Landing at Anzac Cove 25 April 1915

Personal accounts of the landing

As dawn approached on 25 April, HMS Ribble eased its way towards the Gallipoli peninsula with the other British destroyers and battleships.

The first wave of men was known as the 'covering force'. Their task was to storm the beach and then push inland as fast as possible. The first wave included units of the 3rd Australian Brigade: three infantry battalions of men from Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

The men made the last part of their night journey in 36 rowing boats, towed inshore from battleships by small Royal Navy steamboats.

Even before they reached the beach in the half-light, the small Turkish garrison had spotted them. Bullets began hitting the boats, killing some, wounding others.

As the boats grounded around the tip of the Ari Burnu promontory, the men jumped out. Some landed in deep water where they drowned. Most struggled ashore, soaking wet and weighed down by their rifles and sodden packs. There was initial confusion about where exactly they had landed, for above them towered a steep cliff-like landscape.

Australia's official historian, Charles Bean, later described this critical moment:

Lieutenant Talbot Smith with the scouts of the 10th Battalion [from South Australia], thirty-two in number, had struck the shore just after the first shot was fired. 'Come on, boys', he cried, 'they can't hit you' ... '10th Battalion scouts,' he shouted, 'are you ready?' He then led them straight up the height, while the Turks were firing over their heads. From the left hand edge of the plateau could be seen the flash of a machine-gun. They made towards it.

Hundreds of Australians started to climb what was later known as Plugge's Plateau, their first major obstacle on the peninsula. It was not easy. The wounded or killed slid back down the slope until stopped by the scrubby bushes. The men dug their bayonets into the earth to help them climb. From the top of the plateau, the Turkish defenders kept up a steady fire.

Soon, the Australians reached the top and quickly overcame a trench full of Ottoman soldiers. The rest of the garrison moved to the country beyond the plateau.

As the daylight increased, from the top of Plugge's Plateau, it would have been possible to see just what the landing force had taken on. Stretching away into the distance were the ridges and deep valleys of a wild, rugged, scrub-covered landscape. The ridges stretched southwards from the main Sari Bair range, which leads up to the highest points on this part of the peninsula: Chunuk Bair, Hill Q and Hill 971, Koja Temen Tepe.

The day's fighting never brought the Anzacs near their planned objectives. Small isolated groups of soldiers managed to make their way upslope towards Chunuk Bair and onto Third or Gun Ridge. From those positions the strait of the Dardanelles was visible. But they were beaten back or killed by ever-strengthening counter-attacks.

Gallipoli historian, Robin Prior, attributed the Anzacs' defeat to this swift and decisive Ottoman response:

...it was the celerity with which the Turkish command propelled reserves towards the battlefield and the tenacity with which those who met the landing continued to fight that turned the tables.

The Anzacs discovered an enemy of soldiers who would stand and fight, not run from determined attack as they had hoped.

Commander of the 19th Turkish Division, Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal, led the Turkish counter-attack down from Chunuk Bair. Mustafa famously told his men:

I don't order you to attack, I order you to die. In the time it takes us to die, other troops and commanders can come and take our places.

On 25 April, despite their efforts to get inland and landing most of their infantry, the Anzacs were held by the Turks to a small area of land. Soon to be called 'Anzac', the strip was about 1km deep and 2km long.

The front eventually stretched from the south at Brighton Beach, northwards along Bolton's Ridge, through Lone Pine and along Second Ridge to Quinn's Post. There was a gap in the line across a valley to a small ridge known as Pope's Hill. A further valley separated Pope's from the left wing of the Anzac position at Walker's Ridge and Russell's Top. To the north along Ocean Beach were the Outposts, No. 1 and No. 2, positioned to give warning of any Ottoman attack from that area.

By the evening of 25 April, the little cove to the south of Ari Burnu, soon renamed 'Anzac Cove', was crammed with wounded soldiers. They had made their way down or had been carried down from the front. Turkish shelling, which had begun within an hour of the initial landing, took an increasing toll.

Some Australian commanders became so pessimistic that they recommended to General Birdwood, when he came ashore, that the whole force be withdrawn because it had failed to meet its objectives. Although horrified, Birdwood relayed this opinion to Sir Ian Hamilton, who was asleep on the battleship Queen Elizabeth. After hearing from naval commanders that instant evacuation was virtually impossible, Hamilton replied:

You have got through the difficult business, now you have only to dig, dig, dig until you are safe.

