Features
LEST WE FORGET
By Keeli Cambourne

Edition 5007, 03 May, 2007
 
FALLEN REMEMBERED:
ABBM Stephen Baker from Australia’s Federation Guard at the Anzac Day Lone Pine Service in Gallipoli.
Photo: CPL Michael Davis
 
When people think of Gallipoli, they think of Australian diggers forcing their way onto a Turkish Beach to earn a place in our nation’s history.

What many don’t realise is the integral part in that campaign that the newly formed Royal Australian Navy played.

At the outbreak of hostilities in 1914 Australia’s naval fleet consisted of a battle cruiser, six light cruisers, six destroyers, two submarines – AE1 and AE2 – and numerous support and ancillary craft.

The ships and men of the RAN operated as an integral part of the Royal Navy and served in all operational areas. The total number serving in the Permanent Naval Forces at the outbreak of hostilities was 3800 all ranks.

In November 1914, Australian and New Zealand troops sailed from King George Sound off Albany in Western Australia in 38 transports under the watchful escort of Australian, British and Japanese warships. It was during this voyage that the RAN scored its biggest victory of the war. The German raider Emden had been operating in the Indian Ocean and had claimed 27 Allied ships. When it attacked the wireless station at Cocos Island, the fleet was only 50 miles away. HMAS Sydney was dispatched and in a classic running battle drove the Emden ashore.

Although it was first planned as a purely naval effort, the original Gallipoli campaign failed in forcing a passage through Turkey’s Dardanelles defences and by March 1915 it had to be re-evaluated.

The Allies still thought the best way to accomplish their mission was for the warships to penetrate into the Sea of Marmara and bombard Constantinople, forcing Turkey to surrender. To do this they had to secure the Gallipoli peninsula through amphibious assault. This would allow the minefields to be cleared without interference from Turkish shore emplacements and field artillery, and permit the passage of the fleet to Constantinople.

While the AIF was busy trying to secure the beach head at Gallipoli, the RAN submarine HMAS AE2 was embarking on a separate mission in conjunction with the plan to take control of Dardanelles.

Its commander LEUT Henry Stoker was ordered to sail through the Dardanelles and disrupt Turkish shipping to the Sea of Marmara. No other ship had managed to breach the Turkish defence but in the early hours of April 25, 1915, AE2 got past minefields and land-based guns and after torpedoeing a Turkish destroyer reached the sea.

The sub remained at large for five days. The news of the sub’s achievements was passed on to the Anzac troops and greatly spurred them on. But on April 29, 1915 the sub sustained irreparable damage under heavy fire from the Turkish torpedo boat Sultan Hissar and LEUT Stoker was forced to sink the sub and surrender. The crew was taken prisoner. The wreckage of the sub remained undiscovered until 1998.

The Gallipoli campaign created havoc in England as well with First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher going back and forth in his support of Winston Churchill’s plans, preferring an all-amphibious attack on the German Baltic Sea coastline rather than the Turkish one. As the Gallipoli campaign failed, so to did relations between Fisher and Churchill and on May 15, 1915, Fisher resigned his post.

While the AIF and RAN had celebrated roles in the Gallipoli campaign the Merchant Navy also played a major part in the offensive.

Merchant ships transported all Australian troops to Gallipoli, and in many cases landed them at the beach at Anzac Cove in the ships’ lifeboats which were manned by merchant seamen, who also came under the deadly fire of the Turkish guns.

And the great majority of wounded in the campaign were taken in the merchant ships’ lifeboats, with merchant seamen manning the oars, to the hospital ships which were waiting offshore. The merchant ships evacuated most of Australia’s troops from Gallipoli to Alexandria, Lemnos and Cyprus and then transported the wounded home to Australia.

But often forgotten is the role played by the most highly decorated RAN unit in WWI – the RAN Bridging Train. The unit was manned by naval reservists and they acted as an engineering unit to support the British landings at Suvla Bay to the north of Anzac Cove. They landed under fire at Suvla Bay on August 8, 1915 and were responsible for a wide variety of logistics tasks.

Most of the men were evacuated on December 16 and 17, but 50 stayed behind to maintain the wharf the British rearguard was to leave from. These men were the last Australians to leave the Gallipoli Peninsula.