We have long been regretting that the work and the fame of our Submarine Service are for the most part hushed to a kind of undertone. We cannot speak of them as we wish, lest the enemy should overhear and profit by information which he is unable to get for himself. But there are victories that cannot be concealed—blows which must and will reverberate, now and for ages to come. The work of the Navy at Ostend and Zeebrugge may openly be spoken of as it deserves. And this is fortunate; for nations, like men, ‘live by admiration, hope and love,’ and admiration is not the least powerful of the three elements. The double attack of St. George’s Day achieved not only a diminution of the enemy’s strength, but an increase of our own. All over the world we heard it hailed as a great feat of arms, and a proof of mastery; even our own hearts were stronger for being so vividly reminded that our seamen are what they have always been—the greatest fighting men alive.

The very conception of this attack was in itself conclusive evidence of a high heroic spirit. The enterprise was not a wild-cat scheme, it was both possible and useful, but it was one from which no man or officer could expect to return. It was planned in November 1917, a month in which the long and splendid work of our anti-submarine division was rapidly advancing to success. The imagination of the Service rose with the rising tide, and it was determined that the pirates should be not only hunted down at sea, but harried and blocked in their principal submarine sally-ports.

These ports had, during the past two years, become more and more important to the U-boat campaign, and had therefore been more and more strongly guarded and fortified against attack. The section of coast upon which they lie had a system of defensive batteries, which included no less than 120 heavy guns, some of them of 15-inch calibre. A battery of these was upon the Mole at Zeebrugge—a solid stone breakwater more than a mile long, which contained also a railway terminus, a seaplane station, huge sheds for personnel and material, and, at the extreme seaward end, a lighthouse with searchlight and range-finder. An attacking force must reckon with a large number of defenders upon the Mole alone, besides the batteries and reinforcements on shore, and the destroyers and other ships in the harbour. But the attack on the Mole was an indispensable part of the enterprise; for the enemy’s attention must be diverted from the block-ships, which were to arrive during the fight and sink themselves in the mouth of the canal. And in order to deal satisfactorily with the Mole, it must be cut off from the reinforcements on shore by the destruction of the railway viaduct which formed the landward end of it.

That was not all. The main difficulty of the plan was the management of the approach and return of the expedition. The conditions were extremely severe. First, the attacking force must effect a complete surprise and reach the Mole before the guns of the defence could be brought to bear upon them. The enemy searchlights must therefore be put out of action, as far as possible, by an artificial fog or smoke-screen; but again, this must not be dense enough to obscure the approach entirely. Secondly, the work must be done in very short time, and to the minute; for though the attack might be a surprise, the return voyage must be made under fire. The shore batteries were known to have a destructive range of sixteen miles; to clear out of the danger zone would take the flotilla two hours, and daylight would begin by 3.30 A.M. It was, therefore, necessary to leave the Mole by 1.30; and as, for similar reasons, it was impossible to arrive before midnight, an hour and a half was all that the time-table could allow for fighting, blocking, and getting away again. To do things as exactly as this, a night must be chosen when wind, weather and tide would all be favourable. We need not be surprised at hearing that the expedition had twice before started and been compelled to return without reaching its objective—once it was actually within fifteen miles of the Mole—but fortunately the Germans, having no efficient patrol at sea, got no hint of what was being planned; and in the end were so completely taken by surprise, that some of their guns when captured had not even had the covers removed from them!

The attack was to be conducted by Vice-Admiral Roger Keyes, commanding at Dover. The force employed was a large and composite one which required masterly handling. The Ostend expedition was a comparatively simple affair; but for Zeebrugge there were needed, besides the principal ships, a fleet of smoke-boats for making fog, motor launches for showing flares and bringing off men in difficulties, monitors for bombarding the batteries, and destroyers for looking after the enemy ships lying in harbour, besides a submarine of which we shall hear more presently. The landing on the Mole was to be made from Vindictive, an old light cruiser of 5720 tons, and she was to be accompanied by two old Mersey ferry-boats, Daffodil and Iris, with storming and demolition parties. The three destroyers were North Star (Lieut.-Commander K.C. Helyar), Phoebe (Lieut.-Commander H.E. Gore-Langton), and Warwick, in which the Admiral himself was flying his flag for the occasion.

