During the first attempt/attack the French
supplied three battleships, which was a massive amount of money in those days
because a fully equipped battleship with men and crew cost a lot of money to
produce and train. But during the first attempt they lost one of their ships to
Turkish mines. The ship was called the Bouvet and was rocked after a huge
explosion that hit its bow (AustraliaGov, The Bouvet, 2013).The entire ship was sunk in less than three minutes and
nearly the entire crew of 639 was lost. There is a memorial there to this very
day were the ship’s crew were washed ashore. The memorial states:
On March 18th 1915 the Bouvet Cruiser joined the Dardanelles sea war to pass through the Strait toward Istanbul. There Turkish Artillery and floating mines hit it and it sank in a very short time, three minutes, with its 639 crew. Its location in the waters of the Dardanelles is on the Soyandere Intepe line 750m away from this point. Although Turkish Artillery stopped firing very few of its crew was saved and they came out on the land at this point.
The Bouvet, along with its crew, was one of the French’s
major losses. While the Bouvet sunk, the French also lost many men on the shore
during the landing of Gallipoli.