointed to Investigate the Attacks delivered on and the Enemy Defences of the Dardanelles Straits. 1919. Admiralty, Naval Staff, Gunnery Division, April 1921. P522. TNA(PRO) ADM 186/600.
2. Ibid.
3. British Library Map Library, Maps SEC.5. (2429).
4. 1914 edition, BL Map Library, Maps BAC6. (2429).
5. BL Map Library, Maps SEC.5. (2429).
6. BL Map Library, Maps 43980. (7) and (8).
7. Dardanelles, Charts and tracings used by the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron 1914 –1916. TNA(PRO) ADM 137/787.
8. BL Map Library, Maps BAC6. (2429).
9. A Consecutive List of Fleet Charts and Miscellaneous Diagrams, Charts and Plans, issued for Fleet Purposes, 1915, Corrected to 1st April 1915. Hydrographic Department, Admiralty. (Compiled April 1915): pp. 4–5, 10–11.
10. Dardanelles 1915 Jan–April (H.S. 1089), item 100. TNA(PRO) ADM 137/1089.
11. A Consecutive List …, op. cit., pp. 24–5.
12. Dardanelles …, op. cit., items 101–2.
13. Ibid, item 100.
14. Ibid, item 103.
15. Dardanelles Commission, p. 351, No. 29, signal 264. TNA(PRO) CAB 17/184.
16. Dardanelles …, op. cit., MS note on item 103. TNA(PRO) ADM 137/1089.
17. Mitchell Report, op. cit.
18. Denham, H M, Dardanelles. A Shipman’s Log 1915–16, London: John Murray, 1981, pp. 72–3.
19. Aspinall-Oglander, Brig.-Gen. C F, Military Operations, Gallipoli, London: Heinemann, 1929, p. 127.
20. Weather Report by Captain Douglas RN, in Additional statements and documents produced by witnesses after giving evidence to the Dardanelles Commission, TNA(PRO) CAB 19/32.
21. Denham, op. cit., p. 72.
22. Ibid, p. 73.
23. Memoirs of Hydrography, Part III. Typescript, Ch. VII, p. 72. Hydrographic Department, 920: 528.47 JAC.
24. Corbett, Sir Julian S, History of the Great War, Naval Operations, Vol. II, London: Longmans, Green, 1921, pp. 172–3.
25. Ibid, p. 176.
26. Dardanelles, Charts. TNA(PRO) ADM 137/787.
27. Aspinall-Oglander, op. cit.
28. Corbett, op. cit., p. 176.
29. Report on Naval Bombardment Procedures in the Helles Sector, TNA(PRO) WO 95/4263.
30. Notes by Captain HP Douglas RN on Methods Employed by HM Ships When Engaging Enemy Batteries, C.B. 1202, Confidential, 1916, Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, G. 01701/16. May 1916. TNA(PRO) ADM 186/26.
31. Memoirs of Hydrography, op. cit.
CHAPTER 9
Captured Maps and New Maps
Once the landings had taken place on 25 April and the position had been consolidated, the need was primarily for an accurate map for shore-based artillery and on which to show trenches and other targets. For accurate location of enemy batteries, artillery observation posts or flash-spotting survey posts had to be fixed accurately to a regular survey grid, to which one’s own batteries, and those of the enemy, also had to be fixed. By the end of 1914 it had been recognised that artillery survey had to become a normal part of operations, and survey sections for this purpose, as well as for map-making, had to be included in war establishments. However, the first British survey section at Gallipoli, under Nugent, did not start work until June.
New 1:25,000, 1:20,000 and 1:10,000 mapping was produced with commendable speed, both at Imbros by the GHQ Intelligence Staff and Printing Section, and in Egypt. The production of even larger-scale trench diagrams, from air photos, followed in late May and June. This remarkable achievement was not initially accompanied by a realisation of the need for an overarching survey organisation and standardised geodetic and cartographic data for the theatre. Survey and mapping developed on an ad hoc basis, as operations developed, at Helles, Anzac, and later at Suvla, and also independently by the French and the British, as well as by the Army and the Navy. No one possessed the geodetic data on which the Turkish surveys and maps were based; no trig lists had been captured, and the captured maps contained very few fixed points.
