AT THE DARDANELLES

Otago Witness, Issue 3195, 9 June 1915, Page 79

AT THE DARDANELLES

SMASHING THE FIRST FORTS. TRIUMPH S SEVENTEEN FIGHTS. The first descriptive account of the experiences of a battleship in the bombardment of the Dardanelles is telegraphed by our special correspondent, Mr G. Ward Price, from the Aegean. It is a spirited description of the terrific struggle between the ships and the forts, and is of historic interest.—London Daily Mail, March 13. With a shell hole through her funnel and the muzzles of her 14 7.5 in guns that projected from their casemates along her broadside stained and blackened with much firing, thus the Triumph came steaming out of the distance and, making a signal to a big collier that followed her, set herself to coal.

It was a breather for the ship that has had more fighting than any other in the British fleet, that has fired more heavy shells than any ship in the whole history of the navy, if you can call it a breather to take in 108 tons of coal in the first 40 minutes.

After anchoring, the crew, looking like sooty Marathon runners, engaged in an endless wheelbarrow race as they rattled their trucks to the ship’s side over the gritty decks. The Triumph has been 1 1 times in action in this war. She has been hit 14 times, and she has fired 2000 rounds. In one day’s engagement she has used as many shells as would, serve her for peace practice purposes for five years. What the Triumph now r knows about bombarding forts and being shelled by them in return would fill a three-volume novel. “ And you don’t get any more used to it with habit,” they told me. The Triumph came from Tsing-tao to the Levant, and there she has had a hand in everything that has been going. The last and most interesting of her adventures I cannot, unfortunately, relate, but there, as everywhere, this cheerful, highspirited ship’s company seems to have shown itself, as usual, rather more than equal to an emergency. I wish a few million British taxpayers could have shared with me the couple of hours I spent in the Triumph. They would ( appreciate what a splendid reality lies behind the big Navy Estimates at which they have sometimes grumbled. And over and above what money can "buy are the unpurchasahle characteristics of courage and efficiency of which the Triumph is an example and which is repi’oduced wherever the White Ensign flies. OPENING OF THE ATTACK.

It was on February. 17 that the Triumph assisted at the opening of the operations against the Dardanelles. The destroyers made dashes to within 1000 yards of the batteries at the entrance to the straits, but the Turks did not fire on them. Then the Albion bombarded Fort 1, on a point in the Gallipoli Peninsula, and destroyed a battery between Cape Hellas and Point Texel, which the bluejackets,_ by the way, immediately rechristened “ Tickel Point,” while they* soon became familiar with the forts under such names as “ Sandy Boy” and “ Old Jim.”

The Triumph opened a slow, deliberate indirect fire with her lOin guns at 7700 yards. The Queen Elizabeth was lying far ther out sending 15in shells. The enemy did not reply, and the Ark Royal, the waterplar.e parent ship, reported that Battery 50 was undiscoverable. Trenches and barbed wire to oppose a landing were seen, however, also troops at the top of the cliffs. v

At 2.30 the Triumph reconnoitred the shore to the north of Cape Hellas. At 3,15 she opened fire with her 7.5 in guns on the trenches and field works, doing much >damage. “You cannot imagine,’’ said a chaplain, who looked far from clerical in his coaling rig, “a sight more majestic than we saw as we went back in the evening to rejoin the fleet. The French ships were firing furiously against the Asiatic forts, and the Vengeance and the Cornwallis were steaming up and down firing salvoes at Fort 3, which was a tough nut to crack. Imagine a glorious sunset flaming across the sky behind the ships and the constant blaze of the salvoes shooting out over the smooth water. The high barren hills and the absence of everything to distract the eye from the great ships and their thundering guns made the bombardment a scene of grim, unforgetable impressiveness.’’ BAD WEATHER DELAY. Bad weather, which lasted from Friday, February 19, until Thursday, 25th, obliged the fleet to confine its activities to patrolling. Then with, Thursday came the Triumph’s big hay. They found Battery 50 at last and pounded it to pieces. The gunnery lieutenant, whom the Triumph’s crew privately claim to be one of the umst accomplished masters of his craft in the navy, said he had never remarked so vividly before the terrific force of heavy projectiles. There were three runs into the straits made on this day. The Vengeance and the Cornwallis went first, the French warships Gaulois and Bouvet second, and then came the turn of the Albion and the Triumph. They steamed to within 3000 yards (less than two miles) and stuck there under a tornado of shells for three-quar-ters of an hour, picking out one gun after another of Battery 50 The general opinion seems to be that the guns must have been served by German gunners. They were well laid, but the shots spread, some short, some over. Who ever manned the Turkish batteries “ had guns”—to repeat the vigorous phrase the Triumph’s crew use about their enemy. Gun after gun turned a somersault under a direct hit, and bricks and earth and heaps of old stone cannon-balls, which had been Iving in the forts for 100 years, went rocketing into the air. That night the Turks set fire to the ruins of the forts and barracks. Bad weather started again and brought a standeasy. On Friday, the 26th, the only

Turkish defences left at the entrance were howitzers and field guns. Then the drench and English mine-sweepers passed into the straits. The Triumph also destroyed an observation post for mines. March 1 found all the defences of the Dardanelles up to, but not including, the Narrows reduced. With the Albion and Triumph ordered to make a run against Fort Dardanus, on the Asiatic side, the ships were soon under a heavy fire and were deluged with spray from the shots falling all round. Two Turkish shells fell on the Triumph’s quarter-deck and one bruised the armour-belt. SHELL IN CAPTAIN’S CABIN.

Of two that pierced her one burst in the captain’s cabin and destroyed the furniture, and one fell near the gun-room. In the evening a party was landed and blew up and dismounted the guns that were left in the batteries. Packed with gun-cotton or some other explosive, they were hurled so far across the sea that tho Triumph had to move off. 1: Flaming chunks of gun going up like fireworks” is how a gunnery' lieutenant describes it. And since then tho Triumph has seen more brisk movements which make, a stirring yarn that must be held back for good reasons. Amid it all they have found time to have a concert on tho“ lower deck, however, at which “ The Shades of Nelson,” in two acts, was the farce performed with immense success.

The splash on the water of shells falling short—that is a detail of their many engagements that lias most impressed itself on the minds of those in the casemates and turrets and engine-rooms in these days of blind naval war, when men load and lay and fire as the telephone tell 'Mm. Those below are constantly asking tho firecontrol people in the foretop by telephone what they see. They call them the “ Press Bureau,” and scraps of description and jokes are constantly flashing over the wires about the ship, even in action, when there are no orders to be given or obeyed. TO ACTION WITH CHEERS.

The crew always give & delighted cheer when they go under fire. Only once have they shown indignation. That was when the enemy one day interfered with their dinner. That great grey ship is more than a piece of war machinery.; she stands for all that is of the very finest in spirit that has built the Empire and is now fighting to guard it