Embarkation Pier Cemetery, Anzac, Gallipoli

Visiting Information:

The location or design of this site, makes wheelchair access impossible. For further information regarding wheelchair access, please contact our enquiries department on telephone number 01628 634221.

Location Information:

Embarkation Pier is on the north side of the mouth of Chailak Dere, at the north end of Ocean Beach (or North Beach). The cemetery is a little way inland, between the beach and the road from Anzac to Suvla.

Historical Information:

The eight month campaign in Gallipoli was fought by Commonwealth and French forces in an attempt to force Turkey out of the war, to relieve the deadlock of the Western Front in France and Belgium, and to open a supply route to Russia through the Dardanelles and the Black Sea. The Allies landed on the peninsula on 25-26 April 1915; the 29th Division at Cape Helles in the south and the Australian and New Zealand Corps north of Gaba Tepe on the west coast, an area soon known as Anzac.

On 6 August, further landings were made at Suvla, just north of Anzac, and the climax of the campaign came in early August when simultaneous assaults were launched on all three fronts. Early in August 1915, the Embarkation Pier area was occupied by the headquarters of two divisions, and later by a casualty clearing station. The pier was made for the purpose of evacuating wounded from the Battle of Sari Bair, but it came under heavy rifle and shell fire and was abandoned after just two days.

Apart from five original burials, the cemetery is made up of burials brought in after the Armistice from the cemeteries known as Chailak Dere Nos 1 and 2, Mulberry Tree, and Apex, and from isolated graves. There are now 944 Commonwealth servicemen buried or commemorated in the cemetery. There are special memorials to 262 casualties known or believed to be buried among them but 662 of the burials are unidentified.