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    Building a military base

    Transports of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force in Mudros Harbour, with a French camp in the foreground, immediately before the landing on Gallipoli Peninsula.
    Mediterranean Expeditionary Force transports assemble in Mudros Harbour immediately before the landing on Gallipoli peninsula, with a French camp in the foreground. G00547 - Australian War Memorial

    From early March, Lemnos became a hub of intense activity. Governor Rear Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss RN and the first British forces had landed in late February 1915. Within weeks, thousands of troops from many Allied nations began arriving.

    ‘I wish I could explain to you how this place is expanding. In the last three weeks there has practically arisen a new town of about 10,000 inhabitants’

    – Lord Wester-Wemyss (Rosslyn Erskine Wemyss), quoted in The Navy in the Dardanelles Campaign, p. 187