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Scottish Geographical Magazine Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsgj19 Notes on the historical geography of the Dardanelles W.R. Kermack Published online: 30 Jan 2008.

To cite this article: W.R. Kermack (1919) Notes on the historical geography of the Dardanelles, Scottish Geographical Magazine, 35:7, 241-248, DOI: 10.1080/14702541908554894 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14702541908554894

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MAGAZINE.

NOTES ON THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE DARDANELLES.

By W. R. KERMACK.

B~" the time these lines appear in print it is likely that the fate of the Turkish Empire and the guardianship of the Dardanelles and Constan- tinople will have been settled, that the wheel of history will have come full circle, Western influence again be paramount in the city of Constantine, and" the Sick Man of "will probably be--dead. But as, while our hopes may be what they will, no man can yet confidently affirm that the tide of Eastern aggression on the West has for ever ebbed, or that Russian ambition has for ever renounced its imperial dreams, it may still be worth while to look for a minute at some of the geographical conditions which have helped to decide in the past, and may so decide again, the mastery of those straits, which he who holds, holds

Downloaded by [Bangor University] at 16:39 21 December 2014 at once the gate of the and the bridge from to Europe.

1. THE GATE OF THE BLACK SEA. The Rhodope Mountains of the Balkan Peninsula and the land mass of Asia Minor are both formed of ancient types of rock, and were indeed at one time in geological history continuous. The great earth disturbances which heaved up the folded mountain chains of the Alps, Carpathians, Balkan Mountains, and Dinaric Alps broke off and forced downwards the southern part of this older continental mass below what is now the JEgean Sea: and thus Europe was separated from Asia. Fault lines, outbursts of volcanic rocks, such as the peaks of Imbros ~vhich, viewed from , stand out so like the hills of Arran at VOL. XXXV. T ...... ~ .. s "~r~ I ~~

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homo, sharp against the golden background of the setting sun, hot springs like those of Therma on (itself sacred in Greek legend to Hephmstus), worth a longer walk even than that from the British camps at Mudros in 1915 for the almost incredible luxury of a hot bath, --all are signs and legacies of this great disturbance. At the north-east corner of the iEgean Sea so formed lies a group of islands and peninsulas, of which the chief is the large island of Lemnos, midway and a little south of a line joining the southern extremity of the peninsula of Mt. Athos in Chalcidiee to the southern extremity of the peninsula of , Cape Holies. Lemnos, with an area of about 150 square miles, has a fine natural harbour at Mudros, two to three miles across and five to seven fathoms deep, with a narrow, rock-guarded entrance. It must be admitted, however, that it is indifferent holding ground, so that vessels there are apt to drag their anchors; and a north or south wind raises a violent sea. During the great storm of wind and rain followed by frost at the end of , which sent 10,000 sick into our hospitals from the Peninsula, mostly from Bay, there were two days on end on which no communication save by signal was. possible between ship and ship in Mudros harbour, ~r with the shore. With all these deductions, however, the position of Lemnos, taken with its surrounding islands, has always been an essential to the command of the entrance to the Dardanelles. Due south of Lemnos is the small island of Hagio Strati ; due east is Tcnedos, off the Asiatic coast and just south of the mouth of the Dardanelles; north-east is Imbros, just north of the Straits' entrance, with the open roadstead of Kephalos Bay; and north again of Imbros, and to be seen, if you sail from Mudros to Kephalos Bay, towering above Imbros, 1 as Kinglake saw it from the Tread, the mountain mass

of , " aloft in a far away heaven," whence Poseidon watched at Ilium the battles of gods and men. But not only is this group of islands--as will be presently shown-- vital to the control of the Straits. For the coast-wise seamanship of the ancients it was a fingerpost, pointing to the mariners of the ~Egean the gateway of the Black Sea. Lemnos, as noticed already, is equidistant from the easternmost of the great Macedonian promontories and from Cape Hclles, about forty miles from each ; and, even more important than Downloaded by [Bangor University] at 16:39 21 December 2014 distance, from Kastro, the ancient , the chief town of Lemnos, and indeed the only place on the island worth dignifying with the name, either from the shore or from the ruins of the old Venetian castle which stand high on their rock over the town and its little harbour, you may look across the blue waters of the zEgean to where, its base wreathed in clouds, the snow-clad peak of Athos rises grandly into the sky. And though it is only with difficulty that from Cape Hellos you can make out the rocky hills of Lemnos, yet the other islands of the group are constantly in view; and thus, without losing sight of land, ships could work from to the Straits, or back, as St. Paul, called by his

