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Show THREE SHIPS SUNK II DARDANELLES THREE OF THE ALLIES' VESSELS SENT TO BOTTOM BY FLOATING MINES. Turks and Germans Had Set Adrift Floating Containers of Explosives and These Came in Contact With the Doomed Ships. London. The British battleships trresistible and Ocean, and the French battleship Bouvet were blown up by floating mines while engaged with the remainder of the allied fleet in attacking the forts in the narrows of the Dardanelles Thursday. The crews of the two Rritish ships were virtually all saved, having been transferred to other ships under a hot fire; but an internal explosion took place on board the Bouvet after she had fouled the mine and most of her crew was lost. The Bouvet sank within three minutes of the time that she hit the mine. The waters in which the ships were lost had been swept of mines, but the British admiralty asserts that the Turks and the Germans set floating containers of explosives adrift, and these were carried down by the current cur-rent into the allied ships gathered inside in-side the entrance of the straits. All the ships that were sunk were old ones, the Bouvet having been completed com-pleted nearly twenty years ago, and the Ocean and Irresistible in 189S. They were very useful, however, for the work in which they were engaged In the Dardanelles. The sunken British ships are being replaced by the battleships Queen and Implacable, vessels of a similar type. They are said to have started some time ago for near eastern waters in anticipation of just such losses as have now occurred. |