This was Admiral Carden's plan, and it was of course discussed by the Admiralty War Group, though never officially by the Board of Admiralty; and it is interesting to discover the general attitude of its naval members toward the scheme. Of these by far the most influential was Lord Fisher, who seems from the first instinctively to have distrusted it, to have been occupied with preparing for other {115} operations elsewhere, and to have left it, so long as it seemed to him likely to remain subsidiary and additional to these, in the admittedly capable hands of Admiral Sir Henry Jackson--not a regular member of the War Group, but frequently consulted--and the then Chief of the Staff, Admiral Henry Oliver. Sir Arthur Wilson seems on the whole to have taken up much the same attitude as that of Lord Fisher. Admiral Oliver believed in its possibilities, though these would largely depend, of course, upon factors, whose importance could only be determined by experiment. At the same time, he would apparently have preferred to wait until the army could coöperate on a big scale. Commodore Bartolomé, while agreeing in the preferability of a combined naval and military operation, believed that, at a push, in a purely naval attack, about half the forces could get through, though what they would do then was a matter upon which he felt himself in the dark. None of these sailors believed, since it could always be broken off, that the proposed naval attack could lead to disaster. All assumed the necessity, as seen by the War Council, from a political point of view, of immediate action; and all assumed it to be the case, on the authority of Lord Kitchener, that no troops were at the moment available. Thus we come to the 13th of January, the very critical date when, at a meeting of the War Council, Mr. Churchill, with additional details, submitted Admiral Carden's plans. The outer forts having been destroyed, as could be done, it was believed, without the bombarding ships coming into range of their guns, {116} the inner would be attacked both from the Straits and by indirect fire across the Gallipoli Peninsula. Three modern vessels and about a dozen old battleships would, it was thought, suffice for the operation; and these could be spared without sensibly depleting our naval strength elsewhere. Further, the _Queen Elizabeth_, now ready for her trials and about to carry these out at Gibraltar, could instead fledge her virgin guns upon the forts of the Dardanelles.