1 5240 feet as against about 1500. 244 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE.

vision into Macedonia, "loosing from () Tread, came with a straight course to Samothraeia, and the next day to " (Acts xvi. 11). Persians, Greeks, Veuetians, and Turks before our day have in turn held mastery of these islands that command the entrance to the Straits. took Lemnos under a general of Darius Hystaspis ; , the of the Thracian Chersonese--the Gallipoli peninsula--won it (and [mbros)back, and it was held by the Athenian sea-power till absorbed by the Macedonian Empire. The thirteenth and fourteenth centuries of our era saw the great struggle between Venice and Genoa for the Black Sea trade. Genoese influence was more often dominant at , but Venice held Lemnos and , and in 1380 won the final round. Then came the Ottoman Turk. In 1453 he took

FIG. 1.--Kastro in Lemnos.

Constantinople, but his hold oil the Straits was not finally made sure till, two hundred years later, in 1657, after a sixty-three days' siege, Kastro /ell. And in the last and greatest of all attempts to win the Straits, which, for all its failure, yet really broke 's military power, Sir Downloaded by [Bangor University] at 16:39 21 December 2014 Ian Hamilton's headquarters were on Imbros, and Mudros in Lemnos was the base of the fleet and of all supply. The north of the Straits themselves, where the British and French effort was made, is of course the Gallipoli peninsula, the south side being that north-west corner of which we know as the Tread. Gallipoli peninsula stretches its fifty-three miles of length from the to Cape Helles. Its breadth varies from one mile and a half between Cape Helle8 and Cape Tekke at its southern extremity, and three miles at the isthmus of Bulair, to twelve at its widest part, between Cape Suvla and Cape Uzun. Its coast-line is mostly steep cliffs, one to three hundred feet high, but broken here and there where a nullah or gulley reaches the sea. Inland from the Cape NOTES ON THE HISTORICAL GKOGRAPHY OF TBE DARDANELL£S. 9.45

Helios end the ground slopes up to the commanding hill of Achi Babe (590 feet), behind which comes again the plateau of Kilid Bahr (500-700 feet). But the highest ground of all, and undoubtedly strategically the key of this end of the peninsula, is the ridge of Sari Bair, whence from 970 feet you look down upon the Straits, as on the 9th August 1915, men of the 6th Ghurkas and the South Lancashire Regiment looked down from that ridge from Chunuk Bait. The control of the Straits as the gateway of the Black Sea or Constantinople means, and has always meant, the possession of certainly one, generally both, of the shores of the Dardanelles. For a variety of strategical reasons Sir Ian Hamilton in 1915 determined to secure the northern side, which is the higher ground of the two and certainly allows the more effective co-operation of a fleet. But the earliest struggl~

FIG, 2.--The Castle at Kastro.

we have recoFd of to decide this control was fought out, not on the north side in Gallipoli, but in the Tread. It seems, from the work of modern scholars and excavators, that we may now accept as historieal~ not only the fact of a about 1185 B.C., but also, to a large Downloaded by [Bangor University] at 16:39 21 December 2014 extent, the existence and personality of the chief actors on each side in the struggle as handed down to us in 's Iliad. ~ But though Helen and " the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topmost towers of Ilium" may well have been the pretext, we must look deeper, we are told, for the real cause of the expedition. Excavations by Sehliemann and DSrpfield at Hissarlik showed that on that site there had stood, at the same time as now ruined Tiryns and Mycenae flourished in Greece, a great castle which topographically closely corresponded to the details of Ilium given by Homer, with the exception that 3000 years ago the course of the (Mendere)