Hamilton sent Birdwood reassuring news that HMA Submarine AE2 had successfully made its way through the Turkish defences of the Narrows and was on its way up to the Sea of Marmara.

At the Anzac firing line developing along the seaward side of Second Ridge, the soldiers might have been surprised to hear thoughts of retreat. Private Roy Denning of the 1st Field Company, Australian Engineers, wrote:

In spite of the dirty and in some cases ragged uniform covering tired bodies the men were cheerful and laughed at their plight, some jokingly saying, 'Oh, if only my girl could see me now’ ... In the early hours of the morning I heard the Officers going along amongst the men, saying 'Stick to it lads, don't go to sleep: and the cheerful reply would come, 'No, Sir, we won't go to sleep' ... and my heart swelled with admiration ... I thought I was justified in being an Australian ... Give me Australians as comrades and I will go anywhere duty calls.

NLA item 3791, A1861/1

This photograph is thought to be the earliest image taken at the landing. Captain Harry Davies went ashore with the 15th Battalion on 25 April 1915 and took this photograph at the landing. He was shot in the ankle during the charge from the 4th Brigade lines on 28 April and returned to Australia on 10 June 1915.

One description of the landing

Adapted from Denis Winter's 1994 book, 25 April 1915: The Inevitable Tragedy.

The landing scheme was simple in outline at least.

The 3rd Brigade's 4000 men would land as a covering force to secure a beachhead for two Australasian divisions made up of six brigades. The 4000 soldiers would land on the beach in two waves.

The first wave of 1500 men from three battleships — Queen, Prince of Wales and London — would be distributed between 12 tows. Each tow had a steamboat, a cutter (30 men), a lifeboat (28 men) and either a launch (98 men) or a pinnace (60 men).

The second wave of 2500 men from seven destroyers would land soon after the first wave had landed. The destroyers would wait near the island of Imbros and then join the battleships at 4:15am, one and a half miles (about 2km) from the mainland.

The first wave was scheduled to land a few minutes earlier, and the destroyers would then sail in, full speed ahead, adding some lifeboats borrowed from transport vessels to the tows that had been used by the first wave.

Once the 3rd Brigade was ashore, the rest of the 1st Division would arrive on transports, grouped in fours and coming in at regular intervals.

Such was the plan.

The first stage was completed without difficulty.

Troops on the battleships were woken at 1am, given a hot meal and a drink while the tows were readied for the landing. By 1:30am, the men were ready for mustering into companies.

Mustering was completed with impressive efficiency. No one spoke. Orders were given in whispers. The only sounds were shuffling boots and muttered curses as men slipped on the ladders leading down to the boats. But for many of the men, the tension of that still night magnified the sounds.

Türkiye map

To Lieutenant Charles Fortescue it seemed:

the noise of the pinnaces being filled, in the stillness of the night, was enough to make the whole world vibrate

Admiral Thursby, who had to supervise the operation, was equally tense. Many years later, Thursby recalled:

It was a still night. There was hardly a breath of wind. Every sound seemed magnified tenfold and it seemed impossible that the noise of our boat hoists could escape being heard by the enemy a few miles away. We eagerly scanned the direction of the shore, the loom of which could just be seen, to see if we could detect any movement, but all was still.

Filling the small boats took about 40 minutes. It was supervised by adolescent midshipmen dressed in khaki-stained white duck (trousers) and carrying revolvers almost as big as themselves. They checked the numbers and quietly called out, 'Full up, sir!' at the right time. Naval officers then gave the order to 'Cast off and drift astern' where the tows gathered, two on each side of a battleship.

The first wave of troops was slowly gathered together in this way, enveloped by a sea mist that clung to the water like a shallow blanket. Orders required the men to keep greatcoats stowed in packs and wear tunics with sleeves rolled to the elbow so that flashes of white skin could give easier identification during the dawn assault. Dressed so lightly, men were soon chilled to the bone; nor could they move to restore circulation.

The little boats varied in length. The lifeboats were only 9 paces (6.9m) long and the launches were 14 paces (10.7m). The little space left by the men was filled with two boxes of ammunition, 12 picks, 18 shovels, 100 sandbags, three jars of water, 3 days' rations and a set of wire cutters.

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Admiral Thursby gave the order to set off using the Queen's wireless.

