Meanwhile the Turkish attack upon Egypt had been defeated; certain of our plans in France and Flanders had been altered; and, on February 16th, at an informal meeting of Ministers, a very important decision was arrived at. This was to send the 29th Division, hitherto destined for service on the Western Front, to Lemnos, an island about sixty miles from the Gallipoli Peninsula--the Division sailing, it was hoped, within ten days. At the same time arrangements were to be made for a further force to be sent if necessary from Egypt; horse-boats were to accompany the 29th Division; arrangements were to be made to assemble a large number of lighters and tugs in the Levant; and the Admiralty was also to build special transports and lighters, suitable for the conveying and landing of 50,000 men where these might be wanted. The military effort was already in embryo, therefore, before the purely naval attack had been begun; and, with all this in mind, we can now transfer our attention to the actual scene of conflict. It was on February 19, 1915, that Admiral Carden decided to open the bombardment of the entrance {122} forts, namely those of Cape Helles and Sedd-el-Bahr on the northern and European side, and Kum Kale and Orkanieh on the southern or Asiatic. Admiral Carden himself, then fifty-eight, had had a varied and adventurous career; had taken part in the Egyptian campaign of 1882; receiving the medal and the Khedive's Bronze Star; had been present, two years later, at the Eastern Sudan campaign; and, as a commander in 1897, had been with the punitive expedition that followed the Benin massacres. He had reached flag-rank in 1908, and had been Rear-Admiral to the Atlantic Fleet for a year, being the Admiral Superintendent of Malta Dockyard at the outbreak of war. Under his command, besides a flotilla of destroyers and the seaplane ship _Ark Royal_, were three old English battleships--the _Vengeance_, that had already been employed on the Belgian coast; the _Cornwallis_, that had been at the Nore, in the Third Fleet, christened the "Forlorn Hope"; and the _Triumph_, formerly the Chilian _Libertad_, that had been acting as Depot Ship at Hong Kong. With these were the _Agememnon_, a more modern battleship, though about to have been passed into the Second Fleet; and the _Inflexible_, which we have last heard of helping to sink the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_ near the Antarctic Circle. In addition there were under his command the _Suffren_, _Gaulois_, and _Bouvet_, three old French battleships that, the summer before, had not even been in Commission. All these vessels, however, with the exception of the _Triumph_, carried 12-inch guns and therefore outranged the forts; and, between {123} them, they mounted a secondary armament of fourteen 7.5-inch, ten 9.2-inch, ten 6.4-inch, twenty-four 6-inch, eighteen 5.5-inch, and sixteen 4-inch guns.