In the course of the campaign many of the Turks' guns were knocked out by the ships; but every shell must fall somewhere, and if you fire a sufficient number, sooner or later a lucky one may do the "trick" and fall on the exact spot required.
But a ship's magazines are not inexhaustible; with very little effort she could empty them in an hour, and be as useless as a Thames barge until they were refilled. If there had been an inexhaustible supply in the ammunition ships at Mudros, and if a ship had made full use of it, she would have worn out her guns in next to no time; accurate firing would be impossible, and the ship again practically useless.
Knowing all these things, you should now be able to realize the extraordinary difficulties of hitting a single gun from ships at those necessarily long ranges, and be able to understand their comparative failure to do so.
To return to the submarines. It was on a Saturday, the 22nd May, that the first German submarine actually made its appearance off the Peninsula. Just as the Honourable Mess had finished their meagre lunch, a signalman brought the Sub a signal, just received from the _Triumph_, at anchor off Anzac. The Sub read it aloud: "Hostile submarine sighted N.E. of Gaba Tepe".
"Well, it's a good thing to get the show over," the Sub said; and Uncle Podger remarked that "At any rate it will be pretty to watch." They all went on deck; and the sight of a long line of transports, store ships, and hospital ships hurrying across from Anzac to the little protected harbour of Kephalo, in the island of Imbros, made it certain that they evidently did not doubt that a submarine had been seen.
"They're in earnest, at any rate; there's a pretty picture for you," said Uncle Podger as he watched them, the smoke simply pouring out of their funnels as they made haste to get out of danger. All ships round Cape Helles--some forty or fifty ships of all kinds--were ordered to raise steam, and the _Achates_, shortening in her cable, waited for whatever would turn up. Close to her lay the _Swiftsure_; and both had to rely for protection on the keenness of their "look-outs" and the quickness of their guns' crews, because neither ship had torpedo-nets--the _Achates_ never possessed any; the _Swiftsure's_ were lying in a store-house in Bombay Dockyard, where she had left them a year before war broke out.