Lance Corporal James Bell of the 9th Battalion later recalled the final stage of the first landing. An officer on the battleship towering above his tow called out, 'Get away and land!' There was an immediate tug on the painter, and the tow moved off at a brisk 6 knots (11km/hour). On the battleship, sailors lined the side of the ship, giving the service's 'silent cheer' by waving caps in a circle and 'uttering a subdued whisper, barely audible to those on the boats'.

It is uncertain how far offshore the battleships were by then. In his report of 8 May, Birdwood put the distance at 4 miles (6.4km). Admiral Thursby's report agreed with HMS London's log on 2 miles (3.2km). Callwell (Kitchener's Director of Operations) preferred 1.5 miles (2.4km). The 1st Division's war diary recorded 1 mile (1.6km). Whatever the actual distance, the journey took just 40 minutes.

With their nerves wound up to such a pitch, few men had any sense of time.

To Corporal Edward Cheney with the 10th Battalion, the journey seemed 'like days'.

To Lieutenant Aubrey Darnell with the 11th Battalion, it seemed 'to go on for ever'.

Corporal George Mitchell of the 10th Battalion, wrote that the last hundred yards (91m) felt like 'a lifetime'.

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As they closed on the peninsula, men whispered jests. On the surface, there was a sense of calm. Second Lieutenant Ivor Margetts later recalled:

I am quite sure few of us realised that at last we were actually bound for our baptism of fire for it seemed as though we were just out on one of our night manoeuvres in Mudros harbour

But beneath the calm, all the men sensed an excitement that was tense and electric. Set as they were on a flat surface without a shred of cover and incapable of evasive action, all knew that Turkish shrapnel — even a single machine gun — could scupper the first wave. All they could do was sit silent, still, frozen, and let silence and darkness magnify their fears. Mitchell tried to analyse his own feelings at the time but failed:

I think every emotion was mixed but with exhilaration predominant.

One 9th Battalion veteran later described how he had shivered and trembled uncontrollably throughout the journey, nervousness and excitement equally mixed. Private Arthur Blackburn, one of the scouts that day (and a future winner of the Victoria Cross), expressed it more simply:

The 30 or 45 minutes to the shore were the most trying of the lot.

Turkish garrison

As the tows approached the cove, Lieutenant Colonel Şefik Aker of the Turkish 27th Regiment was looking out to sea from the Ari Burnu headland at the northern end of Anzac Cove. Later Aker described the scene:

At 2 am the moon was still shining. The patrols on duty from my reserve platoon were Idris from Biga and Cennil from Gallipoli. They reported having sighted many enemy ships in the open sea. I got up and looked through my binoculars. I saw, straight in front of us but rather a long way off, a large number of ships the size of which could not be distinguished. It was not clear whether or not they were moving. I reported immediately to the battalion commander, Major Izmet, first by telephone, then by written report. He said to me: “There is no cause for alarm. At most, the landing will be at Gaba Tepe” – and told me to continue watching these ships. I went to a new observation point and kept watching. This time I saw them as a great mass which, I decided, seemed to be moving straight towards us. In the customary manner, I went to the phone to inform divisional headquarters. That was about 2.30 am I got through to the second in command, Lieutenant Nori, and told him of it. He replied, “Hold the line. I will inform the Chief of Staff”. He came back a little later and said, “How many of these ships are warships and how many transports?” I replied, "It is impossible to distinguish them in the dark but the quantity of ships is very large." With that, the conversation closed. A little while later, the moon sank below the horizon and the ships became invisible in the dark. The reserve platoon was alerted and ordered to stand by. I watched and waited.

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By dawn, Colonel Aker and his men could see the tows clearly for the first time. In Aker's words:

In a little while, the sound of gunfire broke out. I saw a machine gun firing from a small boat in front of Ari Burnu. Some of the shots were passing over us. I immediately ordered the platoon to occupy the trenches on the high ridge which dominated Ari Burnu and sent only two sections under Sergeant Ahmed to the trenches on the central ridge overlooking the beach. At the same time, I wrote a report to the battalion commander stating that the enemy was about to begin landing and I was going to a position on the far side with a reserve platoon. I ordered the withdrawal by telephone and set off immediately. On the way, we came under fire from the ships.

Aker was severely wounded in the thigh during this action. His command passed to Muharrem, the senior sergeant.

The Australian experience of Turkish fire varied.

