On Feb. 19, 1915, British warships attempted to force the heavy Turkish defenses of the Dardanelles, the entrance to the straits in northern Turkey that are the key link between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The British struck in search of an indirect approach to victory. World War I was in stalemate, the two sides locked into trench warfare in northern France. The hope was that a battle fleet appearing off Istanbul would compel Turkey's capitulation, secure a supply route to hard-pressed Russia, and inspire the Balkan states to join the Allied war effort and eventually to attack Austro-Hungary, thereby pressuring Germany.
The British government gave much consideration to the eventual division of the Ottoman lands once the straits were captured but very little to how the operation might actually be executed. The amateurish preparation and the resulting fiasco are recounted with sharp, taut precision in “Gallipoli: The End of the Myth,” Robin Prior's near-definitive analysis of the campaign.
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