4.7-inch Mark IV naval gun barrel (damaged) : Heavy Battery, 1 Australian Division, AIF, Clarke's Valley, Gallipoli Accession Number: RELAWM05085

Description

Damaged barrel of 4.7 inch quick firing naval gun. A third of the barrel at the muzzle-end has ruptured. The breech block is missing. 'The text, Q.F. 4.7In IV E.O.C. [broad arrow symbol] 1896 No.716' is impressed in the breech ring, close to the breech, and 'N' is impressed further out. 'ELSWICK S... and a number is impressed in the muzzle face, but the details are partially unreadable.

Contextual Description

This gun may have previously been used at Ladysmith during the Boer War. It was later operated at Gallipoli by the Heavy Battery, 1 Australian Division, who also operated two old six inch howitzers. The gun arrived at Anzac at 3.40am on 11 July and was initially placed near Dawkin's Point. After a great deal of effort a new emplacement was built for it and it was put into position on 17 July. After a new gun sight was obtained, the first four rounds were fired at 6.10pm on 26 July.

The battery was located high on the Australian right (southern) flank, above Clarke's Valley. Initially, the two six inch guns of the battery were manned by Royal Marines and Australians, but after a while the marines were withdrawn and replaced by AIF personnel who were commanded by Major Charles George Miles, Royal Australian Field Artillery. The gun was destroyed by members of the 2nd Field Company Engineers, under the supervision of Major Leslie Francis Mather at 3pm on 15 December 1915 in anticipation of the evacuation from the ANZAC area.

The gun was rediscovered by Lieutenant Cyril Emerson Hughes, who was working with the Imperial War Graves Commission. He later showed it to members of the Australian Historical Mission to Gallipoli in 1919. In his book, 'Gallipoli Mission' Official Historian C E W Bean wrote that '...we were caught in a snowstorm, and raced for home...As we clattered down one of the long valleys on the Turkish side of Scrubby Knoll we galloped past the small village and minaret of Koja Dere...There Hughes pulled us up and pointed to an object at the side of the road. I knew it at once; I had photographed it about three days before the evacuation of Anzac - our old 4.7-inch naval gun, actually one that had been used as a land gun in South Africa. At Anzac it had been mounted, as then, with a huge wooden trail, and dragged to a special position high on the right flank for firing at Kilid Bahr Plateau. Just before the Evacuation [sic] it was destroyed by bursting a charge in the muzzle. Now it lay by the side of the Koja Dere road, the bare gun with torn muzzle and without the mounting. Apparently the Turks had intended to take it to Constantinople for their War Museum, but had abandoned the task for the present. Hughes and the Mission decided then and there that it should go to an Australian museum, if to any.' The gun arrived in Australia in 1922.