New books on the subject of the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign continue to appear annually to feed the Gallipoli industry. Despite the risk of inducing further Gallipoli indigestion, Victor Rudenno's comprehensive account of naval action at Gallipoli, with its particular concentration on the role played by submarines in determining some of the outcomes, can only enhance the body of literature on the campaign. As he points out (264), being the first modern amphibious landing of an army on enemy terrain in combined operations, the campaign provided important lessons and experience for military strategists, some of whom would be involved in the D-Day landings in 1944 and some of whom are today's military planners. The national aspirations of the combatants and the manner of the campaign's failure also imbue the campaign with importance even today.

The book fuses accounts from disparate sources and original document research to achieve an intriguing narrative in the traditions of good storytelling—a rare achievement in a nonfiction book that also serves as a good reference book on the subject of naval and submarine warfare at Gallipoli, with its informative maps, tables, indexing, and appendices in the form of fact files on submarines, antisubmarine warfare, and supply. Despite some inaccuracies in his overview of the Gallipoli land battles (such as the map of the Anzac Cove landings [73], which contain errors or misprints), the author is on firm ground when dealing with naval action. The navies of Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire lead the story—not surprising when the campaign was envisaged as a naval affair to force the Dardanelles in the first place and that only developed into a full-scale military attack and siege by land after its failure. Naval concerns therefore dominate and submarines take center stage from the outset as underwater marvels of technology. Yet they remain flawed and volatile in operation, their inner workings from their mechanical bowels to their deadly payloads being described in sordid detail, leading to the danger of yet another type of indigestion—detail overload. However, just when you are about to close the book and take relief in your chosen way Rudenno calls in his reserves of narrative gems.

These are a series of naval characters in the tradition of old-fashioned adventure heroes, beloved of early to mid-twentieth-century boy readers. Australians and Britons call them Boy's Own heroes after a favorite comic book of that name. Early in the book the story of Lieutenant Holbrook, commander of submarine B11, sets the pattern. His actions in December 1914 act as a prelude, both to the submarine action to follow in 1915 and to the way of the book in combining character and action to spin a good action yarn. B11 is old and unreliable, but on submerging Holbrook eats a breakfast of half a lobster, a gift from French submarine captains, before entering a minefield. Here, the mine mooring cables scrape along the side of submarine, everyone holds their breath, and then B11 scores the first torpedo hit of the campaign before hitting the bottom several times, narrowly avoiding capture and receiving the first submariner's Victoria Cross award.

Many other devil-may-care Holbrook-types follow in the narrative—some to gain fame. Lieutenant-Commander M. E. Nasmith will rise to become an admiral in the Second World War, and the German U-boat menace and ace, Otto Hersing, the first submariner to sink a warship in the First World War (the British ship, Pathfinder, on 5 September 1914 in Scotland's Firth of Forth with the loss of 339 men), goes on to sink two more British ships at Gallipoli. Others add color to the story: the prewar British Vice-Consul to the Dardanelles, C. E. Palmer, who, as intelligence officer to British naval commander Vice-Admiral de Robeck is appointed to submarine E15 only to be captured by the Turks and narrowly escapes being shot as a spy; Lieutenant-Commander H. D. G. Stoker of the Australian submarine AE2, the subject of other books of the genre; Lieutenant-Commander E. C. Boyle of the E14, another VC winner; and Lieutenant D’Oyly-Hughes of Nasmith's E11, who swims ashore under cover of darkness with explosives to sabotage a railway viaduct and encounters various dangers in the process.

For students of the Gallipoli Campaign the book clearly outlines the important part played by the Turkish minefield and the double current of the strait as central problems for the British and French. But the book deals well with the stress, once the minefield is breached by Allied submarines, caused to the Ottomans in their defense of the peninsula and the capital, Istanbul. Rudenno, however, appears ambivalent about the overall influence of submarine and naval activity during the Gallipoli Campaign. While stating accurately that the “submarine force in the Sea of Marmara was never going to be a deciding factor in halting enemy supplies” (215), citing the alternative land route, he effectively demonstrates the submarine threat and actions in the Marmara as an important factor, by the very slowing down of supply, in handicapping the Ottoman army from pushing the British and their allies back into the sea from whence they came.

The menace from below the waves affected both sides and their ability to gain the ascendency. The German U-boat danger and losses caused to the Allied fleet resulted in a reduction in the British naval force after the first month of the conflict, including a withdrawal of the most modern and powerful of all dreadnought-class battleships, Queen Elizabeth, back to the seas around Britain. Such reductions affected the ability of the navy to assist the armies on land. Then we read vividly how Allied submarines E11, E12, and E2 successfully make nuisances of themselves as they patrol the Sea of Marmara for targets but equally dramatically how E7, E20, and the French submarine Turquoise are lost, the latter being salvaged by the Ottomans and added to the Ottoman navy.

This serves to remind us that irony is often a potent element of war. Another compelling aspect is that the only certainty in war is that nothing is certain, and this book leaves one admiring the way these submariners of 1915 were able to deal with the hideous uncertainty of life underwater in a giant and volatile tin can pursued by a deadly enemy. Boys' Own stuff indeed.