The end of the Goliath

The night of the 12/13 May was much like any other with the Goliath, the Cornwallis and five Bulldog and Beagle patrolled near Du Tott’s battery, HMS Pincher sat mid channel and HMS Wolverine and Scorpion guarded the opposite side of the channel at Eren Keui bay.

HMS Goliath

destroyers taking up position in the mouth of the straits covering the French position at Kereves Dere whilst the destroyers HMS

   The weather was far from ideal as the night was particularly dark and moonless limiting visibility which was exacerbated by fog. The use of searchlights to aid in observation were prohibited as they would give away the positions of the battleships.  Ashmead Bartlett later recalled that “Many who had prophesied that, owing to the exposed position, a disaster would occur sooner rather than later” (1) The suspicion of attack was so high that the gun crews and lookouts aboard the Cornwallis had been warned to be extra vigilant against a night attack. At approximately 1:15 a.m. an unfamiliar torpedo boat loomed out of the darkness close to the Goliath. The duty quartermaster hesitated giving the order to fire on the strange vessel in case it was a friendly vessel, as was most likely considering the large volume of Allied shipping and with no sign of the Ottoman fleet. A signal was flashed over demanding the vessel identify itself but the reply that returned, although in English, made no sense. The crew began to react but were only able to fire off three rounds from a 25 pounder gun before the first torpedoes struck the helpless battleship.

   The unknown vessel was, in fact, the Ottoman torpedo boat Muavanet-i-Millet under the command of Senior Lieutenant Ayasofyali Ahmed Saffed and Kapitänleutnant Rudolf Firle who had persuaded the Naval Command to allow them to try a raid on the Allied fleet. The German-Turkish crew had left Constantinople on the night of the 12 May and used the inky darkness to their benefit and drifted down the straits and clinging as close to the shore as they could passing the Bulldog and Beagle completely undetected until they came across the exposed battleship and took careful aim.

The Muavanet-i-Millet

   The first torpedo struck the Goliath abreast of the fore turret and the second abeam her fore funnel and moments later the third struck close to the aft turret. With all surprise gone the Muavanet-i-Millet quickly turned for home and disappeared into the darkness with the destroyers HMS Scorpion and Wolverine in pursuit in a desperate gamble to cut off the Ottoman’s retreat.

   Following the impact of the torpedoes the sleeping crew were shaken from their bunks and hammocks. Wolstan Forrester joined the other Midshipman who were gathering on deck in their pyjamas as some of the ship’s Boys were led by a RNR Sub-lieutenant (probably Albert Lund) up a ladder from the gun room flat with the Reservist assuring them to remain calm and that they would all be saved.

   The Goliath began to list quite quickly to starboard and as Forester climbed up to the quarter deck he estimated it was at a five degree list so quickly made for the port side where a crowd was gathering.

   There was a certain amount of confusion as Able Seamen tried to launch boats but found the growing list prevented launching. Calls of “Boat ahoy!” drew the crowd’s attention to the inky blackness but no boats could be seen and the Commander was was urging a team of men to throw flotsam overboard but the list stopped them getting it over the portside and the ship’s fittings, such as the Captain’s hatch made it too difficult to go over the starboard side and the men gave it up as a bad job.

   The night air was suddenly filled with loud noises from deep within the vessel as she listed further and further over twenty degrees.
Inside the ship everything was not secured was sliding about and banging up against the bulkheads with a series of crashes. Crockery was smashing – boats falling out of their cruches – broken funnel guys swinging anainst the funnel casings. (2)

   As the situation rapidly broke down it was obvious the ship was lost and the voices of the gathered men calling for help quietened momentarily and through this the voice of an officer rang out loud and clear:
“Keep calm men, be British!”

   Then the vessel rapidly began to heal over again and the men on the Portside began to climb over the sides and jump into the water with the Commander jumping two seconds ahead of Forrester who hit his face on the side of the vessel on his fall of thirty feet into the water. On hitting the water Forrester was struck by another falling seaman who almost pulled him down but the young midshipman pulled himself free and swam fifty yards to safety to avoid the suction of the battleship as it made its final journey to the bottom of the straits.
I watched her last moments. The noise of crashing furniture and smashing crockery was continuous. Slowly her stern lifted until it was dimly outlined against the deep midnight sky. Slowly her bows slid further and further under until, with a final lurch, she turned completely over and disappeared bottom upwards in a mass of bubbles. (3)
Forrester made for the nearby HMS Cornwallis two and a half miles away worrying about sharks and listening to the shrieks and calls of other men in the water grow more and more infrequent. Having jettisoned his water logged pyjamas he made it onto a spar for a rest before once again plunging into the cold water but found that the current was pushing him off course and he couldn’t even get into the Cornwallis’ searchlight beams. He looked around for another vessel and was able to signal a rowboat but promptly fainted as soon as he was pulled aboard after all of his exertions. The Cornwallis was too far away and the current was too strong with only one man getting no nearer than two hundred yards away before they were picked up. The Goliath had also laid only a hundred yards from the shore but none of the crew were able to swim against the current to reach it.

