100 Events of the Gallipoli Campaign
May 1915
12 May 1915
The battleship HMS Goliath was sunk by three torpedoes from the Turkish destroyer Muavenet-I Millet. Goliath’s Captain, Thomas Lowrie-Shelford, and 570 of his crew were lost.
15 May 1915
On the nights of 15 May and 27 May, Major Percy Overton, New Zealand Mounted Rifles, with others, scouted from No 1 Outpost on Anzac up the valleys towards the heights of Chunuk Bair. His reports indicated that the area was lightly defended and that it might be possible to attack the Turks here and capture these heights. Such an operation could turn the tide at Gallipoli in favour of an Allied victory and from these scouting expeditions the plan for the August offensive from Anzac was born.
17 May 1915
News reaches Gallipoli that a German submarine had successfully passed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Mediterranean.
18 May 1915
Reverend O Creighton, a chaplain with the British 29th Division at Helles, wrote of the Turks:
The Turkish positions only get stronger every day. … They are magnificently well-led, well-armed and very brave and numerous.
19 May 1915
At Anzac, during a major Turkish counter-attack, Karm Singh, a member of the 21st (Kohat) Mountain Battery, Indian Army, remained at his post passing messages although his eyes had been penetrated with shrapnel pellets.
22 May 1915
Death during a night raid on a Turkish trench at Gully Spur, Helles, of Captain Hugh Webb-Bowen, Royal Welsh Fusiliers. Captain Webb-Bowen had arrived at Helles that morning.
24 May 1915
Joseph Murray, Hood Battalion, Royal Naval Division, wrote of one of the main challenges facing the soldiers at Helles:
As one opens the tin [of jam] the flies are so thick that they are squashed in the process. One never sees the jam; one can only see a blue-black mixture of sticky, sickly flies. They drink the sweat on our bodies and our lips and eyes are always covered with them.
25 May 1915
The German submarine U21, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Otto Hersing, torpedoed and sank the battleship HMS Triumph as the ship guarded the ship to shore transports off Anzac Cove. General William Birdwood, commander of the ANZAC Corps, wrote that the Triumph 'suddenly turned just like a fish diving, and went straight to the bottom. It was really rather an awful sight and most solemn'.
After the sinking of the Triumph, Admiral Sir John de Roebuck recalled the British battleships to the comparative safety of Mudros harbour. British war correspondent Compton Mackenzie wrote:
The sense of abandonment was acute … every man had paused to stare at the unfamiliar emptiness of the water … it is certain that the Royal Navy has never executed a more demoralising manoeuvre in the whole of its history.
27 May 1915
U21 torpedoed and sank the battleship HMS Majestic as the ship guarded the ship to shore transports off ‘W’ Beach, Helles. Forty-nine sailors went down with the ship.
30 May 1915
U21 torpedoed and sank the transport Tiger which had been disguised to look like a battlecruiser.