The tows of the 9th Battalion formed the southern flank, landing the men along the south flank of the Ari Burnu peninsula. Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Salisbury, who was among the forces, later gave Bean a detailed account:

It was not quite light but getting very close to it. A very bright light appeared to the north. The first we heard when we were about twenty yards off the beach was a single shot – then two or three. It sounded like a sentry group. Then it began very fast. There was an exclamation, 'Hello! Now we're spotted.' It was a relief to hear the thing go. Here we are. Now we are in it.

Lieutenant Noel Loutit and Corporal William Faint landed with the 10th Battalion on the tip of the Ari Burnu peninsula. Just like the 9th Battalion, they came under fire about 30 yards (27m) out. Some of the battalion was more fortunate. Stanley's boat wasn't fired on until the noise of its keel grounding drew fire.

The 11th Battalion of the flotilla's northern flank landed along the northern face of Ari Burnu. It received a hotter reception. Turkish firing began when they were about 400 yards (366m) out, or so Darnell and Private Cornelius Johnstone thought.

Lieutenant Corporal Hedley Howe put it at 200 yards (183m).

Major Reginald Everett estimated 800 yards (732m).

Tension obviously distorted the perception of men suddenly coming under heavy fire. But the fact remains that the men of the 11th Battalion received the stiffest reception.

Opinions were less divided on how much firing there had been and where it had come from. Lance Sergeant Herbert Milne Longmore told Bean that the Turks were shooting 'from the whole face of the hill'. Mills agreed with him, likening the effect to 'a monster firework display'.

After many interviews, Bean's despatch eventually stated:

The Turks in trenches facing the Landing had run but those on either flank and on the ridges above and in the gullies kept up fire on the boats coming inshore.

Bean, however, didn't go along with men like Fortescue, who spoke of a solid mass of Turkish bullets and a cacophony of bugle calls. Bean concluded:

Neither then nor at any time later was the beach the inferno of bursting shells and barbed-wire entanglements and falling men that has sometimes been described or painted.

Turkish artillery, in particular, didn't start to fire shrapnel until 5:10am (some reports said 4:45 am), or about an hour after the first Australians landed.

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Odd memories from that first period under fire remained clear in some men's minds. Howe's is of a naval officer in the tow to his right shouting out:

Bear away more to the north. You're spoiling the whole bloody show.

A few seconds later, a shower of sparks came from the funnel of that steamboat. Howe recalled:

Then Abdul opened up with his machine guns.

Darnell remembered seeing a light on the tip of Ari Burnu:

It just flashed for a moment. Then we heard voices and what appeared to be a sentry. The call came from that point. The adjutant whispered to Captain Leane that they had seen us.

When the firing began, Darnell heard men singing snatches from 'This little bit of the world belongs to us', while officers shouted:

Make a landing where you can, lads, and hold on!

The officers were using leather megaphones attached to their wrists because the sound of firing, reflected from the steep amphitheatre of Anzac Cove, was loud. It seemed even louder against the hush of the previous silence.

The men's responses to being shot at for the first time varied, as described by Mitchell:

Some men crouch[ed] in the crowded boat while others sat up nonchalantly. Some laughed and joked while others cursed. I tried to scan the dim faces of our platoon and my section in particular. Fear was not at home.

One of Bean's anecdotes highlights the unexpected cheerfulness of men in a time of extremity:

The 11th Battalion had been told by someone that bullets would sound like birds flying overhead. The Turkish bullets, at short range, were anything but that, and one of the battalion's hard cases, Private 'Combo' Smith, set the whole boat laughing by remarking to his neighbour, 'Snowy' Howe 'Just like little birds, ain't they, Snow?'

As for the cursing, Stanley thought it worth mentioning that 'the language was awful'. At the time, the word 'bloody' was the limit for most Australians, and Captain Tom Louch endorsed this point when writing of Mena Camp in Egypt:

What really staggered us about the Tommies was their vocabulary. One four-letter word with variations provided nouns, verbs and adjectives – the staple of their conversation. The men in my section were not particularly straight-laced but they only swore in a mild way when exasperated.

During those last minutes into Anzac Cove, the Australians were exasperated indeed.

There were calm men too, and their example was priceless. Margetts told Bean:

A young midshipman in our cutter stood up. It did one the world of good to see him standing up. He had a great effect on our men. Four seamen had their heads well down in the boat and our men would have taken their cue from them.

A young midshipman in our cutter stood up. It did one the world of good to see him standing up. He had a great effect on our men. Four seamen had their heads well down in the boat and our men would have taken their cue from them.

