Tricking the Turk
Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook’s Perilous Adventure to Surprise and Blow Up a Warship at the Dardanelles
It hardly need surprise any one that each of a multiplicity of deeds and feats of daring and heroic adventure should, by different writers, correspondents, or official observers, be described as the most notable, the most brilliant, or the most courageous undertaking or achievement of the war. The simple fact is that the unparalleled war called for the souls and spirit and mental qualities of men as never did war before, and so many things were done that amounted to triumphs over the impossible, each one of which taken by itself seemed to overtop all others, that it would require a concourse of Solomons to determine which was the supreme excellence. They were all striking enough to command the superlatives of description. And some of these great accomplishments need but a few lines for their recital. It is not the volume of words that determines the value.
One of these briefly recorded deeds was that of Lieutenant-Commander Norman D. Holbrook, of the British submarine B-11, which “all his brother officers concur in regarding as one of the finest individual feats performed during the war.”
In the Dardanelles the old Turkish battleship Messudiyeh lay in guard of the mine fields, and, acting on his own initiative, Lieutenant-Commander Holbrook set out to sink the old ship by torpedoing her at her anchorage where she idled under the protecting guns of the land forts. It was, from the viewpoint of the conservative minded, a mad enterprise. Even under the most favorable conditions the underwater navigation of the Dardanelles is most perilous, beset with forbidding difficulties, so swift are the currents that never cease racing through the straits, producing swift whirlpools and strong eddies as they strike projections. But when to these natural obstructions and dangers are added five distinct rows of mines it would seem that running the Dardanelles in a submarine would prove a feat quite impossible of accomplishment. That is what many said dissuasively; but Lieutenant Holbrook is apparently one of those who hold the opinion that nothing conceivable is impossible. He set out with Lieutenant Sydney Thornton Winn, his second in command, and his regular crew. Cautiously, slowly the B-11 stole along toward its objective, fairly crawling to avoid the rows of mines and beat the swirling currents. Arrived clear of the mines, but uncertain of the exact location of the Messudiyeh, Lieutenant Holbrook deliberately came to the surface in the bay, took an informing survey, submerged again and a little while later rose in perfect position for a shot and sent a torpedo crashing into the side of the astonished old warship that immediately proceeded about the business of sinking to the bottom of the sea.