Chapter 36 – Dacre

Many details included in this chapter are taken directly by AE2 Submarine Commander Dacre Stoker’s autobiographical account Straws in the Wind . The details included in this chapter are taken mainly from pages 103-109, including:

Commander Dacre Stoker’s attempt to pass the Dardanelles in the submarine AE2 on the night of 23/24 April 1915 failed when the shaft which worked the foremost diving rudders broke at the moment he attempted to dive. He returned and repaired  the damage next morning, then successfully completed a test dive (pp103-104). He notes that the disappointment at the anti-climax was indescribable.

Towards the evening, the Queen Elizabeth arrived and Admiral de Robeck sent for Commander Stoker. The Admiral was sympathetic and ordered Stoker to “try again tomorrow” (p.105).

Additional orders to attack and sink, if possible, any mine-dropping ships followed, including instructions to “generally run amok” from the Chief of Staff, Commodore Keyes (p. 106).

Stoker reflects on his new orders: “Now, if you searched the whole world over I doubt you would find a much more unpleasant spot to carry out a submarine attack than this Narrows of Chanak. Half a mile wide, with a current of three to five knots, it is certainly not an ideal place for manoeuvres in a comparatively slow-moving and difficultly turned submarine.” (p. 106).

Details of passage into the Dardanelles Straits from 3:00am on 25 April 1915, search lights, shelling from shore and diving to scrape through the mooring wires of the minefield are recounted (p. 107-109).

Fred and Elizabeth Brenchley, in Stoker’s Submarine , describe the mission of Lieutenant Holbrook who took a smaller B-class submarine B11 beneath the minefield and sunk a ship at The Narrows in December 1914. He then returned as a hero and was awarded a Victoria Cross on 22 December 1915 (pp. 56-58). They note that Holbrook’s fame in Australia was so great that the residents of the small town of Germantown in southern NSW, nervous about its image, changed its name to Holbrook (p. 58).