de a long range attack upon the forts
fringing the Narrows. Three of the allied battleships, the _Gaulois_,
the _Agamemnon_ and the _Lord Nelson_ were hit by Turkish shells but,
as an offset, it was believed that the great forts at Chanak, as well
as the works at Dardanos, had been permanently silenced.

This confidence, as we shall see later on, was not justified. Inside
the great forts, it is true, the Turks and their German officers were
suffering terribly from the bombardment. That they stood it in some
cases for periods of seven hours at a stretch, and continued firing
effectively for the whole of that time, is testimony to their courage
and devotion to duty. As the great shells of the _Queen Elizabeth_
landed in the forts they did frightful havoc. The shrapnel shells
contained something like 12,000 separate bullets and it is on record
that one of these shells wounded or killed no less than 250 Turkish
soldiers. As the high explosive shells struck the works and exploded
they threw up tons of earth and cement a hundred feet in the air,
plainly visible to the allied observers on the warships in the
straits.

But this was not the worst that the defenders had to endure. The
exploding shells gave off poisonous gases that filled the underground
passages of the redoubts. The heroic Turks worked under such
conditions as long as it was humanly possible, but eventually their
German officers were compelled to withdraw their men from each fort in
turn to allow the gases to clear away. These circumstances undoubtedly
account for the fact that almost every one of the forts was reported
permanently silenced, only to resume action a few days later, much to
the surprise and consternation of the allied command.

Furthermore, there is abundant evidence that the Turks were
economizing ammunition, especially big gun shells. They had made up
their minds that there would be a direct naval attack upon the forts
sooner or later, and their instructions were to reserve their fire
"until they saw the whites of the enemy's eyes," so to speak.

From March 6 to March 18, 1915, there was a lull in activity at the
straits. Momentous events were transpiring in London and at the island
of Lemnos, and upon the outcome of these events depended the future
course of the operations at the Dardanelles. While the individual
ships of his fleet conducted minor bombardments intended to harass the
Turks, Vice Admiral Carden, pleading ill health, had been a