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To add to the general indignation, it transpired that the American reserve fleet, consisting of ten predreadnoughts, was tied up in the docks of Philadelphia, unable to move for lack of officers and men to handle them.
It is of course easy to see that victory purchased by the loss of 10 predreadnoughts and 10,000 men would be cheap, as compared with the sacrifice of over 100,000 men killed and wounded and 10,000 invalided in the later campaign on land.
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. In the maneuvering and withdrawal, the Biouvet was sunk by a drifting mine 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.
By this time the ships of the sixth division began to come under the shells of the German battle fleet and they returned the fire. By half past six all sixteen of the German dreadnoughts were firing at the British lines, the slow predreadnoughts being so far to the rear as to be unable to take part.
To turn to the scene of operations, there were now assembled at the Dardanelles 10 British and 4 French predreadnoughts, together with the new battleship Queen Elizabeth, the battle cruiser Inflexible, and many cruisers and torpedo craft.
Furthermore, the Allies had a margin of predreadnoughts and cruisers ready for action and of no obvious value elsewhere. On November 3, 1914, three days after Turkey entered the war, an Allied naval force that had been watching off the Dardanelles engaged the outer forts in a 10-minute bombardment, of no significance save perhaps as a warning to the Turks of trouble later on.
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