   Following the torpedoing it took the surrounding ships vital moments to realise the situation. From the Cornwallis those on duty on the bridge believed that they had heard a heavy gun firing. As the cries of the men gathered on the Goliath’s deck reached them the first thought was it was exultant French soldiers cheering a victory, others were dulled bu the constant rifle fire from the trenches before it became clear that they were actually hearing “Ship Ahoy!”

   On the nearby HMS Majestic Petty Officer Cowie was shaken from his hammock by the explosions and burst out onto the deck as the ship’s boats were ordered away to search for survivors in the water. “The Goliath was gone, but in the water were struggling men and floating wreckage of every description” (4) The men on the deck stared helplessly into the darkness as the current washed the “struggling mass of humanity down upon us”.

   Rope, life belts and flotsam were thrown overboard for the men to cling to and Cowie, in absence of orders forbidding their use, brought the searchlights on to scour the dark and illuminate those in the water to help the lifeboats recover who they could. However those in the water tried to avoid the Majestic believing she was steaming towards them when in fact they were caught in the current and the old battleship was stationary.

   For the boats in the water the current was proving quite a problem with Signalman Beale of the Cornwallis recording that:
I never want to have a more heart rending job! It was awful while picking up one man to hear another not twenty yards away shouting “Picket Boat, Help! Quick! I’m nearly done!” when we knew that the current was sweeping him down stream into the darkness. (5)
Though he also noted that the men retained their sense of humour and that ten minutes after getting into the boat and getting a jumper or coat from one of their rescuers would soon make a joke about having only doing their washing just the day before. Another issue the lifeboats had was with the searchlights playing across the darkness stopping their eyes from adjusting to the darkness.
We had to work at a slow speed as our searchlights and those of other ships only served to make the darkness more terrible, and we were afraid of running down the men struggling in the water. (6)

      Admiral, Sir Rosalin Wemys had stood on the deck of the cruiser Eurayles, a great coat pulled over his pyjamas, having been similarly been jolted out of bed by the action, watching the searchlights play across the water. He described the speed of the incident in his post war book:
They appeared to our horrified vision of men struggling in the water, all the clearer for the surrounding darkness. The night was perfectly still and it was difficult to believe that the fighting lay only hundred yards distance, a noise which gradually rose and fell and finally subsided as the men were picked up or drowned until at last stillness once more reigned and no sign were left of the tragedy that had so suddenly overtaken Goliath. (7)

   Forrester was brought aboard a trawler and given some clothes before transferring to the Lord Nelson with the other survivors. The men swapped stories of their escapes with a Lieutenant telling the young Midshipman that his watch had stopped at 1:29 a.m. when he hit the water and believed the battleship had sunk in three and a half minutes. News that the Commander had survived was greeted well but tinged with grief for the loss of Captain Thomas Shelford who was killed in the water by a falling boat which crushed him beneath its weight. Another of the fallen was the young Ship’s boy Alfred Gadd. One Midshipman was not picked up until two days later when he was found floating in his Gieve safety waistcoat but he was too exhausted from his exertions and sadly passed away soon afterwards.

   The current and the swiftness of the sinking meant relatively few were saved with 570 men being killed and 20 officers and 130 men saved with the former surviving in greater numbers as their quarters were above deck and the rest of the crew were “caught like rats in a trap, and were drowned below” (8)

   The loss had a bad effect on the crews of the other battleships with the speed of the attack and sinking as well as the high rate of loss. Cowie would later record that “the sight of those poor fellows struggling in the water and the realisation of the swiftness of the catastrophe, were significant to unnerve the strongest men.” For the crewmen on the decks of the nearby battleships they were left feeling helpless:

   One would imagine that after having seen hundreds of dead and wounded one would be inured to shocks of all kinds, but nothing we had experienced affected us so profoundly as the sight of these men, swept past in the darkness on a five-knot current, and the sound of their voices rising from the water (9)

End Notes:

1. Ashmead-Bartlett E. The uncensored Dardanelles Loc 1807
2. Forester W    From Dartmouth to the Dardanelles Loc 1159
3. Ibid. Loc 1474
4. Goodchild, G. The Last cruise of the Majestic p.103
5. Stewart A. & Peshall C, The Immortal Gamble p. 171
6. Ibid p.171
7. Wester-Wemyss R. The Navy in the Dardanelles campaign, p.83
8. Ashmead-Bartlett E. The uncensored Dardanelles Loc 1816
9. Stewart A & Peshall C, The Immortal Gamble p. 169