Captured maps
The British 1:40,000 map, in three sheets, of the Gallipoli Peninsula was recognised as inadequate, being essentially nothing more than an enlargement of the 1908 one-inch map but, as no Turkish large-scale maps were captured by landing parties during the preliminary raids, nothing better was available until various maps were captured following the landings on 25 April. These Turkish maps, apart from a few at 1:20,000, followed German practice by being reproduced at 1:25,000 and 1:50,000. They had Ottoman script, and were rather torn and illegible. Nevertheless, they were re-photographed in Egypt, the script transliterated into English and, after preliminary and provisional editions, were reprinted with the naval grid as a new edition.1
Lt Tresilien Nicholas, Hamilton’s ‘Maps’ Officer, had started the war as a research geologist at Trinity College, Cambridge, and went to the Geographical Section at the War Office in January 1915 as a bowler-hatted civilian. After a few weeks, he was warned that he might have to take a Printing Section, with hand-operated litho and letterpress equipment, to the Dardanelles, so was put into uniform in mid-February, collected a revolver from the Tower of London, and on 22 March 1915 embarked for Mudros in the Arcadian with ‘A’ Printing Section RE, which had been formed at the School of Military Engineering at Chatham. Although he returned with Hamilton to Imbros before the landings, his Printing Section did not arrive at GHQ MEF
at Imbros until 12 May (it had been held in Egypt because of lack of base facilities at Imbros). Here it joined the ‘Anzac Printing Section’ which was already at work. On 8 May Nicholas explained the initial confused situation regarding captured maps:
We have captured several Turkish maps, some of which are improvements on our own. One of these includes the Gallipoli Peninsula from Cape Helles to a little South of Maidos. It is on the scale of 1 in 25,000, outline, water and contours in brown, names in black. It is contoured every 10 metres and looks a very nice map, but the contours have a slightly conventional look and it is difficult to decide how much has been done by the draughtsman. No date is given. Another map captured was a 1 in 20,000 map of the area around Maidos and Kilid Bahr, contoured every 10 metres and printed rather roughly, and evidently hastily, in black. It, too, looked very nice at first sight, but on comparing it with the other I found a difference of 30–40 metres in several of the heights; the topography differed considerably, and a test measurement of a length of about 4 km. showed a difference of 20%. One map is evidently lying, and perhaps both. The result has been to make me rather suspicious of elaborately contoured Turkish maps.
We are having the 1 in 25,000 map reproduced roughly by the Printing Section, chiefly for its roads and names of places, but the Staff are against making any general distribution of a new map now that operations have begun.
Among other captured maps are three of the Turkish 1/25,000 series of the Bosphorus; one of these is the Kuchuk Keui sheet, but the other two are Constantinople and the sheet to the North, which will go a long way to filling up the gap along the Bosphorus. I am sending them to Cairo with one of your maps as a pattern and asking for them to be reproduced in the same style. I have asked that they be sent on to M.O.4. when finished with. I would have sent them direct to you but for the distance. I believe there is a good photographic department at Cairo and plenty of draughtsmen.2
The sheets of Constantinople and the Bosphorus were a vital addition to the MEF’s resources, given the expectation that operations would extend to that area – which was indeed the aim of the expedition.
As a first step towards producing new operations maps, the first captured maps were used for a new printing by Hamilton’s GHQ Printing Section at Imbros early in May; this was a black lithographed, squared, outline 1:40,000 sketch map, entitled ‘Sketch Plan of the Gallipoli Peninsula’, and was used to mark up the latest intelligence – particularly Turkish trenches, wire, batteries, etc., obtained from sea and air (visual and photographic) reconnaissance.
For the Helles sector, sheets derived from the 1:40,000 operations map were soon replaced by reproductions of captured Turkish maps. Several sheets were captured by the Australians on 19 May, including a good and crucial large-scale, contoured map of the Anzac and Suvla area found on the body of a Turkish officer,3 and these were later incorporated into the new British Gallipoli 1:20,000 series (see below) printed at the Survey of Egypt.
Nicholas wrote to Hedley on 12 June, explaining these developments:
Not long after landing we began to capture maps, which proved the Turks to be far better equipped in this regard than we were. We captured a copy of a map on the scale of 1/25,000, extending from Cape Helles to the North edge of the Kilid Bahr Plateau, where it was finished off in a manner which suggested strongly that the survey had been continued further North. The map bore evidence of having been produced in a hurry, and was printed entirely in brown, except for the names, but it was contoured at 10 metre intervals, and, as far as could be judged from inspection, the contouring seemed well done and highly detailed. The Printing Section produced a number of editions of this map, and I spent many long hours making tracings of it.4
This map, of part of an area extending to the north edge of the Kilid Bahr Plateau, was apparently surveyed and printed before the regular Turkish 1:25,000 series. It differed in significant details from the later Turkish survey, and was on different sheetlines. It was rapidly and crudely redrawn in May by Nicholas and reproduced in three sketch-map sheets by the ‘Printing Section, GHQ Med. Ex. Force’ (serials 19, 20 and 21) as the black 1:25,000 Preliminary map of Southern Gallipoli Peninsula showing names, Roads, Telegraphs and 50 metre Contours (see below);5 the very wide contour interval is worth noting.
