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On our flanks we were shut in by cliffs along the Aegean Sea on the left, and along the Dardanelles on our right. Every acre of ground we held was dominated by the hill in front, about 720 feet high. Somewhere across there on the Plains of Troy the Turks had at least one big gun to harass us, "Asiatic Ann" we called her, probably a gun dismantled from the Goeben.
On January 2 and 3, the French under Faidherbe, and the Germans under Goeben, fought a battle at Bapaume, south of Arras. The former were by far the more numerous force, being, indeed, as three to one, and Faidherbe is credited with having gained a victory. But, again, it was only a barren one, for although the Germans fell back, the French found it quite as necessary to do the same.
"Full speed ahead!" came the order from the Sylph's commander, and the little craft leaped forward in the very face of her two larger enemies. A shell from the Goeben, which was nearer the Sylph than her sister ship, crashed into the very mouth of one of the Sylph's 8 inch guns, blowing it to pieces. Men were hurled to the deck on all sides, maimed and bleeding. Others dropped over dead.
The composition of this Russian fleet was never made public by the Russian admiralty, but it is known that the Russian battleship Evstafi was the flagship. She came up on the starboard side of the two German ships and opened fire on the nearer, the Goeben, at a distance of 8,000 yards.
It was now too late to lament the chivalrous attitude which had permitted the Goeben and the Breslau to steam into the Dardanelles, or to regret the indifference we had persistently displayed to Near Eastern affairs for well-nigh twenty years. The best that could be done at that late hour was to face the consequences of those errors with dignity and to strive to repair them with alacrity.
In all our forecasts one important element of calculation was invariably left out of account: the consequences of our blunders, past, present and future. And these have added enormously to our difficulties and dangers. Not the least made was the mistake in allowing the two German warships Goeben and Breslau to enter the Dardanelles.
I heard about her grievances over our seizure of her ironclads, of the mischief the coming of the Goeben had wrought, of Enver and his precious Committee and the way they had got a cinch on the old Turk. When he had spoken for a bit, he began to question me.
Here, sauntering slowly round the quiet precincts of the court, with the roar of the street subdued to a murmur like that of a distant cataract, Bella told Nicholas, in tones of the deepest pathos, how a German lady, Elsie Goeben, one of her dearest friends, had been married to the handsomest and best of men in one of the Prussian cavalry regiments.
As units in a Turkish fleet they bombarded unfortified ports on the Black Sea on the first day of the month. Retaliation for this was made by the Allies two days later when a combined fleet of French and English battleships bombarded the Dardanelles forts, inflicting a certain amount of damage. On the 18th of November, 1914, the Goeben and Breslau engaged a Russian fleet off Sebastopol.
Carries eight o' the biggest and best torpedoes, any one o' which is warranted to knock the stuffing out o' the "Goeben" or any other o' Weeping Willy's super-skulkers. 'Where are we now? inquired Ken with interest. 'Couldn't say precisely. But somewheres about ten fathom below the shinin' surface of the Dardanelles. Ken felt a queer thrill.
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