Captain Eric Wheler Bush was a young midshipman on HMS Bacchante at the time. He described the quiet courage of a fellow midshipman:

Midshipman Longley-Cook was in charge of the Prince of Wales number five tow. "Go for'ard and get both bowmen up out of their forepeak and tell them to feel for the bottom with their boathooks," he told his coxswain Leading Seaman Albert Balsom, when the boats were nearing the shore. Balsom had served with Captain Scott in the Antarctic and was a fabulously strong, brave man. "Why only one?" Longley-Cook asked a minute or two later. "I couldn't get the other able seaman up, sir. He's too frightened to move," Balsom replied. And while they were speaking, a rifle bullet entered the compartment and struck Balsom in the spine, killing him instantly. A few minutes later, an Australian officer in one of the boats started to issue some orders, whereupon he was interrupted by Longley-Cook who, in a clear authoritative voice with a polished English accent (so I was told by an Australian who was there) said to the officer, "I beg your pardon, sir. I am in charge of this tow." The officer subsided into silence immediately and the troops in his boat were heard to mutter, "Good on yer, kid!".

By this time, most tows were about 100m from the shore and the steamboats cast them off. Darnell told his father:

Those at the oars rowed like men possessed. Some were shot and others took their place at once and not a word was uttered. Presently we grounded and, in an instant, were in the water up to our waists and wading ashore with bullets pinging all around us.

Private Gordon's landing was less accomplished. Responding to a sailor's exhortation to 'Hop out and after 'em, lads', he promptly lost his footing on the slippery stones of the seabed, then fell a second time as he stepped ashore because of the weight of his saturated uniform.

Meanwhile, Turkish bullets were killing and maiming in such a gratuitous manner that many men were deeply disconcerted.

Captain Arthur Butler, the 9th Battalion's medical officer, recalled a calm midshipman handing him his satchel, 'as if he were landing a pleasure party' when he fell back into the boat, shot through the head.

Colonel Sidney Hawley, a Tasmanian farmer, was shot through the spine and paralysed just as he was getting out of his boat.

The seabed, though, seems to have posed the most pressing problem, as men leaving the boats got into difficulties. Bean put this down to the difference in size between small cutters which could get in close and large lifeboats which grounded in deep water, but the facts are against him. The difference in draught between the biggest and smallest boats used was only a matter of 7 to 8 inches (18 to 20cm). As Salisbury put it to Bean:

Nobody was hit in our boat but some were drowned. Some jumped out up to their chests. Some to their feet only.

Even where the depth was favourable, men could still have problems. Boulders on the seabed could easily trip a man, while small pebbles and metal-shod army boots were a slippery match for top-heavy soldiers in full marching order — as Sergeant Douglas Baker found to his cost when he slipped and got a ducking. Nor were stones and boulders the only hazards. Nicholas wrote later:

Looking down at the bottom of the sea, you could see a carpet of dead men who had been shot getting out of the boats

Private Eric Moorhead stepped on one of those bodies 'in the wash of the water's edge' when he came ashore.

Time of the first landing

The actual time of that first landing remains unclear.

When he was briefing Lambert in 1919, Bean gave it at 4:53am (but he had been well back on the transport Minnewaska and had had to rely on second-hand information).

Corps headquarters recorded 4:32am as the time they heard the first rifle shots through the mist.

Vice-Admiral De Robeck's report put it at 4:20am.

The 3rd Brigade's war diary and the report of the London agreed on 4:15am.

The 12th Battalion's war diary (they were reserve battalion to the first wave) states 4:10am.

The early times best fit what we know of the destroyer flotilla's arrival but the matter is unlikely to be resolved. The circulation of synchronised watches, together with an appreciation of the need for absolute precision in battle planning only came in 1917. Before that, clockwork watches recorded events with their usual approximation. When the corps timepiece stood at 4:32am, for example, the saloon clock on the Minnewaska read 4:28am and Bean's own watch 4:23am.

Location of the first landing

The exact location where the first wave waded ashore is rather more precisely established — but not entirely so. In the draft of his first volume and on most of his working maps, Bean put the 9th Battalion just south of Ari Burnu's tip and the 11th along about 400m of beach on Ari Burnu's northern face, with the 10th on the tip. But 10 years or so after the event, Captain Ray Leane, a stalwart of the 11th during the landing, begged to differ:

The boat I was in landed on the point. There were three boats to the left of us containing 9th Battalion men, most of whom were killed or wounded in the boat on the extreme left. If Commander Dix states that he was on the extreme right, he is wrong, because the l0th Battalion and one of the 11th were on the right of my boat. I met Drake-Brockman after attacking and reaching the top of the point and he came up from the right side of the hill. The whole of the boats landed between the point and where afterwards the pier was built. My company was on the extreme left of the attack but the 9th Battalion boats landed to the left of us.

