Dominic Sandbrook

And you're not wrong.

It couldn't go worse than what they actually did.

So they said, instead of using a horse, a wooden horse, we'll use a bloody big ship, like a huge old collier, a coal ship, called the SS River Clyde.

We will put 2,000 men.

We'll put loads of ammo and we'll put loads of supplies in this big old ship.

And then we will deliberately run it aground.

We'll run the ship aground as close to the beach as possible.

We'll have another little ship coming up called a steam hopper.

And this will go in between the ship and the actual sand.

So all the men will be able to jump off the River Clyde onto the steam hopper and then jump off the steam hopper onto the sands and run up the beach.

Brilliant.

And then this big ship that's stuck on the beach, the River Clyde, we can use that as our headquarters, as a little field hospital, as a kind of supply depot, all of this.

I think it's quite a good idea.

Do you?

How does it go?

Well, we'll find out.

So they start bombarding the beach, and then they're gonna send up the Dublin Fusiliers first, and little rowing boats, and then this bloody big ship, the River Clyde.

The Dublin Fusiliers make very slow progress, so unfortunately, they land out of order.

The River Clyde lands first or crashes aground, but it hasn't got as close to the beach as they hoped it would.

It's still 80 yards away.