Three months elapsed before the real attack began. On February 9, 1915, five British warships, the _Inflexible_, _Agamemnon_, _Cornwallis_, _Vengeance_, and _Triumph_, along with the French cruisers _Bouvet_, _Suffren_, and _Gaulois_, and a flotilla of destroyers, turned their guns on the entrance forts once more. Behind the battle line lay the _Ark Royal_, a mother ship for seaplanes. The aircraft which ascended from her decks carried observers, whose duty it was to direct the gunnery. Long-range firing began at eight in the morning, and before long the forts seemed to be smothered in bursting shells. Hits were frequently made both on the forts at Cape Helles and at Kum Kale, on the opposite shore; but what happened to the low earthworks of the batteries at Sedd-el-Bahr was difficult to ascertain. The forts did not reply, and Admiral Carden, who was in command of the bombarding fleet, thought that they must be out of action. Shortly before three in the afternoon he ordered six of his ships to close in, and bring all their guns to bear on the forts. As they did so the silent batteries awoke to life, and shells fell fast and thick around the attacking vessels. The Turkish fire, however, was badly aimed, and not a single ship was hit. By sundown the Gallipoli batteries were again silent; but Kum Kale was still firing when dusk began to fall, and Admiral Carden had to withdraw his fleet for the night. Next day there was bad weather, which continued for a week, and the attack could not be resumed until the 25th. The _Queen Elizabeth_, _Agamemnon_, _Irresistible_, and _Gaulois_ pounded the forts at such a long range that the guns on shore could not reach them. At the end of an hour and a half the _Queen Elizabeth_ had silenced the forts at Cape Helles, but not before the _Agamemnon_ had been struck by a shell which killed eight men and wounded five others. Under the protection of the super-Dreadnought's fire, the _Vengeance_ and _Cornwallis_ now steamed in to complete the destruction of the forts. Meanwhile the _Irresistible_ and the _Gaulois_ had severely hammered the Kum Kale batteries and the _Suffren_ and _Charlemagne_ were told off to put the finishing touches to the work of their bigger sisters. By 5.15 that evening all the forts at the entrance to the Dardanelles were rubbish heaps. The Turkish gunners had fought pluckily for seven hours against overwhelming odds, and their defeat brought them no discredit. So far, the naval attack had been quite successful.