Attack on the Dardanelles Narrows

18 March 1915, Dardanelles, below the Narrows

Ottoman victory

The allies tried to force the Dardanelles with battleships alone. Sixteen battleships went in to silence the forts, but on 8 March the little minelayer Nusret had laid a line of mines in Eren Köy Bay where the fleet manoeuvred. The French Bouvet hit a mine and capsized in under two minutes; Irresistible and Ocean were mined and abandoned; Inflexible, Suffren and Gaulois were badly damaged. Admiral de Robeck called off the attack, and the army was landed at Gallipoli instead.