A view showing Morto Bay, De Lott's Battery and the Asiatic Coast
It was now light, and the haze on Sedd-el-Bahr was clearing away so that those in charge of the boats could see what they were doing. Had they attempted an attack in the dark on those unsurveyed beaches among the fierce and dangerous tide rips the loss of life would have been very great. As it was, the exceeding fierceness of the currents added much to the difficulty and danger of the task. We will take the landings in succession.
The Landing at V Beach, near Sedd-el-Bahr.
The men told off for this landing were: The Dublin Fusiliers, the Munster Fusiliers, half a battalion of the Hampshire Regiment, and the West Riding Field Company.
Three companies of the Dublin Fusiliers were to land from towed lighters, the rest of the party from a tramp steamer, the collier River Clyde. This ship, a conspicuous sea mark at Cape Helles throughout the rest of the campaign, had been altered to carry and land troops. Great gangways or entry ports had been cut in her sides on the level of her between decks, and platforms had been built out upon her sides below these, so that men might run from her in a hurry. The plan was to beach her as near the shore as possible, and then drag or sweep the lighters, which she towed, into position between her and the shore, so as to make a kind of boat bridge from her to the beach. When the lighters were so moored as to make this bridge, the entry ports were to be opened, the waiting troops were to rush out on to the external platforms, run from them on to the lighters and so to the shore. The ship's upper deck and bridge were protected with boiler plate and sandbags, and a casement for machine guns was built upon her fo'c'sle, so that she might reply to the enemy's fire.
A remarkable view of V Beach, taken from S.S. River Clyde
Five picket-boats, each towing five boats or launches full of men, steamed alongside the River Clyde and went ahead when she grounded. She took the ground rather to the right of the little beach, some 400 yards from the ruins of Sedd-el-Bahr castle, before the Turks had opened fire, but almost as she grounded, when the picket-boats with their tows were ahead of her, only twenty or thirty yards from the beach, every rifle and machine gun in the castle, the town above it, and in the curved low strongly trenched hill along the bay, began a murderous fire upon ship and boats. There was no question of their missing. They had their target on the front and both flanks at ranges between 100 and 300 yards in clear daylight, thirty boats bunched together and crammed with men and a good big ship. The first outbreak of fire made the bay as white as a rapid, for the Turks fired not less than ten thousand shots a minute for the first few minutes of that attack. Those not killed in the boats at the first discharge jumped overboard to wade or swim ashore, many were killed in the water, many, who were wounded, were swept away and drowned, others, trying to swim in the fierce current, were drowned by the weight of their equipment; but some reached the shore, and these instantly doubled out to cut the wire entanglements, and were killed, or dashed for the cover of a bank of sand or raised beach which runs along the curve of the bay. Those very few who reached this cover were out of immediate danger, but they were only a handful. The boats were destroyed where they grounded.
Meanwhile, the men of the River Clyde tried to make their bridge of boats, by sweeping the lighters into position and mooring them between the ship and the shore. They were killed as they worked, but others took their places, the bridge was made, and some of the Munsters dashed along it from the ship and fell in heaps as they ran. As a second company followed, the moorings of the lighters broke or were shot, the men leaped into the water and were drowned or killed, or reached the beach and were killed, or fell wounded there, and lay under fire getting wound after wound till they died; very, very few reached the sandbank. More brave men jumped aboard the lighters to remake the bridge. They were swept away or shot to pieces; the average life on those boats was some three minutes long, but they remade the bridge, and the third company of the Munsters doubled down to death along it under a storm of shrapnel which scarcely a man survived. The big guns in Asia were now shelling the River Clyde, and the hell of rapid fire never paused. More men tried to land, headed by Brigadier General Napier, who was instantly killed, with nearly all his followers. Then for long hours the remainder stayed on board, down below in the grounded steamer, while the shots beat on her plates with a rattling clang which never stopped. Her twelve machine guns fired back, killing any Turk who showed, but nothing could be done to support the few survivors of the landing, who now lay under cover of the sandbank on the other side of the beach. It was almost certain death to try to leave the ship, but all through the day men leaped from her (with leave or without it) to bring water or succour to the wounded on the boats or beach. A hundred brave men gave their lives thus: every man there earned the Cross that day: a boy earned it by one of the bravest deeds of the war, leaping into the sea with a rope in his teeth to try to secure a drifting lighter.
