20 Iron Pots

…The small Turkish steamer Nusret succeeded in laying unnoticed a line of 26 mines lying in front of the known minefields of the Straits. This mine line was not laid across the barrier canal, as in minefields, but in length. This line, was constituted, in fact with the last reserve of dormant mines which the Turks had. Their total value probably does not exceed six or seven thousand pounds. In all of Europe in 1915, millions of tin and riveted men to a death fight, large offensives were killed or wounded. The wealth of nations flowed in the abyss. Four or five thousand warships sailed the seas. But these twenty iron pots surreptitiously placed by the steamer Nusrat were intended to give more complete and more decisive results, as to the length of the war and the future of the world than all the other forces combined…

Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, La Revir de Paris, 1930 August.