Most of Bean's other eyewitnesses thought the first wave had landed altogether further northwards with the sequence of battalions 9, 10, 11 from south to north. And yet the 10th Battalion's war diary gives Leane some backing when it records battalions landing, mixed together. In the course of correspondence 60 years after the event, John Metcalf, a midshipman in 1915, stated that two whole platoons of the 9th Battalion had landed 5 minutes late and in 11th Battalion territory. With such discrepancies still existing two generations after the event, a definitive resolution remains unlikely.

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First man to land

The question of who was first ashore became another contentious issue soon after the landing.

The Sydney Mail newspaper proposed Lance Sergeant Joseph Stratford, a New South Wales man who had enlisted in Queensland's 9th Battalion and died on the first day. Lismore claimed the honour for its son, and a school in Queensland was named after him.

But Lieutenant Duncan Chapman, another 9th Battalion man, claimed priority in a letter dated 24 June 1915:

My boat was the first to land and, being in the bow, I was the first man to leap ashore.

Bean supported Chapman and mentioned Frank Kemp, a sergeant scout, who corroborated the story. But since the tows landed on both sides of a peninsula with only the dimmest glimmer of dawn to illuminate the scene, it's difficult to discover a solid basis for any claim on this score.

One indisputable fact is that once the tows were well on their way to the shore, Admiral Thursby, in charge of the landing, shone a shaded light seawards and called in the destroyers.

Major Alexander Steele recalled the engine-room bell of his destroyer clanging, then a 20-knot (37km/hour) surge and an abrupt stop within the ship's length just 200 yards (183m) from the shore. That surge of speed presented two problems: the lifeboats got into difficulties, and the destroyers themselves became easy targets.

Filled with men and breasting a steep bow wave, the lifeboats moved at a speed their designers had never contemplated. At least two cases ended in mishaps.

The first incident involved HMS Foxhound. A boat capsized, and the senior NCO (non-commissioned officer) aboard was saved only by an air pocket that formed in his uniform. Another man — Private Ernest Shepherdson — seized a rope and was dragged along at high speed, submerged for the most part but drifting to the surface now and again. When the Foxhound finally came to a stop, Shepherdson reappeared, 'much to the surprise of his comrades who had thought him drowned a mile back'.

The other incident, recounted by Richardson, had a more tragic outcome:

We were doing 18 knots. The man in the second boat didn't seem to be controlling his boat at all. She was slewing in and out for two minutes. A seaman called out that the pace was too fast but it didn't slow up. It couldn't. The boat then swung into the destroyer, slewed out and started to tip. The water simply washed them all out of the stem except a man on the tiller who managed to catch the stern rope and began to crawl back along it into the boat. He [had] got one leg into the boat on the inside beam when she swung in again and crushed him. The men were all lined up, looking at it over the side. Half a dozen naval men put a rope round the poor chap, who was dying, and hauled him aboard.

Corporal John Searcy was in the boat at the time. He tried to reach Private PV Smith, one of the drowning men, but was hindered by the weight of his pack. Many years later Searcy wrote:

I'm certain I heard his drowning screams

British ships under fire

Meanwhile, the British destroyers had come under fire from Turkish snipers.

The HMS Beagle on the southern flank was particularly badly placed since it was within the range of Gaba Tepe's machine guns. On the other flank, too, Turkish machine guns high on Walkers Ridge opened fire at almost point-blank range.

Lieutenant Elmer Laing described those bullets hitting the side of HMS Usk 'like hailstones on a tin roof'. Nor did all the bullets waste themselves on armour plating, as Captain Dixon Hearder, second in command on one of the destroyers, could attest:

I noticed a boy standing, more or less appalled at the din. So I walked up to him and said, "Come on, lad. No one is being hit." He pulled himself together and went on in front of me to the stern of the destroyer where there was a boat room. I followed right behind for another ten yards. I stepped aside to pass him and, just as I did so and got level with him, he just said "Oh!" and pitched forward on the deck. I did feel bad about him.

Almost as unnerving as the sound of Turkish small-arms fire was the noise of the Royal Navy's covering fire. This began at 4.30am. As Baker put it, 'the noise was awful. I have never heard thunder equal to it.'

