Few events varied the monotony of trench warfare. The mine-sweeper _Hythe_ was sunk in collision on October 28 and 155 men lost, including two military officers. The submarine E20 was sunk in the Sea of Marmora early in November, Lieut.-Commander Clyfford and nine others being rescued and made prisoner. On November 15 part of the 156th Brigade (52nd Division) captured nearly 300 yards of Turkish trench between the Vineyard and the Gully Ravine. Once or twice the Turks attempted half-hearted attacks both at Helles and Anzac, but were easily repulsed. For the rest, little was done, except bombing, mining, and preparing for the winter. Wooden beams and sheets of plate iron arrived in some quantity, and were especially needed at Anzac. The beaches were, as far as possible, cleared. Stores which had been piled up in the gullies were removed to higher positions. On the left, among the Anzac foothills, Brigadier-General Monash ordered vast caverns to be excavated as sheltered barracks for his 4th Brigade. Up at the “Apex,” long subterranean galleries were dug clean through the crest of Rhododendron Ridge, so as to command the deep ravines between it and Battleship Hill. On one occasion the fumes in an exploded mine tunnel caused several deaths. On another, an Anzac party was cut off in a gallery exploded by a Turkish mine, but dug themselves out and reappeared over the parapet after three days’ burial.[231] [Sidenote: GREAT STORM OF NOVEMBER] To the end of November the weather remained fairly fine, except for heavy showers and occasional mists and frosts. The dust was laid, even at Helles and Suvla; flies almost disappeared, and the prevailing sickness was much reduced. But on November 27 and the following four days a natural disaster as deadly as a serious engagement befell the Peninsula. A heavy south-westerly gale brought with it a thunderstorm accompanied with torrents of rain, which poured down upon the Ægean and the Peninsula for nearly twenty-four hours. In half an hour the wind rose to a hurricane, lashing the sea to tempest. At Kephalos one of the ships forming a breakwater was sunk, and all the craft inside the little harbour were driven ashore. At Helles and Suvla the light piers and landing-stages were destroyed, and the shores strewn with wreck. A destroyer was driven ashore in Suvla Bay. At Anzac the trenches were filled with water, and streams roared down the gullies. The fate of Suvla was more terrible. Across a long and deep ravine leading obliquely down from the “whale-back” ridge of Kiretch Tepe Sirt, high parapets had been constructed by Turks and British alike. Against these parapets the water was dammed up, as in a reservoir. They gave way, as when a reservoir’s embankment bursts, and the weight of accumulated water swept down the ravine into the valley, and from the valley into the Salt Lake and the shore, bearing with it stores and equipment, and mule-carts and mules and the drowning bodies of Turks and Britons,