Moudros Bay
- May 26
- 5 min read
It was time to leave Myrina. We had spent five beautiful and peaceful days there.
Well, when I say “peaceful”, the final night was less so: first, as we arrived back to Missy Bear (after a gyros supper; simply the best fast-food in the world), a very black cloud loomed. We managed to lock down or stow everything, just before a squall blew through, with an accompanying heavy downpour.
Second, the local Greeks had gone mad, and were screaming their heads off, singing and chanting, and letting off very loud fireworks (as only the Greeks can, and at every opportunity). The Greeks are basketball nuts, and Olympiakos had just beaten Real Madrid in some European final. I feared the smouldering embers would plummet to land on the deck. At the stroke of midnight, the antics ceased, and peace was restored.
And, fortunately, the rain had been a clean rain, so the decks sparkled the next morning. I did some final shopping (First Mate was still in bed nursing a chest infection donated by our departed guests), and I paid the harbour fees: 6 Euros per night!
Before we cast off, I wondered over to the local, quayside statue, above which fluttered the Greek national flag. Unlike many, modern, left-leaning, rent-a-mob, residents of my home country, the Greeks do love their flag, and a statue or two. Early every Sunday morning, the local Greek army marches along the port, stops in front of the statue, and shouts a song, as they lower/raise their fluttering cloth.
This particular bust is of Admiral Pavlos Kountouriotis. He was the commander of the Greek Aegean Fleet during the first Balkans War, and captured Lemnos from the Ottomans in October 1912, with his battleship “Georgios Averof”, thus incorporating the island into the modern state.
The commander recognized the strategic importance of the island (lying only 40NM from the Dardanelles), and turned it into an advanced naval base. The following year (1913) - and orchestrated from the immense bay at Moudros - his fleet blockaded the Dardanelles. On January 5, he defeated the Ottoman fleet at the ‘Battle of Lemnos’, thus securing modern Greek sovereignty over the Aegean Sea. That is still a bone of contention with the Turks to this day.
Possibly as a result of Kountouriotos’ actions, the allies (the ‘Entente’) then - in 1915 - chose Moudros Bay as their main naval base, and logistical stronghold. Their main objective was to force Turkey out of WWI. Turkey had been using Germany to modernise its military. The Turks sided with them, and were now tricked by Germany into fighting the Russians again.
To achieve their objective, the Allies would capture Istanbul. With Turkey forced out of the proceedings, the Dardanelles route would become an all-season supply route to Russia, and help support an eastern front against Germany and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. [DN - I suspect Britain would probably have handed Istanbul back to Greece, who would subsequently have reverted it to 'Constantinople'].
And so, Missy Bear, set off to visit Moudros Bay again. (First Mate and I had visited two years previously, but by hire car, leaving Missy Bear in Myrina, ‘Stepping Stone to Asia Minor’) The NE wind bent/backed around the west of the island, and the resulting northerly air-stream meant Missy Bear gybed southwards. We rounded the SW headland, chased by a larger yacht, and headed east along the southern coast.
The wind lulled and gusted, as it funnelled between the peaks and saddles. When we sailed into a wind shadow, the chasing yacht caught us. But as we found a new patch of wind, we accelerated away from them.
Finally, the wind steadied to a F3 NE, and we tightened the sheets, heeled over and cut along, on a fine reach, at up to 7 knots boat speed. Incredibly, we were caught by numerous butterflies. One, a small Common Blue landed on the stainless steel of the Bimini frame, and then fluttered onto the deck.
We rounded the headland of Moudros Bay, and then had to beat upwind for 5 NM or so, in flat calm waters. The bay is vast, barren and empty of ships, save for a few small, local wooden fishing boats. And a small, grey Maltese Frontex border patrol boat, presumably still looking for illegal immigrants arriving from Turkey?
It’s hard to imagine, but what a difference to its appearance in 1915, when the bay would have been crammed with hundreds of Royal Navy and French battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and supply and transport ships. Fortunately, there is a tiny maritime museum in the town with a collection of black and white photos of that time.
Missy Bear tied up alongside the commercial pier (the small marina is too shallow for us to enter, and full of local boats). The chasing yacht turned out to be a charter boat from Kavala, full of Austrian men.
I walked into the sleepy, slightly ramshackle village, and then out the other side to re-visit the East Mudros Military Cemetery.
The Gallipoli campaign fell into four phases: i) naval operations in early 1915 culminating in unsuccessful attempts by battleships to force the Dardanelles. The Turks had mined the strait, and the had been given too much time to install formidable shore batteries; ii) landings in April, by the British and French armies, and by the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (the Anzacs). But the precipitous terrain was strongly defended; iii) further British landings achieved some success, but the two combatant sides remained deadlocked in a static trench warfare; and iv) the successful withdrawal, completed by January 1916.
In the nine months of that bitterly fought campaign, the British Commonwealth lost more than 36,000 dead, many unfound or unnamed, including Indian troops.
The total casualties figure on both sides was more likely 500,000, being shared equally between the Turki and the Entente.
Many suffered from extreme heat, and then harsh winter cold wearing only light clothing. The ships anchored in Moudros Bay included a cruise liner repurposed as a hospital ship, but I can imagine the bay, with little, cleansing tidal movements, becoming a fetid and dirty, disease-ridden swamp. No holding tanks and pump-out stations back then...
Lemnos remained in British occupation throughout the war, and it was on board HMS Agamemnon in Moudros Bay that the Armistice between the Allied Powers and Turkey was signed on 30th October 1918. And long may the peace be made to continue.
When I was 'checking in' later, a Port Policeman told me that the ANZAC anniversary had just passed, and many antipodeans had been to visit. There is also some new and impressive street-art in the village commemorating the campaign.
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