This painting rather tied together something for me that relates to the Gallipoli campaign during the First World War. The sinking of the French battleship Bouvet on 18 March 1915 stands as something of a masterclass in the lethal consequences of predictable habits. While the Allied fleet was busy redecorating the Ottoman shore batteries with heavy shells, the Bouvet struck a mine laid by the minelayer Nusret. The Ottoman crew had noticed that Allied captains possessed a rather repetitive preference for pivoting their massive vessels in the exact same patch of Erenköy Bay, and they politely provided twenty mines to facilitate the manoeuvre. Of the 710 men aboard, 639 perished, including the very brave Captain Rageot de la Touche (1858-1915), who stayed with his ship to the end.
The loss of the Bouvet, alongside the HMS Irresistible and HMS Ocean later that day, effectively convinced the Allied command that the Dardanelles would not be won by boat alone. This failure successfully traded a naval headache for the catastrophic (from the allied perspective) land campaign at Gallipoli, something which is very much part of the story of World War One.