To Hamilton’s request for ‘two fresh divisions organized as a corps’ (see my post of 6 May), Kitchener replied on 10 May that he could send him only one. This was the 52nd (Lowland) Division, which would take almost a month to arrive.
Hamilton and his staff desperately debated what to do next. If they could not break through soon, there would never be a return to open warfare and progress for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on the peninsula. As it was, the Army’s guns were rationed to two shells a day, although the navy was well stocked with munitions. The order now went out to reduce the gap between the opposing trenches from half a mile to an ‘assaulting distance’ of 200-250 yards. This was to be done by sapping and night advances.
Meanwhile, after the failure of the Second Battle of Krithia Hamilton was expecting a Turkish counter-attack. The War Minister, Enver Pasha, visited the peninsula on 10 May and it was decided to concentrate on destroying the Anzac bridgehead first, starting tomorrow. Following the arrival at Gallipoli of their 2nd Division, in this sector the Turks outnumbered the invaders by more than two to one.
In London, another disaster struck. The superannuated but publicly loved Admiral Fisher resigned on 15 May as First Sea Lord over what he saw as the vulnerability of British ships at the Dardanelles. This and the Shell Crisis (see my post of 8 May) precipitated the collapse of the Liberal government a hundred years ago today. ‘Gallipoli’ was becoming a dirty word and everyone was looking for someone to blame for it.
Just as at Ypres, then, Calderon was sailing with unerring accuracy into the eye of a storm.
Next entry: 18 May 1915
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K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Captain of the 11
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
George Calderon c.1901
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George Calderon, 1912
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Gallipoli: The situation
To Hamilton’s request for ‘two fresh divisions organized as a corps’ (see my post of 6 May), Kitchener replied on 10 May that he could send him only one. This was the 52nd (Lowland) Division, which would take almost a month to arrive.
Hamilton and his staff desperately debated what to do next. If they could not break through soon, there would never be a return to open warfare and progress for the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force on the peninsula. As it was, the Army’s guns were rationed to two shells a day, although the navy was well stocked with munitions. The order now went out to reduce the gap between the opposing trenches from half a mile to an ‘assaulting distance’ of 200-250 yards. This was to be done by sapping and night advances.
Meanwhile, after the failure of the Second Battle of Krithia Hamilton was expecting a Turkish counter-attack. The War Minister, Enver Pasha, visited the peninsula on 10 May and it was decided to concentrate on destroying the Anzac bridgehead first, starting tomorrow. Following the arrival at Gallipoli of their 2nd Division, in this sector the Turks outnumbered the invaders by more than two to one.
In London, another disaster struck. The superannuated but publicly loved Admiral Fisher resigned on 15 May as First Sea Lord over what he saw as the vulnerability of British ships at the Dardanelles. This and the Shell Crisis (see my post of 8 May) precipitated the collapse of the Liberal government a hundred years ago today. ‘Gallipoli’ was becoming a dirty word and everyone was looking for someone to blame for it.
Just as at Ypres, then, Calderon was sailing with unerring accuracy into the eye of a storm.
Next entry: 18 May 1915
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