Cape Helles to Çanakkale – sites of history and legend

Those who fought at the Dardanelles in 1915 were surrounded by great natural beauty. Sergeant Cyril Lawrence, of the Australian Engineers, wrote of how Gallipoli’s ‘very wildness and ruggedness grips you’. When the British warships shelled Fort Dardanos, on the Asian shore of the Straits, shards of pottery and masonry flew up in the shell explosions from the remains of the ancient Greek city of the same name.

An artist’s impression of Çimenlik Castle, Çanakkale, in 1915. Situated on the Asian shore of The Narrows of the Dardanelles, the castle was heavily shelled by British and French warships in February and March 1915. [From Henry Morgenthau, Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story, New York, 1918].

Indeed, the Dardanelles is dotted with historic sites. South of Çanakkale are the ruins of the city of Troy, made famous by the poet Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In 482 BC, King Xerxes of Persia had two bridges built across the Dardanelles upstream from Çanakkale between the Greek cities of Abydos (Asian shore) and Sestos (European shore) to carry his invading army into Greece. From the European shore in 332 BC, the army of Alexander the Great set off across the Straits on that trail of conquest which led them to India.

This crossing from Abydos to Sestos is also where the legendary Leander swam nightly across the current to his lover, the priestess Hero. When one night she failed to leave a light in her tower to guide him, he drowned. Finding his body next day, Hero threw herself into the waters and perished with him. The English poet Lord Byron and Lieutenant Richard Ekenhead of the Royal Marines emulated Leander’s swim in 1810.

In 1452 the Ottoman Emperor Mehmet II built a fortress, which still stands, on the European shore of the Narrows – Kilitbahir, the ‘Key to the Sea’. Its purpose was to prevent the possibility of reinforcements being sent through the Straits to the aid of the last Byzantine Emperor, Constantine XI, at Constantinople (modern Istanbul). The city fell to the Turks in 1453 and the rule of the Ottoman emperors from Istanbul began. In 1462, the Ottomans built Çimenlik fort at Çanakkale.

View from Walker’s Ridge of North Beach, Anzac, Gallipoli, 2004. The Australian dawn landings of 25 April 1915 took place around Ari Burnu Point, visible at the end of the beach. The landscape feature to the left was called the ‘Sphinx’ by the Australians.

Spread across this area today are also many reminders of that bloody conflict of 1915 which cost the lives of so many soldiers from countries all around the world and which was so significant in the history of modern Turkey, Australia and New Zealand. For the Turks, that struggle is known as the Battle of Çanakkale, and it encompasses their total defence of the Dardanelles, the naval battles of November 1914 to March 1915, and the Gallipoli campaign which began on 25 April 1915. A comprehensive visit to the region would take in places such as the ruins of Seddülbahir at Cape Helles, Anzac Cove at Anzac (so central to the Australian sense of Gallipoli) and the memorials on Chunuk Bair, which tell the story of the New Zealand fight on the heights and the Turkish commander who drove them off. Nor should the Asian shore be neglected. Here Turkey has preserved a replica of the litttle minelayer that helped defeat the Allied fleet on 18 March 1915 and the forts where the Turkish gunners withstood the shelling of the Allied battleships.

This website describes a number of sites on Gallipoli and the Asian shore. Each of them has a story to tell about the struggle for the Straits of the Dardanelles, and from many of the sites superb views are to be had over the peninsula, the Straits, the highlands of western Anatolia and the nearby islands of the Aegean. To visit these places armed with some sense of what happened there is to pay the best tribute possible to the soldiers, sailors and airmen of all countries who fought and died at the Dardanelles during the Battle of Çanakkale.