The early productions by Nicholas’s Section were:
1:25,000 (Z.2015, Printing Section GHQ MEF), ‘Preliminary map of southern portion: Gallipoli peninsula showing names, Roads, Telegraphs and 50 metre Contours’.6 Ungridded black contoured map of Helles–Krithia area. One copy showed British and Turkish trenches in manuscript to the west of Krithia.7
1:15,840 (4 inches to the mile) (Z.2016, Printing Section GHQ MEF), ‘Sketch Map compiled From Photos and Aerial Reconnaissance’, showing Turkish trenches, covering the Krithia–Fusiliers’ Bluff–Kereves Dere area. This was the prototype for a new type of map – showing detail and trenches plotted from air photos.
1:10,000 (Z.2018, sheets 1-4, Printing Section GHQ MEF), enlargements of Z.2015, ‘Artillery Maps’.8
The capture of a second sheet later in May led to this being sent to Egypt, to be rapidly reproduced in twelve hours (though GHQ did not receive them for seven days) in an edition of 1,000 copies as the 1:20,000 Southern Gallipoli, From a Turkish Map, Provisional Edition, with heights in metres and contours at ten-metre interval. This replaced the ‘Preliminary map’. It was a large, ungridded sheet with topographical detail and contours, unusually, printed in blue, and compass roses in black. As it did not reproduce photographically, such a blue background was normally used as a base for inscribing further detail or lettering, as part of the process of creating a new printing plate. There were no names at this stage – presumably they had not yet been transliterated and transcribed onto the printing plate. One copy had Turkish positions marked in MS for 24 April – i.e. before the landings, a retrospective addition.9 The scale of 1:20,000 seems to have been chosen, like that of 1:40,000 for the earlier sheets, because it had been adopted as a standard British operations scale on the Western Front (where these scales had been adopted from the Belgian national survey). This provisional edition was very soon followed by a definitive edition of this sheet. This was reproduced over a five-day period (Nicholas called it ‘an admirable piece of production’) with greater care as the 1:20,000 and (in four sheets) 1:10,000 Map of Southern Gallipoli from a Captured Turkish Map. Nicholas also noted that applying the British Naval squaring to the reproductions of Turkish maps proved difficult, as the latter were very different from the British 1:40,000 map.10
The capture of sheets of the regular Turkish 1:25,000 survey in early June led to the British adoption at the end of July of the Turkish sheetlines of this series as standard for their 1:20,000 topographical sheets. Of this episode, Nicholas noted on 12 June:
… during the last few days we have captured 6 sheets of yet another Turkish map on the 1/25,000 scale, differing considerably from the first, and as these extend to Ejelmer Bay and Ak Bashi Lemain, the C.G.S. [Braithwaite] decided that they should be sent off at once to Cairo for reproduction and issued as the operations map in substitution for sheets 1 and 2 of the 1/40,000 map, so we are faced with another impending change of map.11
GHQ issued a memorandum about mid-July, stating:
A new issue of maps will shortly be made in substitution for Sheets 1 and 2 of the 1/40,000 map of Gallipoli. The new map will be on the scale of 1/20,000 and will be issued in 7 sheets. Five of these are reproduced from captured sheets of a newly surveyed Turkish map, while the 6th and 7th sheets (Krithia and Sedd-el-Bahr) are a provisional edition taken from the present S. Gallipoli 1/20,000 map, and will be replaced by a more correct edition as soon as the necessary material is collected. Other sheets will be prepared if the originals can be obtained. The system of squares has also been improved and 600 yards adopted as the unit in place of 675 yards. These maps will be issued throughout the Med. Exped. Force and on a given date of which due notice will be given they will be taken into
use as the Operations Map and substituted for Sheets 1 and 2 of the 1/40,000 map and for S. Gallipoli 1/20,000 and 1/10,000 which will then be withdrawn. 7 sheets:- Anafarta Saghir, Kurija Dere, Boghali, Dainler [Damler], Chanak, Sedd-el-Bahr, Krithia.12
These sheets carried a note explaining the new naval grid (squaring) used on the series, which differed from the grid carried on the old 1:40,000 series.
The withdrawal of Sheets 1 and 2 of the 1:40,000 map and the large 1:20,000 Southern Gallipoli sheet took place at the end of July, so that the new series would be issued and in place before the Suvla and Anzac operations of early August. Braithwaite issued Force Order No. 21 to all formations of the MEF on 27 July:
1.in The National Archives at TNA(PRO)The new 1/20,000 Map of Gallipoli issued in seven sheets will be taken into use as the Official Map of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force from midnight 31st July/1st August. After that date all references in orders, reports, or other documents will be understood to refer to this Map unless another Map is specifically mentioned.
Grasping Gallipoli Page 33