seaplane carrier had discovered a number of mines on 16 and 17 March but failed to spot the line of mines laid by Nusret in Eren Köy Bay. On the day of the attack civilian trawlers sweeping for mines in front of line "A" discovered and destroyed three mines in an area thought to be clear, before the trawlers withdrew under fire. This information was not passed on to de Robeck. At 13:54, Bouvet—having made a turn to starboard into Eren Köy Bay—struck a mine, capsized and sank within a couple of minutes, killing 639 crewmen, only being rescued. At first it appeared that the ship had been hit in a magazine and de Robeck thought that the ship had struck a floating mine or been torpedoed. The British pressed on with the attack. Around 16:00, Inflexible began to withdraw and struck a mine near where Bouvet had sunk, thirty crew being killed and the ship taking on with of water. The battlecruiser remained afloat, was eventually beached on the island of Bozcaada (Tenedos) and temporarily repaired with a coffer dam. Irresistible was the next to be mined and as it began to drift, the crew were taken off. De Robeck told Ocean to take Irresistible under tow but the water was deemed too shallow to make an approach. At 18:05, Ocean struck a mine which jammed the steering gear leaving the ship adrift. The abandoned battleships were still floating when the British withdrew but when a destroyer commanded by Commodore Roger Keyes returned to tow or sink the vessels, they could not be found despite a 4-hour search. In 1934, Keyes wrote that For 118 casualties, the Ottomans sank three battleships, severely damaged three others and inflicted seven hundred casualties on the British-French fleet. There were calls amongst the British, particularly from Churchill, to press on with the naval attack and De Robeck advised on 20 March that he was reorganising his minesweepers. Churchill responded that he was sending four replacement ships; with the exception of Inflexible, the ships were expendable. It is not correct that the ammunition of the guns was low: they could have repulsed two more attacks. The crews of the sunken battleships replaced the civilians on the trawler minesweepers and were much more willing to keep sweeping under fire. The US Ambassador to Constantinople, Henry Morgenthau, reported that Constantinople expected to be attacked and that