d owing to ill health, and his
second in command, Admiral de Robeck, succeeded, with the feeling
that he had orders to force the Straits.

The attack of March 18 was the crucial and, as it proved, the final
action of the purely naval campaign. At this time the mines had
been swept as far up as Cephez Point, and a clear channel opened
for some distance beyond. During the morning the _Queen Elizabeth_
and 5 other ships bombarded the Narrows forts at 14,000 yards.
Then at 12.22 the French predreadnoughts _Suffren, Gaulois,
Charlemagne_, and _Bouvet_ approached to about 9000 yards and by
1.25 had for the time being silenced the batteries of the Narrows.
Six British battleships now advanced (2.36) to relieve the French.
In the maneuvering and withdrawal, the _Biouvet_ was sunk by a
drifting mine[1] with a loss of over 600 men, and the _Gaulois_
was hit twice under water and had to be beached on an island
outside the Straits. About 4 o'clock the _Irresistible_ also
ran foul of a mine and was run ashore on the Asiatic side, where
most of her men were taken off under fire. The _Ocean_, after going
to her assistance, struck a mine and went down about 6 o'clock.
Not more than 40 per cent. of the injuries sustained in the action
were attributable to gunfire, the rest to mines sent adrift from
the Narrows. Of the 16 capital ships engaged, three were sunk,
one had to be beached, and some of the others were hardly ready
for continuing the action next day.

[Footnote 1: It is stated that an ingenious device caused these
mines to sink after a certain time and come back on an under-current
that flows _up_ the Dardanelles, and then rise at the Narrows for
recovery. This may have enabled the Turks to keep up their presumably
limited supply of mines; but how well the automatic control worked
is not known.]

[Illustration: DARDANELLES DEFENSES]

There is some military support for the opinion that if, on the
18th or at some more suitable time, the fleet had acted in the
spirit of Farragut's "Damn the torpedoes! Full steam ahead!" and,
protected by dummy ships, bumpers, or whatever other devices naval
ingenuity could devise, had steamed up to and through the Narrows
in column, it would not have suffered much more severely than during
the complicated maneuvering below. Of such an attack General von
der Goltz, in command of the Turkish army, said that, "Although
he thought it was almost impossible to force the Dardanelles, if
the English