available on the spot.

On the 16th inst., Vice Admiral Carden, who has been incapacitated by
illness, was succeeded in the chief command by Rear Admiral John Michael
de Robeck, with acting rank of Vice Admiral.


THE SCENE IN THE STRAIT.

_The London Times publishes this story of an eyewitness:_

TENEDOS, (Aegina,) March 18.

This is not so much an account of the five hours' heavy engagement
between the Turkish forts and the allied ships which has been fought
actually within the Dardanelles today as an impression of the
bombardment as seen at a distance of fifteen miles or so from the top of
a high, steep hill called Mount St. Elias, at the northern end of
Tenedos.

Over the ridge of Kum Kale you plainly see, like a great blue lake, the
first reach of the Dardanelles up to the narrow neck between Chanak and
Kilid Bahr. It was up and down in this stretch of water that the largest
vessels of the allied fleet steamed today for over four hours, hurling,
with sheets of orange flame from their heavy guns, a constant succession
of shells on the forts that guard the Narrows at Chanak, while the
Turkish batteries, with a frequency that lessened as the day went on,
flashed back at them in reply, with the difference that, while the
effects of the Allies' shells were continually manifest in the columns
of smoke and dust that were signs of the damage they had wrought, a