Naval disaster led to Gallipoli landing
In a graveyard on the sea bottom sits the French battleship Bouvet - lost 100 years ago on Wednesday - a tragedy which led directly to the Australian landing on Gallipoli.
Bouvet struck a Turkish mine and was also hit by a Turkish shell, sinking in less than a minute and taking with her 600 crew.
Lost the same day were British battleships Irresistible and Ocean while Inflexible was severely damaged.
This was the final roll of the dice of a naval campaign which Britain's first lord of the admiralty Winston Churchill believed would be sufficient to force Turkey out of the war, a conference in Canberra heard on Wednesday.
The events of March 18, 1915 showed it wouldn't.
Eerie vision by Turkish film maker Savas Karakas and underwater researcher Selcuk Kolay shows Bouvet and many of the wrecks of this campaign lying just where they settled.
Canadian historian Christopher Bell said Churchill believed the naval campaign would be a low risk venture.
Using the might of the Royal Navy and French Navy to force passage of the Dardanelles seaway, Turkey, an ally of Germany, would be forced out of the war.
The campaign started on February 19 and despite a promising start made little progress against Turkish guns and minefields.
The final push launched on March 18 proved disastrous.
With a third of the fleet lost for no appreciable gain, Professor Bell said the campaign should have been called off but politicians in London believed it would be seen as a humiliating loss.
Churchill believed one more push would succeed, but British admiral John de Robeck concluded the only way it could was by landing troops to neutralise the Turkish guns.
From that grew the campaign to land Australian and New Zealand troops on Gallipoli, which proceeded on April 25.
