page_title: Naval operations in the Dardanelles campaign
section_title: Battle of 18 March
hierarchical_section_title: Naval operations in the Dardanelles campaign / Naval operations / Battle of 18 March
caption_attribution_description: Sir Roger Keyes, Vice-Admiral De Robeck, Sir Ian Hamilton, General Braithwaite.
context_page_description: The naval operations in the Dardanelles campaign took place against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. Ships of the Royal Navy, French Marine nationale, Imperial Russian Navy and the Royal Australian Navy, attempted to force the defences of the Dardanelles Straits, a narrow, 41 mi long waterway connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Sea of Marmara and further north to the Black Sea.
  The Dardanelles campaign began as a naval operation but the success of the Ottoman defence led the Allies to initiate the Gallipoli campaign, an attempt to occupy the Gallipoli peninsula with land forces supported by the navies, to open the sea route to Constantinople. The Allies also tried to pass submarines through the Dardanelles to attack Ottoman shipping in the Sea of Marmara.
context_section_description: The event that decided the battle took place on the night of 18 March when the Ottoman minelayer Nusret laid a line of mines in front of the Kephez minefield, across the head of Eren Köy Bay, a wide bay along the Asian shore just inside the entrance to the straits. The Ottomans had noticed the British ships turned to starboard into the bay when withdrawing. The new row of 20 mines ran parallel to the shore, were moored at fifteen m (49.2 ft) and spaced about 100 yd (91 m) apart. The clear water meant that the mines could have been seen through the water by reconnaissance aircraft. The British plan for 18 March was to silence the defences guarding the first five minefields, which would be cleared overnight by the minesweepers. The next day the remaining defences around the Narrows would be defeated and the last five minefields would be cleared. The operation went ahead with the British and French ignorant of the recent additions to the Ottoman minefields. The battleships were arranged in three lines, two British and one French, with supporting ships on the flanks and two ships in reserve.
  The first British line opened fire from Eren Köy Bay around 11:00. Shortly after noon, de Robeck ordered the French line to pass through and close on the Narrows forts. The Ottoman fire began to take its toll with Gaulois, Suffren, Agamemnon and Inflexible suffering hits. While the naval fire had not destroyed the Ottoman batteries, it had succeeded in temporarily reducing their fire. By 13:25, the Ottoman defences were mostly silent so de Robeck decided to withdraw the French line and bring forward the second British line as well as Swiftsure and Majestic.
  The Allied forces had failed to properly reconnoitre the area and sweep it for mines. Aerial reconnaissance by aircraft from the seaplane carrier HMS Ark Royal had discovered a number of mines on 16 and 17 March but failed to spot the line of mines laid by Nusret in Eren Köy Bay. On the day of the attack civilian trawlers sweeping for mines in front of line "A" discovered and destroyed three mines in an area thought to be clear, before the trawlers withdrew under fire. This information was not passed on to de Robeck. At 13:54, Bouvet—having made a turn to starboard into Eren Köy Bay—struck a mine, capsized and sank within a couple of minutes, killing 639 crewmen, only 48 survivors being rescued. At first it appeared that the ship had been hit in a magazine and de Robeck thought that the ship had struck a floating mine or been torpedoed.
  The British pressed on with the attack. Around 16:00, Inflexible began to withdraw and struck a mine near where Bouvet had sunk, thirty crew being killed and the ship taking on with 1,600 long tons (1,600 t) of water. The battlecruiser remained afloat, was eventually beached on the island of Bozcaada (Tenedos) and temporarily repaired with a coffer dam. Irresistible was the next to be mined and as it began to drift, the crew were taken off. De Robeck told Ocean to take Irresistible under tow but the water was deemed too shallow to make an approach. At 18:05, Ocean struck a mine which jammed the steering gear leaving the ship adrift. The abandoned battleships were still floating when the British withdrew but when a destroyer commanded by Commodore Roger Keyes returned to tow or sink the vessels, they could not be found despite a 4-hour search.
  In 1934, Keyes wrote that
  The fear of their fire was actually the deciding factor of the fortunes of the day. For five hours the [destroyer] Wear and picket boats had experienced, quite unperturbed and without any loss, a far more intense fire from them than the sweepers encountered... the latter could not be induced to face it, and sweep ahead of the ships in 'B' line.... I had the almost indelible impression that we were in the presence of a beaten foe. I thought he was beaten at 2 pm. I knew he was beaten at 4 pm — and at midnight I knew with still greater clarity that he was absolutely beaten; and it only remained for us to organise a proper sweeping force and devise some means of dealing with drifting mines t
caption: Sir Roger Keyes, Vice-Admiral De Robeck, Sir Ian Hamilton, General Braithwaite.
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