Gallipoli (48 page)

Privately? Fisher is ropeable. Even as Prime Minister of Australia, he cannot be privy to the manner in which Australians are being used? And the results of their actions?

Outrageous.

30 APRIL 1915, SEA OF MARMARA, THE END IS IN THEIR SIGHTS

What an extraordinary six days for those aboard the
AE2
since entering the Dardanelles! It has been filled with a number of narrow escapes, a great many frustrations as torpedo after torpedo has misfired or outright missed, but also a few triumphs.

For the pure fun of it, at one point they had surfaced next to a group of Turkish fishing boats and hoisted a large ensign, and had been thrilled to see the fishermen supplicating the heavens to spare their lives before frantically heading to shore. There, they tell tales of the gigantic submarine – ‘
Tahtelbahiri gördük!
' – loose in the Sea of Marmara, which had been the point of the exercise all along.

And the day before, they had been stunned to come across another British sub,
E14
, which – now that Stoker and his men had demonstrated that it
was
possible to go through the Dardanelles – had been ordered to follow suit and create its own havoc.

Stoker had begged the commander of
E14
for torpedoes, but the sub's skipper, Commander Edward Courtney Boyle, had declined, saying they needed those torpedoes themselves, and had further ordered him to meet up at this spot 24 hours hence, which is why Stoker is here now … on the surface, looking in vain for their sister sub.

Coming the other way, heading north, is a Turkish torpedo boat,
Sultanhisar
, under the command of Kaptan Riza, who, by the by, is having a very bad couple of days. One of
Sultanhisar
's tasks is to ferry no less than General Liman von Sanders from his quarters in the town of Gallipoli back and forth to Maidos every day, but on this day – when General von Sanders had been late – Riza had obeyed the orders of senior Turkish officers to take the wounded instead. Luckily, the Turkish captain had arrived back just in time for von Sanders' arrival at the dock at Maidos.

The German general, though, was having the worst of days, what with the Brits bombing the town of Maidos to hell and back. So when he learns from the young Turkish captain that they have an unscheduled stop to pick up a boat on their way to Gallipoli, he quickly becomes carpet-biting mad – as only a commanding German officer can.

‘A General cannot be kept back from his way for a boat. You Turks are all the same. You don't know your duty!' he'd yelled at the stunned Ali Riza.
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And the rage didn't stop there, for now Riza and his vessel and crew have been sent back to Constantinople to be replaced by another.

Good – Riza would rather not see von Sanders again in the near future.

Still, while he is on his way, he is eager to see if he can find the submarine everyone is talking about. He diverts to the waters around Karaburun Point at the high end of the Dardanelles Straits to have a look.

And there is something now.

It is a black vessel, very low in the water, that just
might
be a submarine, and Captain Riza quickly orders his crew to squeeze the last possible knot out of their old tub so they can investigate.

Stoker sees the torpedo boat all right and quickly gives the order to dive, just as he has done hundreds of times before without a problem. The saddle ballast tanks are filled with seawater, the hydroplanes take on a five degree downward angle and the twin screws drive the submarine into the sea. This time, however,
AE2
no sooner slips beneath the surface, its bow heading down, than something goes radically amiss. Without Stoker giving a command or anyone working a control, the sub suddenly flattens before heading up at such a steep angle that everything not bolted down – including the crew – is sent flying.

Stoker stays calm but is a blur of movement, furiously pulling levers to diving rudders and giving orders to get the water ballast back into the for'ard tanks so it will sink again.

Alas, their sub continues to rise like a whale bursting for air and breaks the surface 1200 yards from
Sultanhisar
, which is now closing fast.

‘
Ateş! Ateş!
Fire! Fire!' Captain Riza roars as the two sailors manning each of the tiny pom-pom guns on both sides of the bow frantically load their shells. It is the crew on the port side who have the best shot, and the gun-layer hurriedly turns the brass wheel to bring the gun onto the target of the hulking black mass emerging from the depths ahead. He peers carefully along the open metal sights and fires.

Not even close.

And nor is
Sultanhisar
, which is the problem.

Captain Riza speaks into the brass voice tube and demands of his Chief Engineer maximum possible speed.

Getting nearer, Captain Riza thinks of his twin torpedo tubes. There could be no more marvellous method of sinking the hated submarine than with the might of a Turkish torpedo. Once within range of 1000 yards, he turns the wheel and swings
Sultanhisar
suddenly to port, upsetting the gunners, who are still firing to no effect.

Once the word comes from the bowels of the boat that the torpedo is primed and loaded, with great excitement Captain Riza shouts, ‘
Ateş!
– Fire!' With the detonation of the old-fashioned gunpowder charge in the torpedo tube – no modern compressed air for them –
Sultanhisar
shudders and shakes, and then … with the gurgle of a barely strangled vomit, out pops the sick torpedo, half-in and half-out of its tube. Only a portion of the charge has ignited. The force of the rushing water dislodges it, and it slowly sinks to the bottom.

‘We must get under again at once,' Stoker says calmly, and this time
AE2
responds instantly as the for'ard tanks are filled. In fact, it responds too well – instead of being a whale bursting for air, the submarine is now closer to a heavy spanner, hurtling down towards the seabed. Stoker gives orders for them to level off, but it is obvious that something is seriously wrong. The sub is losing control and keeps going down.

Urgently now, Stoker orders the water pumped from the for'ard tanks, which should bring the bow up, but
nothing works
. The depth gauge keeps registering the gravity of the situation, that gravity is making them sink like a stone: 40 feet … 60 feet … 80 feet …
100 feet …
and now there is nowhere left to go on the gauge. The submarine is simply not designed to withstand the water pressure this deep. Next, Stoker orders the ballast tanks blown empty with compressed air, despite knowing this will cause the loss of what little control he has of depth. After all, he wants
AE2
to remain submerged, but not at crush depth. There is a screeching sound, as air gushes into the ballast tanks at high pressure – the system is not designed to vent main ballast at anything like this depth …

Is this what happened to
AE1
? Is there some design fault that suddenly sends the sub straight to the bottom? Are they facing their last seconds alive before the hull is crushed and the water rushes in?

Stoker has one last card to play …

‘Group up full astern both motors,' he calls, and in an instant it is done. The diesel engines roar, the propellers whirl anticlockwise, not a word is heard …

Within moments, they will know if they will live or die.

And now a voice rings out. It is the coxswain: ‘She's coming up, sir!'
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And so she is! All eyes turn to the depth gauge as the needle now comes back the other way. They are heading back to the surface, and now at huge speed … where they know a torpedo boat awaits them. The submarine has gained buoyancy as high-pressure air expels the remaining seawater from the ballast tanks.
AE2
is behaving like a cork released at depth. Again, Stoker tries to arrest this mad ascent by flooding the tanks, but the
AE2
continues to rise.

There it is! Aboard
Sultanhisar
, the splendid vision of the submarine again coming up from the depths, exploding through the surface in a spray of water and bubbles. Captain Riza trains every gun he can upon it and heads full throttle forward, even as another Turkish gunboat approaches. A black, cigar-shaped thing explodes through the surface in a spray of water and bubbles … and the whole upper portion of the submarine is now exposed. The Turk's boat ‘fires for all she is worth'.
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