It need not be said, except for the pleasure of saying it, that the name of every officer present is worth remembering. Those who died, gave their lives to secure a victory as effective and gallant as any recorded, even in our naval history. Those who returned are marked men, to whom their country will never look in vain for sound and brilliant service. It is an inspiring thought that while their action was unique, they themselves were not. The British Navy is full of such men, and we may jostle them in the corridors of the Admiralty every day in the year. Anyone who happened to be near Room 24 on the morning of Monday, April 22, might have seen two officers come out who bore no sign of a destiny more heroic than the rest. Yet they were, in fact, Captain Alfred Carpenter, who had been selected to command Vindictive, and Wing-Commander Brock, who was to create the magic fog, and whose mysterious fate is one of the most heroic and moving episodes of the fight.

To Captain Carpenter we owe the best account yet given of the expedition. If we read the main portion of it, and supplement it with a few notes, we shall get as near to realising the achievement as anyone without experience or expert knowledge can do. ‘At last,’ he says, ‘the opportunity we had waited for so long arose, and everybody started off in the highest spirits, and with no other thought than to make the very greatest success of the operation. Fate was very kind to us on the whole, and everything went well—almost as per schedule. The various phases depended on accurate timing of the work of the various units. The smoke-screen craft and the fast motor-boats, at given intervals, rushed on ahead at full speed, laid their smoke-screens, attacked enemy vessels with torpedoes, and generally cleared the way for the main force, in addition to hiding the approach of the latter from the shore batteries. Meanwhile a heavy bombardment was being carried out by our monitors, and the sound of their firing, as we approached, was one of the most heartening things that I can remember. On arriving at a certain point some considerable distance from shore, the forces parted, some going to Zeebrugge and some to Ostend, the idea being that the forces should arrive at the two places simultaneously, so that communication from one place to the other could not be used as a warning in either case. Precisely at midnight (the scheduled time) the main force arrived at Zeebrugge and two of the block-ships arrived at Ostend. The Admiral’s signal before going into action was “St George for England!” and the reply from Vindictive was “May we give the Dragon’s tail a damned good twist!”

‘At midnight we steamed through a very thick smoke-screen. German star shells were lighting up the whole place almost like daylight, and one had an extraordinary naked feeling when one saw how exposed we were, although it was in the middle of the night. On emerging from the smoke-screen the end of the Mole, where the lighthouse is, was seen close ahead, distant about 400 yards. The ship was turned immediately to go alongside, and increased to full speed so as to get there as fast as possible. We had decided not to open fire from the ship until they opened fire on us, so that we might remain unobserved till the last possible moment. A battery of five or six guns on the Mole began firing at us almost immediately, from a range of about 300 yards, and every gun on the Vindictive that would bear fired at them as hard as it could. (Ours were 6-inch guns and 12-pounders.)

‘In less than five minutes the ship was alongside the Mole, and efforts were made to grapple the Mole, so as to keep the ship in place. The Iris was ahead. The Daffodil, which was following close astern, came up and in the most gallant manner placed her bow against the Vindictive and pushed the Vindictive sideways, until she was close alongside the Mole. There was a very heavy swell against the Mole; the ships were rolling about, and this made the work of securing to the Mole exceedingly difficult.’

Vindictive was specially fitted along the port side with a high false deck, from which ran eighteen brows or gangways, by which the storming parties were to land. The men were standing ready, but before the word was given a shell killed Colonel Bertram Elliot of the Marines, and Captain Henry Halahan (who was commanding the blue-jackets) fell to machine-gun fire. But no losses could stop the stormers.

‘When the brows were run out from the Vindictive, the men at once climbed out along them. It was an extremely perilous task, in view of the fact that the ends of the brows at one moment were from eight to ten feet above the wall, and the next moment were crashing on the wall as the ship rolled. The way in which the men got over those brows was almost super-human. I expected every moment to see them falling off between the Mole and the ship—at least a 30-feet drop—and being crushed by the ship against the wall. But not a man fell—their agility was wonderful. It was not a case of seamen running barefoot along the deck of a rolling ship; the men were carrying heavy accoutrements, bombs, Lewis guns and other articles, and their path lay along a narrow and extremely unsteady plank. (Of these plank brows only two were uninjured by the enemy’s fire; the rest were riddled.) They never hesitated; they went along the brows, and onto the Mole with the utmost possible speed. Within a few minutes three to four hundred had been landed, and under cover of a barrage put down on the Mole by Stokes guns and howitzer fire from the ships, they fought their way along.

