Dardanelles Ancient Fortifications. (Ā© Forrest)
The Dardanelles ā early incursions and defence
The name Dardanelles is derived from the ancient Greek city Dardanus in the region Dardania on the Asian side of the Strait, and from Helle, a character from Greek mythology linked to the story of Jason and the Argonauts. According to legend, Helle drowned in the Dardanelles after falling from the back of a winged ram. Helle also gave her name to Cape Helles at the tip of the Gallipoli peninsula and to the Hellespont, which in classical literature was the part of the Strait between Sestos on the European shore and Abydos on the Asiatic shore, close to what is now known as Nagara Point. The original settlers on the Gallipoli peninsula were from Thrace and would have known it at that time as the Thracian Chersonese; they lived in a number of small towns or on farms on either side of the Dardanelles.
The shores of the Dardanelles undoubtedly saw the arrival of hundreds of ships from Sparta, Athens, Ithaca, Thessaly and other such places described by Homer in the Iliad during the time of the Trojan War. The first significant military use of the Strait was when Darius I of Persia moved troops across the Hellespont to support the Persian invasion of Europe, circa 500 BC. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus records that Dariusās heir, Xerxes I, built two bridges across the ānarrowest part of the Hellespontā to move his army across and so invade Thrace and Greece, circa 480 BC. The bridges were destroyed by a storm before completion, so Xerxes had the flowing water branded with red-hot irons and lashed as a punishment; crueller still, the bridge builders were beheaded. The army successfully crossed at the next attempt by lashing some 300 boats together facing the current to create two floating bridges, suitably anchored to avoid being washed away. Over these boats six large cables were stretched, and on them were fastened strong timbers. Walls were built on either side of the bridges so that the horses and pack animals would not see the water and take fright. In this way more than 200,000 troops crossed from Asia into Europe. In 334 BC, the Greek army of Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont in the opposite direction to conquer Asia. Two hundred years later, the waterway and its shores came under the administration of Rome.
Christian Emperor Constantine, ruler of the Eastern Roman Empire, or the Byzantine Empire, recognized the strategic importance of the waterway between the Black Sea and the Aegean, and also the commercial significance of the ancient city of Byzantium, which he made his capital city. It was renamed Constantinople after Constantineās death in 337 AD, and for more than a thousand years stood as the gateway that separated Christian Europe from Islam until it fell to the Ottomans in 1453. In the preceding century the Ottomans had advanced from central Anatolia, expanding east toward the Caspian Sea and Arabia, and heading west to cross both the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus into the Balkans. Although the Byzantine Empire was in decline and Constantinople was under economic siege, the city was bypassed and so remained aloof, having a strange sort of neutrality with the invader gobbling up its ancient lands. Life in Constantinople went on in much the same way as before, the population being adequately supplied from the sea by independent trading states such as Venice, Florence and Genoa. Yet beyond the city walls hundreds of Byzantine fortresses were absorbed by the Ottomans, including those at Sestos and Gallipoli. According to eighteenth-century Turkish writer Evliya Celebi in his Book of Travels, the hexagonal Greek castle at Gallipoli had a compliment of 300 soldiers but was destroyed by an earthquake in 1356, and the ruin was occupied by Ottoman forces.
The Ottoman Empire had embraced gunpowder early in its rise to power, first using firearms in the late fourteenth century. Bronze cannons soon followed, then, during the final siege of Constantinople, so did massive siege bombards. These cast bronze guns of 5m in length were capable of firing huge stone balls, 80cm in diameter and weighing more than 500kg, for a distance of over 500m. The irony of the Ottoman use of the bombard is that the Hungarian gunfounder, Urban, who was able to produce such a large weapon, first offered it to the Byzantine defenders of Constantinople but they had neither the financial nor material resources to create such a weapon. The Ottomans, under the command of Sultan Mehmed II, were able to accept Urbanās services, and the largest super-bombard, measuring more than 8m long, was cast in Adrianople, modern-day Erdine, the capital of the Ottomans in Thrace. Hundreds of men and sixty oxen were required to move the huge weapon 200km to its firing position outside Constantinople. The Ottomans used more than sixty artillery pieces of various sizes to attack Constantinople, but as some guns were cast in the open their quality was poor and may have burst in use. A building was constructed outside Constantinopleās city walls in the Galata district specifically for the casting of cannon. This became known as the Tophane (arsenal) and was a centre for Ottoman gun production up to the First World War.
The āDardanelles Gunā ā a Great Bombard displayed at the Royal Armouries Museum, Fort Nelson, Hampshire. Cast by bronze-founder Munir Ali in 1464, it has a bore of 635mm and was capable of firing a 300kg ball to a distance of 1,500m. It is a masterpiece of medieval technology, having been cast in two pieces ā powder chamber and barrel ā which screw together. In 1866, during his state visit to London, Sultan Abdulaziz gave the Dardanelles Gun to Queen Victoria as a present. (Ā© Forrest)
By circa 1400, the Dardanelles were firmly under the control of the Ottomans, but the first use of artillery to attack ships in the Dardanelles was in 1444. Ottoman troops were being transported from the Asian shore to the European shore, and Ottoman guns fired upon Burgundian ships that were trying to prevent the transfer. Although it is not known what type of cannon were used the significance is that the guns were firing at moving targets, whereas the primitive artillery of this time was normally used against static targets.
As the Ottomans absorbed the Byzantine Empire, so they recognized the strategic importance of the Dardanelles. Two castles were built in 1452 to control what we now know as the Narrows ā Kilid Bahr (meaning lock of the sea) on the peninsula shore, and Kale-i Sultaniye (castle of the sultan ā now known as Cimenlik Kalesi) at Canakkale. Incredibly, a number of the fifteenth-century bombards located at these forts were still in service more than 400 years later. The Dardanelles Gun, now on display at the Royal Armouries Museum of Artillery at Fort Nelson, Hampshire, dates from 1464, and is a magnificent example of medieval technology having been cast in two pieces, powder chamber and barrel, which screw together. This bombard was capable of firing a 300kg ball to a distance of 1,500m.
The powerful Ottoman Navy protected the empireās sea lanes and controlled the waters far into the Mediterranean. The first Ottoman naval dockyard was built at Gallipoli harbour, and became the principal naval base until superseded by the yards built at Constantinople in 1515. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, another important maritime power ā the Venetians ā challenged the Ottomansā supremacy and proved to be more than a match for them during a number of gruelling battles in waters of the Aegean and the Dardanelles. The Ottoman Navy experimented with mounting their biggest bombards on a few of their ships, although results were far from satisfactory due to the massive energy of the recoil acting on the wooden hull. It was during the Sixth Ottoman-Venetian War, in the middle of the seventeenth century, that a Venetian fleet blockaded the Dardanelles to prevent Ottoman ships resupplying the armies fighting for islands in the Aegean. After at least four significant naval engagements involving sailing vessels, galleys and galleasses (a larger type of galley with a gun deck) during the years 1654 to 1657, the Ottomans were able to finally clear the threat of blockade. It was at this time that the forts either side of the entrance to the Dardanelles were built ā Sedd el Bahr (key...
