Lieutenant-Commander Edward Courtney Boyle, R.N., took E 14 beneath the enemy mine-fields and suddenly appeared in the Sea of Marmora on the 27th April, 1915. He was stalking transports, the enemy’s favourite method of conveying troops to Gallipoli because the land communications consisted of a solitary road. The submarine, a larger and more powerful boat than B 11, with a displacement of 810 tons, did not return to her base until twenty-two days later. When she arrived it was much to the astonishment of many officers and men of the Allied Fleet, who had firmly believed that she and her brave crew had gone to Davy Jones’s locker.
During the interim E 14 had dodged mines, navigated treacherous currents, kept out of harm from hostile patrols, sunk a couple of gunboats, wrecked two transports—one crowded with 6000 troops—and poked her inquisitive nose into the Bosphorus.
The first week spent in the Sea of Marmora was terribly exciting. E 14 was hunted by all the light craft at the disposal of the Turks. Gunboats, destroyers, and torpedo-boats took part in the chase, without achieving the slightest success. Their failure, combined with shortage of coal, caused most of them to be withdrawn from the service. Thenceforth they assumed the more humble rôle of convoys. This phase lasted a short time only. After Boyle had sunk the large troopship already mentioned, the Turkish soldiers refused to go by sea, preferring to march for three days and three nights rather than run the risk of meeting the terrible submarine.
E 14 went into the Marmora on two subsequent occasions. Altogether she spent no fewer than seventy days there. On her last visit she had to break through the net placed across the Dardanelles by Nagara Point. As this formidable obstacle was made of chain and 3½-in. wire, it “required some breaking,” to quote the words of the commanding officer. Then Boyle’s first lieutenant developed typhoid, and was ill for the remainder of the voyage, a matter of over a fortnight. About fifty vessels, including dhows laden with grain and other useful commodities, were sent to the bottom by E 14, but—mark this—no non-combatant ship was ever sunk before the crew had been taken close inshore in their boats and had been fed if they were hungry. Submarines can be good Samaritans, despite German assertions to the contrary. It should also be added that for two days E 14, in conjunction with E 11, shelled the reinforcing troops marching to repel the Suvla Bay landing.
Boyle superbly earned and won the V.C., his colleagues, Lieutenant E. G. Stanley, R.N., and Acting-Lieutenant R. W. Lawrence, R.N.R., were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, and each member of the crew was given the Distinguished Service Medal. One can fully appreciate the statement of Admiral de Robeck, that “it is impossible to do full justice to this great achievement.” On the occasion of E 14’s first penetration of the Straits the King sent the gallant Commander and his crew a telegram of congratulation.
Another E boat carried this process of anything but peaceful penetration still farther. Lieut.-Commander Martin Eric Nasmith, R.N., not only took E 11 through the Dardanelles and crossed the Sea of Marmora, but actually succeeded in entering the Golden Horn, situated no fewer than 170 miles from the entrance to the Straits. At the quay adjoining the arsenal he fired a torpedo, which “was heard to explode.” Whether it hit a transport or a lighter laden with firebricks lying near by has not been ascertained with certainty. The Turks and their Teutonic friends are none too keen on telling the truth if it is to their disadvantage. One informant had it that the barge was blown to smithereens, and that part of the débris was flung with such terrific force against the German Levant steamer Stambul that she was holed and had to be beached. Another report stated that the strong current deflected the torpedo, causing it to blow up part of the jetty. All independent observers were at least unanimous as to the effect of the raid on the nerves of the inhabitants of Constantinople. The people were panic-stricken, and when the Turkish guns opened fire on their invisible foe they merely contributed to the ferment. So far as Nasmith was concerned, it was almost a case of ‘much ado about nothing.’ E 11 escaped with no worse casualty than a jagged wound in her periscope! Many of the Turks thought that the Russian Black Sea Fleet had broken through and was bombarding the capital as a preliminary to the landing of troops. Nasmith was merely singeing the Sultan’s beard, as Drake had singed that of Philip of Spain three centuries before.
Whether the torpedo in question struck troopship, lighter, or jetty at Constantinople does not much matter; the Commander’s remaining torpedoes found their billets right enough. Nasmith undoubtedly destroyed two heavily laden transports, a large gunboat, an ammunition ship, and three store ships, while another vessel containing supplies was driven ashore. As though this bag were not large enough, he returned to torpedo a fourth transport when his crew were congratulating themselves that the most dangerous part of the homeward voyage had been safely negotiated. The ammunition ship blew up with a terrific explosion. By her loss the enemy was deprived of thousands of charges, a quantity of gun mountings, and a 6–in. gun. Having sunk everything that could be sunk, Nasmith returned to report.
The most unpleasant incident of a whole chapter of exciting passages occurred in the Sea of Marmora. The submarine ran foul of the cable that anchored a mine. As other canisters of death were in the vicinity, it was much too perilous to attempt to go astern in the hope that the steel rope would become disentangled. The mine was the submarine’s unwelcome guest for eleven miles. Every officer and man knew it, and each realized only too well exactly what would occur if one of the horns of the beastly thing bumped against the boat or struck some floating object. What with submerged torpedo-tubes skilfully rigged up by the Turks on shore, land batteries, forts, floating and anchored mines, there was sufficient food for reflection to say nothing of the sinister appendage, and it is perhaps not surprising that the company was serious. If conversation was not animated this was not entirely due to the somewhat sultry atmosphere of E 11. However, Nasmith got rid of the mine at last, and when he emerged among the battleships and cruisers at the other end of the Dardanelles no King or Kaiser ever received a warmer welcome.
This young hero of thirty-two years, who had already attracted notice by his ready resource when A 4 inadvertently sank while exercising at Spithead in 1905, had certainly earned his V.C., and the same may be recorded of his brother-officers, Lieutenant Guy D’Oyle-Hughes, R.N., and Acting-Lieutenant Robert Brown, who were given similar distinctions to those awarded to the subordinate officers of E 14. Had Nelson been alive we may be quite sure he would have admitted the heroes of this chapter to his gallant ‘band of brothers.’ Their exploits are memorable, as Bacon says of another great naval episode, “even beyond credit, and to the Height of some Heroicall Fable.”