To close that gap at the apex was obviously the first essential move, and on Sunday, May 2 (a week after the landing), a determined effort was made. The objective was a round knoll, known as Baby 700, on the slope of Sari Bair. It stood about three hundred yards beyond the lines on Pope’s Hill, and its possession would have blocked the entrance from which the enemy commanded large sections of Monash Gully and Shrapnel Gully. The attempt began at 7 p.m. with a rapid bombardment, and throughout the night the Australians of the 13th and 16th Battalions endeavoured to storm the terrible position. The Otago Battalion was sent in support; then part of the Nelson (R.N.D.), and after midnight the Portsmouth and Chatham (R.M.L.I.). The Australians gained some trenches near the Bloody Angle, but the plateau had by now been carefully fortified with wire and machine-guns. It was impossible for our destroyers, firing up the length of Shrapnel Gully, to distinguish friend from foe. Five shells, perhaps coming from them, temporarily checked and divided the Portsmouth Battalion in its advance. It was speedily rallied, but under the heavy machine-gun and rifle fire no support was able to establish the position at the Bloody Angle. Parties of the 13th, 16th, and Otago Battalions clung to the edges of the steep ascent till far into May 3. But in the end, all survivors returned to the original lines. The attempt failed, and it cost 800 men.[102] On the following day (May 4) an effort to seize Gaba Tepe and end the continuous loss inflicted by its shrapnel upon the beach and upon bathers in Anzac Cove also failed, owing to the mass and strength of wire along the edge of the sea. Meantime, the warships had been continuously assisting all troops on sea and land. On the 27th the _Queen Elizabeth_, hearing from a seaplane that the _Goeben_ had ventured down the strait, apparently with the object of firing over the Peninsula, forestalled that intention by dropping one of her largest shells from near Gaba Tepe into the strait. Narrowly missed, the _Goeben_ retired under shelter of the steep shore, but the _Queen Elizabeth’s_ second shell sank a transport in the middle of the current.