On a heavy morning in March 1915, when the sky shook with the roar of cannons and British battleships pushed fiercely toward the Dardanelles, one soldier stood between Istanbul and disaster. 

In the chaos of war—where fear swallowed breath and hope seemed thin—he performed an act that felt stolen from legend.

That soldier was Seyit Onbaşı… the man who lifted the impossible, fired the unthinkable, and changed the fate of a city.

The Story of a Hero Who Didn’t Wait for a Miracle

Seyit Onbaşı was a simple soldier from rural Balıkesir, but on 18 March 1915, he became a name carved into history.

Inside the Rumeli Mecidiye Fort, the Ottoman artillery was being torn apart under relentless bombardment. The lifting equipment collapsed, massive shells lay helpless on the ground, and British fire grew stronger by the minute.

 And behind that narrow strait, the entire city of Istanbul waited for its destiny.

Then, something happened—something that only occurs in stories:

• Seyit lifted a 275-kilogram shell—an iron mass too heavy for three men to move.
  
  

• He raised it onto his shoulder in a way that stunned every soldier watching.
  
  

• He loaded it into the cannon… then returned for the second… and the third.
  
  

It wasn’t a single heroic shot, as simplified tales often claim—
it was three massive shells fired in moments, launched toward the attacking fleet.

One of those shells struck the British battleship HMS OCEAN.
The ship didn’t sink immediately, but the hit destabilized it and forced it toward the minefield laid by the Ottoman minelayer “Nusret.”
There, HMS Ocean struck a mine and eventually sank.
But the first decisive blow—the one that shifted the balance of the battle—came from the shoulder of Seyit.

After the battle, officers asked him to lift the shell again so they could photograph the moment.
He tried… but he couldn’t.

He simply said:
“During the battle, God gave me a different kind of strength.”

And from that day on, his story became a symbol of the extraordinary power that rises from the heart of danger—
a power that cannot be measured or repeated, yet appears when an entire nation stands behind a single man.