1 Professor J. B. Bury : " The Trojan War" (Quarterly Review, July 1916). 246 ScoTrIsH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINL

must have lain farther eastward than to-day. :Now examination of the Iliad shows that, though the place is nowadays marshy and malarious, and without any good natural harbour, yet Homeric must have been a great commercial centre, having relations north, east, and south with what were later in the early days of Greek eolonisation the chief ceutres of trade, , Cyzieus, Sinope, ; and Dr. Walter Leaf, whose argument has been adopted by Professor Bury, offers an explanation of this apparent inconsistency. The surface current of water through the Bosphorus and the Dar- danelles flows very strongly from the Black Sea to the ~-Egean, although along the bottom of the same channel there is a river of much salter water flowing in the opposite direction. The Dardanelles, in particular, form a narrow channel, only one mile wide where the European and Asiatic shores come closest together (at " the Narrows "), and through it the current from the Sea of Marmora sets at the rate of two to three knots an hour. It will readily be remembered how greatly this helped the Turkish defence of the Straits by floating mines in 1915 agaiust our naval operations. Furthermore, during winter in the Mediterranean the ~Egean and Black Seas form a relatively warm belt, along which centres of low pressure of air move generally from west to east, that is, from the _d~gean to the Black Sea. Before the centre of one of these cyclonic depressions reaches the Straits the wind there is south to south-westerly, dropping to a calm when the centre of the depression arrives. Then it passes, the temperature suddenly falls, and a strong north to north-east wind springs up, frequently increasing to a gale, and bringing cold air and often rain from the high-pressure area of the Russian steppes. 1 These are the dreaded Etesian winds, which blow in the often for days together; and thus, with both tide and wind against them, sailing ships for the Black ,Sea were apt to be held up for considerable periods at the mouth of the Straits. But the only sources of fresh water supply, at the Scamander and Besika Bay, were controlled by the lord of Troy, who could thus exact tolls at his will, and compel merchants from the .ZEgean to trade with their fellows from the Black Sea under his conditions. It was this barrier to free trade with the Black Sea that, two generations after they had established themselves in Greece as a ruling caste, became intoler- able to the , and drove them to grasp at the pretext for war Downloaded by [Bangor University] at 16:39 21 December 2014 with Troy, which m~y have been offered in the abduction of Helen.

2. THE BI{ID(4E OF EAST AND WEST. The whole peninsula of Asia Minor is in reality a bridge between Asia and Europe, just as , between the desert and the sea, is a bridge between Asia and Africa. The bulk of Asia Minor consists of a plateau, 3000 to 5000 feet above sea-level. Round this there is a fringe of low-lying coast-line, much broken on the west into promontories and

1 Alan G. Ogilvie, "Notes on the Geography of ]mbros" (Geographical .lvur~ml, xlviiff pp. ]36-7). NOTES ON THE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE DARDA:NELLES. 23~7

islands. The tableland, with its subdued and 'monotonous scenery, its great co~trasts of summer and winter climate, stands representative of Asia : the _~Egean coasts, the scene of the Greek settlements, has all the brightness and variety and charm of Greece itself. Routes from east to west through the peninsula have kept north or south of the great salt lake and salt desert which occupy the heart of the plateau, according as they were attracted to the centre of a power based within Anatolia itself, such as the Hittite Empire, or to a port on the JEgean sea-board, such as , with oversea trade relations with Greece or Rome. With the rise of Constantinople as capital of the Empire, roads were naturally directed towards the Bosphorus. 1 The magnificent natural position of Constantinople was neutralised so long as the Balkan peninsula and the valley of the Danube were filled with barbarous nomad tribes. The removal of this menace as the result of the wars of and his successors allowed the full development of the city which stood where the route from the JEgean to the Black Sea crossed the natural inter-continental route down the Maritza valley to Adrianople and the Bosphorus, and thence up the Sakaria (Sangarius) valley to the heart of the plateau of Anatolia--the route of the Berlin- Bagdad railway of German ambitions. The only aiternatives were either to follow the Maritza valley from Adrianople to the coast, and to Alexandria Troas, a poor harbour, and wind-swept voyage ; or to cross at the Hellespont (Dardanelles) shore into western instead of central Anatolia. Under natural and peaceful conditions the bridge from Europe to Asia must be at the Bosphorus. But given a state of things where this natural bridge is held by a hostile power, or where the 2Egean lands--Greece or Macedonia--rather than central Europe and the Danube valley, are the centre of civilisa- tion, then the Dardanelles, not the Bosphorus, crossing becomes the more important. Such conditions prevailed when Xerxes' great army passed by the bridge of boats from to to attempt the conquest of Greece; or when, in historic retaliation, Alexander of Macedon, as the representative of Hellenism, invaded the Tread and crushed the army of Persia at the Granikos ; or when again the pendulum of the eternal warfare of East and "West swung once more back, and the turned the flank of the defences of Constantinople by seizing (in 1356) the Byz~mtine fortress on the site of ancient Sestos, Downloaded by [Bangor University] at 16:39 21 December 2014 and extending their conquest to include Gallipoli town and the Thracian Chersonese the following year, and a century later Constantinople itself. Some description has been given already of the Gallipoli peninsula, which is the European side of this Dardanelles bridge. The Tread, the Asiatic half of the bridge, has towards the ~Egean cliffs of clayey or sandy marls, which are, save at a few points, as unfavourable to a landing as those of Gallipoli itself; but towards the Straits they are relatively low, with good landing places along the whole Hellespont fro~t of thirty-five miles, and the only good harbour of the Hellespont at the site of ancient

