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.