th of May, 1915. For a number of weeks after the allied
fleet had made the great attempt to force the Dardanelles on March 19,
1915, their commanders attempted no maneuvers with the larger ships,
but the submarines were given work to do. On April 27, 1915, the
British submarine _E-14_, under command of Lieutenant Commander Boyle,
dived and went under the Turkish mine fields, reaching the waters of
the Sea of Marmora. In spite of the fact that Turkish destroyers knew
of its presence and hourly watched for it in the hope of sinking it,
this submarine was able to operate brilliantly for some days, sinking
two Turkish gunboats and a laden transport. Similar exploits were
performed by Lieutenant Commander Nasmith with the British submarine
_E-11_, which even damaged wharves at the Turkish capital.

But when the military operations were getting under way during May,
1915, the larger ships of the fleets were again used. The Germans
realizing that these great ships, moving as they did slowly and
deliberately while they fired on the land forts, would be good targets
for torpedoes, sent some of their newest submarines from the bases in
the North Sea, down along the coasts of France and Spain, through the
passage at Gibraltar and to the Dardanelles. Destroyers accompanying
the allied fleets kept diligent watch for attacks from them. The
_Goeben_, one of the German battle cruisers that had escaped British
and French fleets in the Mediterranean during the first weeks of the
war, and which was now a part of the Turkish navy, was brought to the
scene and aided the Turkish forts in their bombardment of the hostile
warships.

On May 12, 1915, the British battleship _Goliath_, of old design and
displacing some 12,000 tons, was sunk by a torpedo. This ship had been
protecting a part of the French fleet from flank attack inside the
straits, and under the cover of darkness had been approached by a
Turkish destroyer which fired the fatal torpedo. It sank almost
immediately.

The submarines of the German navy which had made the long journey to
participate in the action near the Dardanelles got in their first work
on May 26, 1915, when a torpedo fired by one of them struck the
British battleship _Triumph_ and sent her to the bottom. Of interest
to naval authorities all over the world was the fact that this ship at
the time she was struck had out torpedo nets which were supposed to be
torpedo-proof; but the German missile tore through them a