The casual courage of many sailors was crucial in setting an example to the soldiers and helping the men through a difficult phase. Two incidents serve as examples.

Hearder wrote that, as the boats were filling up:

talking was heard in one of them and one of the officers called from the deck, 'Who is in charge of that boat?' Great was the glee when a very dignified alto voice promptly replied, 'Naval officer in charge of this boat'. The joke went on in the trenches. 'Make way for a naval officer', a private will squeak when he wants to get with water or something to the firing line.

It was Hearder, too, who told of the incident, when a sudden burst of Turkish rifle and machinegun fire halted disembarkation:

A cheery English voice on the bridge called out, 'Go on, lads. Get into the boats; these fellers can't shoot for tawfee.'

Hearder smiled to himself when he saw the Australians laughing at the incongruity of the upper-class English accent. 'It was just the right note to strike,' he concluded.

Unlike the first wave in the battleship tows, many of the destroyer men came under fire throughout the whole of the journey ashore. One man spoke of:

shrapnel bullets striking the water with a noise like the popping of corks when drawn from champagne bottles

Private Edward Luders, a 1st Battalion signaller, saw a shrapnel shell kill 16 men in a single boat.

The tows go in

By the time most of the 3rd Brigade's 4000 men had landed from the battleships and destroyers (at about 8am), the main force in the transports had begun to arrive, and the destroyers began ferrying them ashore, too.

Private Robert Grant, who was aboard one of those transports with other 1st Battalion men, described his own experience graphically:

Before dawn, I was asleep on the lower deck. When the ship's officer switched off the lights, the horses started to stampede in their stalls. This woke the troops who, in their semi-conscious state, groped about for their equipment which was lying loose at their sides. Being pitch dark, they got in one anothers' way and this brought out some very impolite remarks. Eventually, they struck matches and, as day dawned, we began to take in the situation. I was near a porthole and put my head out. I could hear the crackling of rifles in the hills about a mile away. The navy opened a terrific bombardment. Huge chunks of the Gaba Tepe fort flew about. The hills reverberated. Steam pinnaces towed laden boats of troops ashore, working with the regularity of the Sydney ferries. The destroyer Scourge came alongside. Her funnel was riddled with bullet holes and her decks were slippery with the blood of the wounded she brought to our ship. I watched them slung aboard. Never did I hate a ship more or want to leave it less than the Minnewaska.

Bean was on the same vessel and was himself unnerved by the sight of the destroyer, her decks awash with blood.

A curious feature of that first morning was the speed with which conditions changed.

By mid-morning, the Turks had been pushed back to the 3rd Ridge. The war had moved inland, and it was as if the gunfire from Ari Burnu and shrapnel from Gaba Tepe had never been. Colonel Dawson of the Auckland Regiment wrote:

We were surprised how peaceful was our trip ashore … A little shelling. Some dropping rifle fire but only two casualties in our battalion. The landing was peaceful but distinctly wet, particularly for us small ones. It is surprising what a lot of water a ship's boat draws. The quietness of our narrow strip of beach was also surprising. A few Australians forming up; an Indian mountain battery and some wounded and dying men.

And quiet it remained as the men trudged towards the first range of hills. Captain Andrew Came, 6th Battalion wrote:

We advanced in the cool of the morning through thick undergrowth, heavy with dew and fragrant with the perfume of wild flowers. Birds were singing in the bushes and the sun was bright overhead.

With time to look around and take in the scenery, some men must have been surprised at the choice of landing place. Was a pebble beach less than the width of a cricket pitch a suitable site for landing the supplies for two divisions? Was a cliff of crumbling sandstone bush covered and carved up by deep gullies, really the best place to launch an offensive?

AWM H13745

Was Anzac Cove the right place?

It was only shortly after the landing that high command let it be known that an error had been made — the landing should have been made on Brighton Beach, south of Anzac Cove and in a locality of relatively friendly topography. Instead and by accident, the men found themselves in the heart of the precipitous country to the north of the intended landing area. Two explanations were proposed:

• a sea current had drifted the tows northwards and in the dim light of dawn the silhouette of Hell Spit, or
• Ari Burnu had been mistaken for the intended aiming point, Gaba Tepe.

Both explanations can be safely rejected.

