Item 02: Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett articles on the Gallipoli campaign, 1915 - Page 220

[Page 220]

[Text incorporates handwritten corrections by E.A.B.]
war in which a battleship or a crusier has been sunk by a torpedo fired by an above water craft, except the single instance of the unfortunate Goliath, which was torpedo three times by a Turkish destroyer manned by German officers on the night of May I3th in the Dardanelles. Destroyers were originally intended as the main weapon of defence against Torpedo attack and also as an offensive weapon against battleships and Crusiers. Now it is difficult to define the respective functions of Destroyers and Torpedo Boats as they have become more or less merged.

To-day Destroyers has become the principal antidote to submarine attack, and although by no means an ideal defence, they are the best available and have performed immense services during this war. The amount of work accomplished by the Destroyer Flotillas at the Dardanelles has been stupendous but their labours are little known to the public although fully recognised by both the army and the Navy. We are now in the [twelveth?] month of this World War and our Destroyers have worked almost without a break during the whole of this period.

Their labours started with the escape of the Goeben and the Breslau from the Dardanelles, and the subsecquent return of those two vessels to Turkish waters has turned out to be one of the most unfortunate incidents in our naval history. They were then employed in watching the Austrian Fleet and in patrolling the Mediterranean and Adriatic. But it was only when Turkey declared war that their most arduous task commenced. Throughout the winter months it fell to their lot to keep up an incessant patrol off the Dardanelles and along the Asiatic coast. These months will never be forgotten by those who took part in them. In all weathers/ tossed about by terrible gales in the [indecipherable] Gulf of Smyrna and never dry for weeks at a stretch