1 Professor W. M. Ramsay, The Historical (;eogrcq)hy of Asia Minor (London : John Murray, 1890), pp. 23-4, 43-5. 248 SCOTTISH GEOGRAPHICAL MAGAZINE.

Abydos, under Nagara Point. 1 With command assured of the higher Gallipoli shore, a landing on the south side of the Dardanelles would not therefore meet with any great natural obstacle. But difficulties only begin with the achievement of the landing. The dominant feature of the Tread is the high range of (c. 5800 feet), visible from the Gallipoli shore, which runs first eastward from the ~Egean coasts parallel to and beyond the head of the Gulf of , at an average height of over 1000 feet, and then branches, south-westward to enclose the alluvial plain at the head of the Gulf, and north-north- eastward to reach the Sea of Marmora near the mouth of the Aisepoa river. The Tread is thus walled off from the rest of Asia Minor by a mountain barrier, easily passable only near the Sea of Marmora where the hills fall rapidly into plain. It is at this point only, therefore, that, a force landing in the Tread can easily reach the Sakaria valley and central Anatolia ; and Dr. Leaf has shown that it was these geographical considerations which in 334 B.c. governed the Persian strategy, and placed their army to meet Alexander's invasion, not on the Hellespont, shore itself, where the higher Gallipoli shore allowed troops to be massed unseen for a surprise crossing, and the barren plateau to landward could afford them no supplies, but about in the lower Aisepos valley, just where there is this one gap in the natural mountain wall. Then, when Alexander had crossed unopposed from Sestos to Abydos, and east of Lampsakos had climbed from the Dardanelles coast to the plateau, the Persians marched to meet him to dispute his passage of the Granikos. 2 The battle which followed, on ground favourable to the tactics of the Macedonian , gave to the invader the mastery of Asia Minor.

"While sea and rock hold in their accustomed places," has prophe- sied Frederic Harrison, "the Lord of Constantinople must continue to be the Lord of South-Eastern Europe and of North-Western Asia." ~ History will be able to tell us in the future whether the ingenuity of the Paris Peace Conference proves stronger than the geographical control of a great natural position. But be the fate of South-Eastern Europe and North-Western Asia what it may, he who is to be Lord of Con- stantinople, with all its legacies of Empire, must be Lord also of th~ Dardanelles. Downloaded by [Bangor University] at 16:39 21 December 2014 THE GEOGRAPHICAL PREREQUISITES OF A : A REVIEW. 4 By GEO. G. CHISHOLI~I. YEA, the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns. Mr. Mackinder, it is true, has always accustomed himself and his readers to

1 Dr. Walter Leaf, " The Military Geography of the Tread" (Geographical Jovrnal xlvii, pp. 4(,3, 410). 2 Ibid., pp. 499-14. 3 The ~lIeanin~l of His/ory, I). 326. 4 De~aocratic Ideals and Reality : A ~tudy in the Politics of Reconslruction. By H. J. Maekinder, M.P. With 31 maps or diagrams. London : Constable and Co., 1919.