The British covering force consisted mainly of the 86th Brigade (29th Division), under Brigadier-General S. W. Hare, but two battalions of the 87th Brigade and half a battalion of the 88th were attached to it, beside the Plymouth Battalion of the Royal Naval Division, as the General’s own reserve, and the Anson Battalion, detailed for beach duties. Their three transports were escorted by the _Euryalus_ (flagship of Admiral Wemyss, commanding the first and fourth of the seven squadrons into which the fleet was divided), the _Implacable_, and the _Cornwallis_, and their station was Tenedos. The next afternoon (Saturday, April 24) they were followed from Mudros harbour by the _Queen Elizabeth_ (flagship of Admiral de Robeck), with Sir Ian Hamilton and the General Headquarter Staff on board, leading the other battleships in line ahead. After them went the Anzac covering force, consisting of the 3rd Brigade under Colonel Sinclair Maclagan (the Queensland, South Australian, West Australian, and a mixed Australian and Tasmanian battalion). The remainder of the Anzac army corps followed, escorted by the _Queen_ (flagship of Admiral Thursby, commanding the second squadron), the _London_, and the _Prince of Wales_. Their destination was a point off Imbros, near Cape Kephalos, where they were to wait during the night till the moon went down. The covering force occupied four transports, beside the 1500 men of the brigade placed upon the _Queen_. General Birdwood’s headquarters were on the _Minnewaska_, and about thirty transports carried the remainder of his corps. As they passed out of harbour, leaving the Lemnian shore with which many, by practised landings, had become familiar, they too were greeted with tumultuous cheering by the ships which had not started yet, and tumultuously they replied. Moved onward irresistibly into imminent death, knowing that by the morrow’s afternoon at least one in ten of their numbers would have fallen in all the splendour of youthful vitality, still they cheered like schoolboys bound for a football match or a holiday by the sea. Excitement, comradeship, the infectious joy of confronting a dangerous enterprise side by side, made them cheer. Never before had those men known what battle means, but the sinking dread of the unknown, which all men feel as the shadow of extreme peril approaches, was allayed by the renunciation of self, and the clear belief that, whoever else was wrong in the world, it was not they.