On 3 May 1915 the battalion (under the command of Major C.R. Pilkington, Lt-Col Heywood being unfit) embarked at Alexandria on the SS "Derfflinger", a captured German Norddeutscher Lloyd shipping line vessel that had just arrived with a cargo of wounded from the initial landings at Gallipoli. "Derfflinger" missed her intended landing spot at Cape Helles, and so the Manchesters arrived late on 6 May, after the rest of the division had gone into action. The 1/6th Bn bivouacked above 'W' Beach ('Lancashire Landing') and during the night of 7/8 May was moved, with ammunition, rations and entrenching equipment, but no blankets or baggage, to the Krithia sector, where the men went into the firing line for a 10-day period. On 12 May the brigade made a feint attack to attract attention away from a movement elsewhere