Characters of WW1 - Martin Eric Nasmith VC

Lieutenant Commander Martin Nasmith won the Victoria Cross in the Sea of Marmara (off Turkey) in June 1915 for conspicuous gallantry in command of his submarine, HMS E-11. Such was the carnage suffered by the Allies on the beaches of Gallipoli, few people have heard of the outstanding success of the Royal Navy submarines in the Dardanelles and inland Sea of Marmara. Four VCs were awarded for the campaign. Unknown to the Allied intelligence organisations, when their troops withdrew from the beaches of Gallipoli, the submarines had brought the Turks to within seven days of running out of ammunition. The course of the war might have been very different!

Nasmith and his fellow submarine commanding officers (COs) were charged with forcing the Dardanelles Strait to enter the Sea of Marmara and to ‘run amuck’. However, the submarines faced two considerable challenges with this. Firstly, dived navigation. The strait is forty miles long, four miles wide at its widest and narrows to just one mile across. It is only 120 feet deep at its shallowest. With currents of up to five knots against the submarines, their maximum dived speed was only three or four knots. The submarines’ batteries could not last a dived passage without surfacing for a charge (in the days before the snorkel mast). However, the second challenge was the Turkish defences. To prevent submarines entering the strait, the Turks had laid at least ten batteries of anti-submarine nets and mines. Moreover, both sides of the strait were lined with artillery forts and searchlights, and any submarine successfully making the transit into the sea beyond would be expected by the Turks on the way back. It was an insane mission, but Nasmith achieved it twice.

On his two patrols he sank several Turkish ships and small craft, often burning or blowing up the smaller craft to save on torpedoes. Since torpedoes were notoriously unreliable, he adapted them so that if they didn’t hit their intended target, they would float to the surface at the end of their run. Nasmith later returned to recover the intact torpedoes and reloaded them. On his second patrol, his submarine had been fitted with a gun. Such was the success of him and his fellow submarine COs, the Turks changed their tactics and abandoned their sea trade to reinforce the Turkish forts at Gallipoli. Instead, they relied on the coastal railway along the north coast. In response, Nasmith used his gun to shell the trains and, on one occasion, sent his second-in-command ashore with explosives to blow up the railway track and a valuable viaduct. The Turkish soldiers were forced to march to the front, carrying their ammunition on mules and camels. He even penetrated the harbour of Constantinople (Istanbul) and launched an attack on ships berthed alongside the quays there, causing panic in the city.

I have written about Nasmith’s exploits in more detail in my first submarine novel, The Custom of the Trade. It’s sequel, Where the Baltic Ice is Thin, focuses on an equally brilliant submarine campaign in the Baltic. Both books are largely based on factual history.