At V Beach, in spite of the incalculable courage and skill of the Irish Regulars and the sailors combined, the landing on the 25th had failed. At W Beach, not much more than half a mile north-west, over the cliff of Cape Helles where the lighthouse and Fort I had stood, the English covering party displayed equal heroism and gained greater success. W Beach is a shallower but longer arc of sandy shore, curving between Cape Helles and Cape Tekke, the two extreme points of the Peninsula. Between the two inaccessible cliffs and the fallen rocks which the sea washes, a gully has been cut by a short watercourse, draining the extremity of the high and slightly undulating plateau in which the Peninsula ends. Except after heavy rains, the gully is dry, but its occasional stream, working upon the sandstone formation, and aided by the north-east wind blowing dust over the plateau’s surface, has piled up low heaps of sand dune, at that time covered with bent-grass, spring flowers, and the aromatic herbs which flourish upon the dry seacoasts of the Near East. Along its gentle curve the actual beach is rather more than a quarter of a mile in length, and its broadest part, where the gully runs out, is some 40 yards across. Hidden in the shallows a strong wire entanglement had been laid, and another protected the whole length of the beach from end to end at the water’s edge. To check communication with V Beach, two redoubts had been constructed upon the plateau south-east, and from them thick entanglements ran down to the cliffs edge at Cape Helles. Other entanglements on the north-west cut off communication with the more distant X Beach. The top rows, as it were, of the theatre, broken near the centre of the gully, were strongly entrenched; machine-guns, commanding the beach by converging fire, were lodged in caves upon the cliffs on both sides; and the land and sea were planted with mines. In his dispatch, Sir Ian Hamilton justly says: “So strong, in fact, were the defences of W Beach that the Turks may well have considered them impregnable, and it is my firm conviction that no finer feat of arms has ever been achieved by the British soldier--or any other soldier--than the storming of these trenches from open boats.”[88]