The Terra Nova returned to Cardiff on June 14^th 1913. William became the ship-keeper while refitting was taking place. He had now completed his service with the Royal Navy and returned to Portsmouth. The day after his “discharge to pension” on October 10th 1913, William signed up to the Royal Fleet Reserve and was called up almost immediately, before he could begin the new job as a surveyor’s ‘tapeholder’ he had been offered with the Board of Trade at Cardiff.

HMS Irresistible and the Gallipoli Campaign.

On August 2nd 1914, William was back in training on HMS Victory II, the depot for the Royal Naval Division. He joined the battleship HMS Irresistible on September 1st 1914.

In October 1914, HMS Irresistible was at Dover, under the command of Admiral Hood. Her duties included bombardment of German army forces along the Belgian coast in support of Allied troops fighting on the front. During the German raid on Gorleston in November she was ordered to sea but did not come into action. Irresistible returned to the Channel Fleet later in November 1914, and then transferred to Sheerness in November to guard against a possible German invasion. The squadron transferred back to Portland on December 30th.

On February 1st 1915 she set sail for the Dardanelles, in company with HMS Majestic, to join the battleship fleet to help with the bombardments and the final attempt by the British battleship squadron to clear the Dardanelles Channel. In late February two partially successful attacks were made by the British using a squad of 12 ships to try to clear the mines and to destroy the defences. Among them was HMS Irresistible with William Lashly as one of the stokers. Bad weather and the slow advance of ground troops ashore hampered progress and it wasn’t until March 18th that a final attack using 18 ships in 3 waves was made. Unfortunately, the Allied forces had failed to properly reconnoitre the area and to sweep it for mines and HMS Bouvet struck a mine, capsized and sank within a couple of minutes, killing 600 men. The British pressed on with the attack. HMS Inflexible began to withdraw and struck a mine near where the Bouvet went down, killing 30 men.

Irresistible was the next to be mined. At 4.15pm they were taking part in a bombardment of Turkish forts from a distance of 11,000 yards. She was drifting with her engines stopped, and ran onto a submerged moored mine which exploded under the bilge of the starboard engine-room. The engine room flooded and only three men escaped. The water pressure then broke down the midship bulkhead, and the port engine-room also flooded. The ship was listing at seven degrees with the stern down and the engine gone. Irresistible then came under heavy Turkish fire and the captain ordered the crew to abandon ship. HMS Wear, despite enemy fire, managed to rescue 28 officers and 582 men from the Irresistible. When HMS Ocean tried to take Irresistible under tow it, too, struck a mine leaving her helpless. As Irresistible began to drift helplessly the remaining crew members were taken off. At 5.50pm the ship was abandoned. It seems that it drifted back into range of the Turkish forts and was sunk by gunfire.