[GALLIPOLI] Logbook kept by the surgeons of H.M.S. Albion during the Dardanelles campaign, 25 January - 21 July 1915.

Government-issue Waterlow & Sons Limited ledger book, folio (320 x 220 mm), original marbled papered boards with hessian backstrip and corners (heavily rubbed and worn from extensive use), upper board lettered in manuscript in black ink: 'H.M.S. Albion / 25th Jany. 1915 / to / 21st July 1915'; [340] pp. with manuscript entries in the hands of the three surgeons on board (approx. 30,000 words in total), being a daily log kept throughout the Albion's involvement in the Dardanelles campaign recording every casualty or case presented to the ship's surgeons, including date and location, name and rank of patient, description of the ailment or wound, and type of treatment prescribed or administered; clean throughout. HMS Albion was a Canopus Class pre-Dreadnought battleship of the Royal Navy which participated in the Dardanelles campaign. This unique manuscript record gives many insights into how the campaign would have been experienced by a naval surgeon and by wounded or ill sailors. Navy lists record that during this part of 1915 there were three surgeons serving on Albion, whom we all believe contributed to this logbook: Fleet Surgeon Edward H. Hodnet-de-Courtmacsherry, William Norman Pickles, M.B., and Henry Clarence Wardleworth Nuttall. At various points in the logbook - for example, during the first Gallipoli landings on Sunday 25 April and Monday 26 April - the phrase 'Action Stations' is written diagonally across the page. Earlier, in February 1915, Albion had taken part in the bombardment of Turkish forts guarding the outer entrance to the Dardanelles, and had come under attack from Turkish shore batteries. On 3 March she covered troop landings at Sedd el Bahr. On 25 April she supported the main landings at V Beach on Cape Helles at the foot of the Gallipoli peninsula. On 28 April she suffered damage from shore batteries off Krithia and retired to Mudros on Lemnos. Within a week or so she was back in action in the Dardanelles. On 22-23 May she ran aground off Gaba Tepe on the Gallipoli Peninsula and came under heavy fire, but was eventually towed off by HMS Canopus. She arrived at Malta with sick and wounded men from Gallipoli. In early July she returned to Lemnos to collect more of the ever-mounting casualties for removal to Malta.