Chapter 46 – Roger

Accounts of the meeting on naval flagship Queen Elizabeth, soon after midnight in the evening of 25/26 April 1915, at which Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Ian Hamilton was informed of the request to evacuate and he penned his famous reply, are included in many books written on the Gallipoli campaign. Some first-hand accounts indicate that Hamilton’s decision not to evacuate the troops was made based mainly on Advice against this course of action from Admiral Thursby, Naval commander in charge of the ANZAC landing. However, some accounts indicate that the news of AE2 was influential.

In Gallipoli Diary , Ian Hamilton gives his version of events (pp. 142-144). Hamilton states that he was roused by Braithwaite at “12.5 a.m.” after one hour’s sleep. He flung on his “British Warm” and crossed to the dining saloon where he and his Chief of Staff Braithwaite met with naval commanders Admiral de Robeck, Admiral Thursby, and Commodore Keyes, as well as Australian staff officers Generals Carruthers and Cuncliffe Owen. Hamilton read Birdwood’s message aloud, then, to gain time, asked the Australians about the tactical position on shore, but they were unable to add anything to Birdwood’s statement. Hamilton includes the subsequent dialogue with Admiral Thursby, commander of the Naval ships landing the ANZACs before his decision to reject the request to evacuate, and the text of Hamilton’s reply.

In the first volume of his memoirs, The Narrow Seas to the Dardanelles 1910-1915 , Roger Keyes describes the presentation of General Birdwood’s note to Commander-in-Chief General Sir Ian Hamilton on the night of 25/26 April 1915 (pp. 303-304). Keyes states that Hamilton read the note aloud and that when asked for his opinion, Admiral Thursby “used some very strong language about evacuation.” Keyes supported Thursby’s view that evacuation should not be ordered. Keyes states that at this moment he received the signal from Lieutenant-Commander Stoker of AE2. He read it aloud and added “Tell them this. It is an omen—an Australian submarine has done the finest feat in submarine history and is going to torpedo all the ships bringing reinforcements, supplies and ammunition to Gallipoli.” Hamilton nodded. Keyes states of the next morning: “At daylight, under difficult conditions of light, we started to plaster the hillside with high-explosive and shrapnel shell of all calibres, at any point indicated by our observation officers ashore, and watched the Australians and New Zealanders making magnificent progress, retaking all the positions they were driven out of the night before.” (p. 305).

Lieutenant Charles Brodie, assistant to Commodore Roger Keyes, in Forlorn Hope 1915 – The Submarine Passage of the Dardanelles , describes how he flow over the beached E15, captained by his twin brother Lieutenant-Commander Theodore Brodie, and later participated in a submarine mission to torpedo her, coming within 100 yards (pp. 39-49). He states that Keyes came out of the meeting with Hamilton, having delivered the message of AE2’s success beaming, to say “It’s done the trick” (p. 69), and that Keyes “felt that his instincts for taking risks and his faith in his submarines had been justified.” (p. 70)

Charles Bean includes an account of this meeting in Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18 , vol I (pp. 458-461). Bean notes that Hamilton’s account is vivid and accurate, but that Bean has deliberately taken details from a different source, but they agree in essential particulars. Bean does not place an emphasis on the influence of the news of AE2 on the decision to stay.

Dacre Stoker, commander of submarine AE2 states in his biography Straws in the Wind , that he only learned from Admiral Keyes years later that his signal was received and delivered to him at a critical moment, when the Council of War on Queen Elizabeth “had almost decided for evacuation, when receipt of the news that a submarine had got through altered the whole discussion, and it was decided to hold on.”