This website has been prepared by
the first "hotel de charme" on the Gallipoli peninsula
A plaque describes the first British-French Naval attack by six cruisers at a range of 16,000 yards on Seddulbahir and Kumkale Forsts on 3 November 1914, which did more damage to the castle than any subsequent attacks. One explosing killed five officers and eighty-one men
when a shell
detonated the magazine. A memorial, surmounted by a shell, was first
erected here in 1915 but was destroyed during the subsequent fighting. The
present memorial was erected in 1986.
"Gallipoli Battlefield Guide", (Barnsley 2000), Tonie & Valmai Holt, p. 112
"Monument erected by the Turks in remembrance of the first bombardment" reproduced from a period postcard (Başar Eryoner - private collection)
On the 3rd November, two days after the British Ambassador left
Constantinople, The Allied fleet carried out a short bombardment of the outer
forts. Up to this time the German efforts to effect a more rapid improvement
of the defences of the Straits had met with considerable obstruction from the
Turks. The effect of the bombardment was temporarily to sweep this
obstruction aside.
“The bombardment of 3rd November warned me”, said Jevad Pasha, commander of
the fortress, after the war “and I realized that I must spend the rest of my
time developing and strengthening the defences by every means”.
The unfortunate effect of the bombardment was aggravated by its astonishing
success. Though the firing lasted only twenty minutes it succeeded, owing to
two lucky shots, in causing more damage than any subsequent attack.
"Military Operations: Gallipoli", Volume I, (London 1929), Brigadier-General
Cecil F. Aspinall-Oglander, p. 34-35
