re no doubt being flashed over
the wires to Constantinople and many points in our immediate
neighbourhood, announcing our long-expected arrival.

Soon the guns began to roar, the first I heard being to our left up
the Gulf of Saros, but in a few minutes all the ships had joined in
the chorus, from what was afterwards known as Anzac all round the
point and some way up the Dardanelles. A grand roar such as the world
had never heard. The peninsula was quickly one dense cloud of
poisonous-looking yellow-black smoke, through which flashes of
bursting shells were to be seen everywhere. It was truly a magnificent
sight, and the roar of the guns stirred one's blood like some martial
skirl from the bagpipes. The feeling one had was a longing for them to
hurry up and do their work, and let us get at the Turk at close
quarters.

Our old ship crept slowly in through the ring of warships, took a
circular turn just as we were passing through the line--apparently we
were in too great a hurry--then we straightened our course and passed
close past our covering ship, "Queen Elizabeth," the finest ship in
the whole Navy, and which had been detailed to look after us. How her
guns roared as she poured out broadside, as we passed by her port
side, straight in on full steam for the strip of sand under the
village and fort of Sedd-el-Bahr.

Unable from our hold to see properly what was doing, I had spent most
of the time on deck, and when about 200 yards from land I darted down
below to warn the men to lie down in case we struck rock, when the
impact would have been violent. I held on to a stanchion. We were fast
in the sand before I was really aware that the ship was aground--there
to lie for four years, to be shot at constantly whilst we occupied
Gallipoli, but in spite of all her buffeting to serve many uses, and
finally to become an object of veneration, "as holy as Westminster
Abbey" some one says of her in "The Sphere". For the 2100 of us on
board there was to be no retreat whatever happened. We had crossed the
Rubicon and burned our boats.

On board we had the 1st Munster Fusiliers, two companies of the 1st
Dublin Fusiliers, one company of Hants, 100 marines, a few of the
Signal Company, the West Riding Engineers, and 124 stretcher-bearers
of the 89th Field Ambulance.

We had been dragging along huge barges on either side, enough to form
a couple of gangways, had they only behaved as was intended. When the
ship struck, the moment