If a stiff wind blew from the south-west, a set of one and a half knots flowed north-east. This fact was well known to the Mediterranean fleet, which had often visited Lemnos before the war, and was allowed for in orders issued to the marker ship Triumph:

It is absolutely essential for the success of the expedition that your ship should be accurately in this position [coordinates given]. Also record the direction of the tide and strength of the current and communicate both to Admiral Thursby after his arrival at the rendezvous.

In the event, naval log books recorded a breeze blowing at just one knot during the landing, with the result, as Hamilton put it in his memoirs, that:

Birdwood had no current to trouble him

On the point of silhouettes, no one could possibly have mistaken the headlands in question. The high mountain of Sari Bair rises immediately behind Anzac Cove. The Khilid Bahr Plateau, on the other hand, is some distance behind Gaba Tepe and appears much lower from the sea, with a flatter top. If the tows had lost their direction during the period of darkness, there was time to make any necessary adjustments during the inshore journey because (so Bean told a correspondent) the outline of the land could be seen fifteen minutes before the tows set off.

The navigators accompanying the tows were certainly well qualified to make those adjustments. They had studied the shore's profile on a reconnaissance voyage just before the landing and would have made a particular effort to establish their bearings before moonset (2:57am on the 25th). They would have had plenty of time to do so as well.

Thursby's report on the landing states that the loom of the land could be clearly seen at 2:30am and, even an hour later, Colonel Johnstone found that he could 'just see a faint outline of the coast.' Godfrey went further. His memoirs state that he was 'conscious of the loom of the land about 3:00am', little more than an hour before the landing.

The significance of this degree of visibility was later explained by Hedley Howe, an Australian who landed with the first wave, wrote:

Throughout the approach to Anzac until the moon set at 3 am, navigating officers in ships were able to fix their positions at all times by accurate bearings of the land and in view of the large number of ships involved in the manoeuvre, there cannot be the slightest doubt that the commander of every vessel would be continuously occupied in maintenance of his correct station. Precise navigation is not merely a tradition in the navy. It is an obligation rigorously enforced on the commanders of all ships and on their navigation officers ...

Put simply, Howe was saying that the tows were released at a point and in a direction exactly calculated. Since there was virtually no current on the morning of the 25th, any deviation in the tows' course requires explanation. And there was a deviation — or, to be exact, two deviations, both noted by Major James Robertson of 9th Battalion and others. Robertson wrote:

The naval people in the pinnaces seemed a bit hazy about the landing spot. They stopped, changed course, and stopped again; and finally, when they were about two chains from the shore, a rifle shot rang out. This was the signal for full steam ahead and land as soon as possible.

Metcalf, then a midshipman, was more exact in the chart he sent to the War Memorial in 1973:

My effort was to show there was no error in navigation nor any current

On that chart, he marked two places where the course had been changed, on each occasion by two points or 22.5 degrees.

The journal of Midshipman Dixon records the first change halfway in. Bean later confirmed Dixon's assessment when he briefed George Lambert for his painting of the landing:

After fifteen minutes, the tows were sailing more or less in a line. They were swung to port by the naval officer in charge.

Since the tows set off at 3:30am and landed around 4:10am, that change would have been made at 3:45am, a little less than halfway in. The second change was made just before the tows landed.

According to Bush's midshipman's log, it was a shift of two points. Metcalf judged that the change had been made 200 yards (183m) from shore, while Leane of the 11th Battalion put it at 300 yards (274m), at the moment when the northernmost tow was Opposite Hell Spit. That was the change of course that sent the tows in a cluster towards the Ari Burnu peninsula, where they landed.

The second would have been a visual one because the shore was close and dawn just breaking.

But how had the first change been carried out in the dark?

Bean's working papers show him puzzling over the matter for years. The wording of the first reference in his draft, written in 1920, suggests his bewilderment:

The naval men appeared to see far more in the dark than the troops did, for as the land grew closer one after another picked up this movement and swung several hundred yards northward.

Bean's address to cadets at Duntroon Military Academy 3 years later shows that he remained puzzled:

Naval officers may have been able to see each other's tows but the soldiers could not for a long time.

Bean had been unable to discover how the first change of course had been made by all tows simultaneously. He went on puzzling into old-age, trying to explain why none of the soldiers had been able to tell him much when he interviewed them. Perhaps, he reasoned:

the overpowering strain of suspense (Was the coast defended? Had the Turks seen them?) [had] caused the raw soldiers in the boats to concentrate their thoughts and be less aware than the handful of British sailors who steered the tows