The British casualties in personnel are not heavy, considering the scale of the operations; but practically the whole of the crew of the Bouvet were lost with the ship, an internal explosion having apparently supervened on the explosion of the mine.
The Queen and Implacable, which were dispatched from England to replace ships' casualties in anticipation of this operation, are due to arrive immediately, thus bringing the British fleet up to its original strength.
The operations are continuing, ample naval and military forces being available on the spot.
On the 16th inst., Vice Admiral Carden, who has been incapacitated by illness, was succeeded in the chief command by Rear Admiral John Michael de Robeck, with acting rank of Vice Admiral.
THE SCENE IN THE STRAIT.
The London Times publishes this story of an eyewitness:
TENEDOS, (Aegina,) March 18.
This is not so much an account of the five hours' heavy engagement between the Turkish forts and the allied ships which has been fought actually within the Dardanelles today as an impression of the bombardment as seen at a distance of fifteen miles or so from the top of a high, steep hill called Mount St. Elias, at the northern end of Tenedos.
Over the ridge of Kum Kale you plainly see, like a great blue lake, the first reach of the Dardanelles up to the narrow neck between Chanak and Kilid Bahr. It was up and down in this stretch of water that the largest vessels of the allied fleet steamed today for over four hours, hurling, with sheets of orange flame from their heavy guns, a constant succession of shells on the forts that guard the Narrows at Chanak, while the Turkish batteries, with a frequency that lessened as the day went on, flashed back at them in reply, with the difference that, while the effects of the Allies' shells were continually manifest in the columns of smoke and dust that were signs of the damage they had wrought, a great number of the enemy's shots fell in the sea hundreds of yards from the bombarding ships, sending torrents of water towering harmlessly into the air.
Not that the successes of the day have been won without cost. I saw several ships, French and British, struck by shells that raised volumes of white smoke, and one of the French squadron is toiling slowly home at this moment down by the head and with a list to port, while, so far as one could make out with a glass, several boatloads of men were being taken off her.