Since then the problem had been studied anew on several occasions and in the light of steam navigation. Fisher himself had twice considered making the attempt in the first years of the twentieth century, but had decided that it was ‘mightily hazardous’. There were now, however, good arguments for taking up the matter again. The battleships of the Majestic and Canopus class were all due for scrap within the next fifteen months. Already they were so out of date they could not be used in the first line of battle against the German fleet, but they were perfectly adequate to deal with the Turkish batteries at the Dardanelles. The Germans in their recent advance across Belgium had given a striking demonstration of what modern guns could do against old forts — and the Turkish forts were very old indeed. The British had had their naval mission in Turkey for years, and they knew all about them, gun by gun. It was also known that there was barely a division of Turkish soldiers on the Gallipoli peninsula. These were widely scattered and very badly equipped; and presumably they were still subject to the inertia and the confusion of command which had lost Turkey all her battles in the past five years.

As for Fisher’s other proposal — the bringing in of Greek and Bulgarian soldiers to attack Turkey — there was a good deal to be said for it. Once the fleet was in the Sea of Marmara it was quite likely that Greece and Bulgaria would abandon their neutrality in the hope of gaining still more territory from the Turks. Italy and Rumania too would be greatly influenced, and thus you might end with a grand alliance of the Balkan Christian states against Turkey. But it was the aid that would be brought to Russia that was the really vital thing. Directly the Dardanelles was forced and Constantinople taken, arms and ammunition could be sent to her across the Black Sea, and the 350,000 tons of shipping which had been bottled up would be released. Russia’s grain would once more become available to feed the Allies in the west.

With these ideas in mind Churchill sent off the following message to Vice-Admiral Sackville Carden, who was commanding the squadron outside the Dardanelles:

‘Do you consider the forcing of the Dardanelles by ships alone a practical operation?

‘It is assumed older battleships fitted with mine-bumpers would be used, preceded by colliers or other merchant craft as mine-bumpers and sweepers.

‘Importance of results would justify severe loss.

‘Let me know your views.’

Both Fisher and Sir Henry Jackson (who was attached to the Admiralty staff as an adviser on the Turkish theatre), saw this telegram before it went, and approved it. On January 5 Carden’s answer arrived: ‘With reference to your telegram of 3rd instant, I do not consider Dardanelles can be rushed. They might be forced by extended operations with large number of ships.’

Up to this point nobody, either in the Admiralty or at the War Office, had reached any definite conclusions or made any plan as to what was to be done. But here for the first time was something positive: the Admiral on the spot believed that he might get through the straits, and by a method that had not been broached before: that of a slow progress instead of a rush, a calculated shelling of the forts one by one. Having consulted Sir Henry Jackson and his Chief-of-Staff, Admiral Oliver (but not Fisher), Churchill telegraphed again to Carden:

‘Your view is agreed with by high authorities here. Please telegraph in detail what you think could be done by extended operations, what force would be needed, and how you consider it should be used.’

Admiral Carden’s plan arrived in London on January 11 and it envisaged the employment of a very large force: 12 battleships, 3 battle-cruisers, 3 light cruisers, 1 flotilla leader, 16 destroyers, 6 submarines, 4 seaplanes, 12 minesweepers and a score of other miscellaneous craft. He proposed in the first place to take on the forts at long range and by indirect fire and then, with his minesweepers in the van, to sail directly into the range of the Turkish guns and demolish them seriatim as he went along. Meanwhile a diversionary bombardment would be carried out on the Bulair Lines at the base of the Gallipoli Peninsula and on Gaba Tepe on the western coast. He would require much ammunition, he said, and once he had emerged into the Sea of Marmara he proposed to keep open the straits in his wake by patrolling them with a part of his force. He added,

‘Time required for operations depends greatly on morale of enemy under bombardment; garrison largely stiffened by the Germans; also on weather conditions. Gales now frequent. Might do it all in a month about.’

This plan was discussed and approved in detail at the Admiralty and one very important addition was made to it. The Queen Elizabeth, the first of five new battleships and one of the most powerful vessels afloat, was about to set off for the safe waters of the Mediterranean for her calibration exercises. It was now decided that, if the plan went through, she should proceed to the Dardanelles and calibrate her 15-inch guns on the Turks — a thing she could very easily do without ever coming into the range of the hostile batteries on shore.

The vital meeting of the War Council took place on January 13. Churchill had now become an ardent enthusiast for the plan, and with the aid of a map he explained it to the other members. He argued, Lloyd George says, ‘with all the inexorable force and pertinacity, together with the mastery of detail he always commands when he is really interested in a subject’.

There appears to have been very little discussion. Lord Fisher and Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Wilson had come to the meeting but did not speak. ‘Lord Kitchener,’ it is recorded in the Council’s Minutes, ‘thought the plan worth trying. We could leave off the bombardment if it did not prove effective.’ And finally the decision was made without a dissenting voice: ‘That the Admiralty should prepare for a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli Peninsula with Constantinople as its objective.’

In the years that followed great play was made over the wording of this resolution. ‘It is impossible,’ the Dardanelles Commissioners wrote in their report in 1917, ‘to read all the evidence, or to study the voluminous papers which have been submitted to us, without being struck by the atmosphere of vagueness and want of precision which seems to have characterized the proceedings of the War Council.’ How, it was asked, can a fleet ‘take’ a peninsula? And how could it have Constantinople as its objective? If this meant — as it apparently did mean — that the Fleet should capture and occupy the city, then it was absurd.

Yet in point of fact this is precisely what everyone at the War Council did hope; and it may not have been altogether absurd. Turkey’s position was very weak. Twice within the last five years Constantinople had been thrown into chaos by political revolution. It had the reputation of being an hysterical place, and it was known to be divided against itself. For the moment Enver and the Young Turks might have control, but anything could happen with the appearance of an Allied fleet in the Golden Horn. One had to consider the condition of the crowded streets with their tumbledown wooden houses once the guns had begun to fire — or even at the threat of the guns firing. On past occasions the mob had run loose under far less provocation than this, and Turkish governments had been known to bolt very easily. There existed only two munition factories in Turkey, and both these were on the shore, where they could have been quickly destroyed by naval gunfire along with such military objectives as the naval dockyards, the Galata bridges and the Ministry of War. Constantinople was the centre of all Turkish affairs, economic, political and industrial as well as military. There was no other city in the country to replace it, no network of roads and railways which would have enabled the Army and the government to have rapidly re-grouped in another place. The fall of Constantinople was in effect the fall of the state, even though resistance might have been maintained indefinitely in the mountains. If the arrival of one battle-cruiser, the Goeben, had been enough to bring Turkey into the war then surely it was not altogether too much to hope that the arrival of half a dozen such ships would get her out of it.