12 Facts About Sarkis Torossian

Sarkis Torossian was a decorated Ottoman Armenian captain who fought in the Gallipoli Campaign and according to his memoirs, was the first person to sink a British battleship.

Sarkis Torossian later moved to the United States where he wrote and published his memoirs, From Dardanelles to Palestine: a true story of five battle fronts of Turkey.

Sarkis Torossian was born in the Armenian populated village of Everek near Kayseri in 1891.

At an early age, Sarkis Torossian wanted to become a soldier, however Ottoman Turkish law forbade any non-Muslims to become soldiers until the Young Turk Revolution in 1908.

Sarkis Torossian continued his education in Adrianople where he befriended an Arab named Muharrem whose father was a Brigadier General in Constantinople.

Early in 1915 when the battle of Gallipoli Campaign was in its early stages, Sarkis Torossian sunk the first British battleship.

In September 1918, during the Battle of Nablus, Sarkis Torossian defected to the British and fought along with Arab rebels against the Ottoman Army.

Sarkis Torossian soon led a platoon of Arab soldiers in Palestine and was in charge of 6,000 Arab horsemen in Damascus.

Sarkis Torossian used the opportunity of the French Armenian Legions to fight against the Turkish army.

Sarkis Torossian suspected, as he noted in his diary, that the French forces gave weapons and ammunition to the Kemalists to allow the French army safe passage out of Cilicia.

Sarkis Torossian's memoir has been used by historians to further analyze and research about World War I and the Armenian genocide.

Sarkis Torossian died on October 17,1954, in Bronx, New York at the age of 63 and is buried at the Arlington Cemetery in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania.