The siege of Kut Al Amara, also known as the first battle of Kut, was the besieging of an 8,000 strong British Army garrison in the town of Kut, 160 kilometres (100 mi) south of Baghdad, by the Ottoman Army. In 1915, its population was around 6,500. Following the surrender of the garrison on 29 April 1916, the survivors of the siege were marched to imprisonment at Aleppo, during which many died. Historian Christopher Catherwood has called the siege "the worst defeat of the Allies in World War I". Ten months later, the British Indian Army, consisting almost entirely of newly recruited troops from Western India, conquered Kut, Baghdad and other regions in between in the Fall of Baghdad.
The Gunboat War was a naval conflict between Denmark–Norway and the British during the Napoleonic Wars. The war's name is derived from the Danish tactic of employing small gunboats against the materially superior Royal Navy. In Scandinavia it is seen as the later stage of the English Wars, whose commencement is accounted as the First Battle of Copenhagen in 1801.
USS Alligator was a sloop in the United States Navy during the War of 1812. The U.S. Navy purchased Alligator in 1813 at New Orleans, Louisiana. Commissioned as a tender at New Orleans, she served on that station under the command of Sailing Master Richard S. Sheppard until late in 1814 when the British captured her at the Battle of Lake Borgne.
The Battle of Ctesiphon was fought in November 1915 by the British Empire, against the Ottoman Empire, within the Mesopotamian Campaign of World War I.
The Mesopotamian campaign was a campaign in the Middle Eastern theatre of World War I fought between the Allies represented by the British Empire, troops from Britain, Australia and the vast majority from British India, against the Central Powers, mostly from the Ottoman Empire.
The Fall of Baghdad occurred during the Mesopotamia Campaign, fought between the forces of the British Empire and the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.
Major General Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, was a soldier who during the First World War led an overreaching military campaign in Mesopotamia. His troops were besieged and captured at the Siege of Kut, which was possibly the worst defeat suffered by the Allies.
General Sir John Eccles Nixon was a senior commander of the British Indian Army. He gave the orders for the ultimately disastrous first British Expedition against Baghdad during the First World War.
The Battle of Dujaila was fought on 8 March 1916, between British and Ottoman forces during the First World War. The Ottoman forces, led by Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz were besieging Kut, when the Anglo-Indian relief force, led by Lieutenant-General Fenton Aylmer, attempted to relieve the city. The attempt failed, and Aylmer lost 4,000 men.
The Second Battle of Kut was fought on 23 February 1917, between British and Ottoman forces at Kut, Mesopotamia.
The Chesapeake Bay Flotilla was a motley collection of barges and gunboats that the United States assembled under the command of Joshua Barney, an 1812 privateer captain, to stall British attacks in the Chesapeake Bay which came to be known as the "Chesapeake Campaign" during the War of 1812. The Flotilla engaged the Royal Navy in several inconclusive battles before Barney was forced to scuttle the vessels themselves on August 22, 1814. The men of the Flotilla then served onshore in the defense of Washington, DC and Baltimore. It was disbanded on February 15, 1815, after the end of the war.
The Battle of Basra was a battle of World War I which took place south of the city of Basra between British and Ottoman troops from November 11 to November 22, 1914. The battle resulted in the British capture of Basra.
The Battle of Qurna, was between British forces and Ottoman forces that had retreated from Basra, which they lost at the Battle of Basra (1914) during the Mesopotamian campaign of World War I.
The Battle of Wadi, occurring on 13 January 1916, was an unsuccessful attempt by British forces fighting in Mesopotamia during World War I to relieve beleaguered forces under Sir Charles Townshend then under siege by the Ottoman Sixth Army at Kut-al-Amara.
The First Battle of Hanna was a World War I battle fought on the Mesopotamian front on 21 January 1916 between Ottoman Army and Anglo-Indian forces.
The Battle of Es Sinn was a World War I military engagement between Anglo-Indian and Ottoman forces.
The Battle of Sheikh Sa'ad occurred between 6–8 January 1916 during the Mesopotamian Campaign of the First World War. The battle took place along the banks of the Tigris River between the Anglo-Indian Tigris Corps and elements of the Ottoman Sixth Army. The engagement was the first in a series of assaults by the Tigris Corps to try to break through the Ottoman lines to relieve the besieged garrison at Kut.
The Fly-class river gunboats, collectively often referred to as the "Tigris gunboat flotilla", were a class of small well-armed Royal Navy vessels designed to patrol the Tigris river during the Mesopotamian Campaign during the First World War.
The Battle of Nasiriyah was a battle in World War I that took place in the Mesopotamian city of Nasiriyah between British and Ottoman forces in July 1915. It was a pivotal battle in the Mesopotamian campaign of World War I and saw 5,000 British and Indian troops face off against a Turkish garrison of a similar number. British and Indian forces under the command of Lieutenant General Sir George Frederick Gorringe attacked Nasiriyah with the intention of protecting the British stronghold of Basra and destroying a major Turkish supply center in the region. British forces defeated the Turkish forces in Nasiriyah and it became the latest addition to a long string of successes against Ottoman forces in the campaign, coming right after the capture of Amara and the Battle of Qurna.
The II Wessex Brigade was a howitzer unit of the Royal Field Artillery in Britain's Territorial Force (TF) that was formed on the Isle of Wight in 1908. It served in India and the Middle East during World War I, one of its batteries being captured at the Siege of Kut in Mesopotamia in 1916, and another seeing active service in the Third Afghan War of 1919. Although reformed after the war, the unit was broken up in 1927.
Ottoman Empire 
Charles Townshend 