‘Comparatively few of the German guns were able to hit the hull of the ship, as it was behind the protection of the wall. Safety, in fact, depended on how near you could get to the enemy guns, instead of how far away. While the hull was guarded, the upper works of the ship—the funnels, masts, ventilators and bridge—were showing above the wall, and upon these a large number of German guns appeared to be concentrated. Many of our casualties were caused by splinters coming down from the upper works. (One shell burst in the Stokes battery, another destroyed the flame-throwing house, and a third killed every man in the fighting top except one—Sergeant Finch, who was badly wounded, but kept his machine-gun going and won the V.C. for it.) If it had not been for the Daffodil continuing to push the ship in towards the wall throughout the operation, none of the men who went on the Mole would ever have got back again.’

But Daffodil’s men jumped across to Vindictive, and so joined the storming party. Iris, in the meantime, was trying to grapple the Mole ahead of Vindictive; but her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet, and two most gallant officers—Lieut.-Commander Bradford and Lieut. Hawkins—who climbed up and sat astride the parapet trying to make them fast, were both shot and fell between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away. He came out of action with his ship, but died next morning. His place on the bridge was taken by Lieutenant Spencer, R.N.R., who was already wounded, but refused to be relieved. Finally a single big shell came down through the upper deck and burst among some marines who were waiting their turn for the gangways. Out of 56 only 7 survived, and they were all wounded. Altogether Iris lost 8 officers and 69 men killed, and 3 officers and 102 men wounded. But the parapet was stormed all right, and the Germans under it put up no resistance except intense and unremitting gunfire. Some of them took refuge in a destroyer, and were sent to the bottom with her by a successful bombing attack from the parapet.

After some fifteen minutes of this work the batteries on the Mole were silenced, the dugouts cleaned out, and the whole range of hangars and store sheds set blazing, or blown to ruins with dynamite. Then came the first great moment of triumph. ‘A quarter of an hour after the Vindictive took her position, a tremendous explosion was seen at the shore end of the Mole. We then knew that our submarine (the old C.3, who had certainly reached the age for retiring) had managed to get herself in between the piles of the (railway) viaduct connecting the Mole with the shore, and had blown herself up. She carried several tons of high explosive (the equivalent of over 40 good mines) and the effect of her action was effectually to cut off the Mole from the land. Before the explosion the crew of the submarine, which comprised some half-dozen officers and men (under command of Lieutenant R.D. Sandford, R.N.), got away in a very small motor skiff, which lost its propeller and had to be pulled with (a single pair of) paddles against a heavy tide and under machine-gun fire from a range which could be reckoned only in feet. Most of the crew were wounded, but the tiny boat was picked up by a steam pinnace (commanded by Lieut.-Commander Sandford, who rescued his brother and the other five salamanders when they had struggled only 200 yards away from the point of explosion). It is possible that the Germans who saw the submarine coming in under the play of their searchlights, thought that her object was to attack the vessels within the Mole, and that she thought it feasible to get through the viaduct to do this. Their neglect to stop the submarine as she approached could only be put down to the fact that they knew she could not get through owing to the large amount of interlacing between the piles, and that they really believed they were catching her! A large number of Germans were actually on the viaduct, a few feet above the submarine, and were firing at her with machine-guns. I think it can safely be said that everyone of those Germans went up with the viaduct. The cheer raised by my men in the Vindictive when they saw the terrific explosion, was one of the finest things I ever heard. Many of the men were severely wounded—some had three and even four wounds—but they had no thought except for the success of the operation. (They cheered their captain as he went round the decks and kept asking, “Have we won?”—just as if it had been a football match.)

‘About twenty-five minutes after the Vindictive got alongside (and ten minutes after the explosion of C.3), the block-ships were seen rounding the lighthouse and heading for the canal entrance. It was then realised on board the Iris, Daffodil and Vindictive that their work had been accomplished. The block-ships came under very heavy fire immediately they rounded the end of the Mole. Most of the fire, it appears, was concentrated on the leading ship, the Thetis (Commander R.S. Sneyd). She ran aground off the entrance to the canal, on the edge of the channel, and was sunk, as approximately as possible, across the channel itself, thus forming an obstruction to the passage of the German vessels.’ She was coming in in grand style, but had the bad luck to catch her propeller in the defence nets and became a target; but she did fine work even then, signalling to her sister ships and enabling them to avoid the nets. And she may give quite as much trouble to the enemy yet as the other two, for she lies right in the channel, which must always be kept free from silt if even the outer harbour is to be used.

‘This co-operation between the three block-ships, carried out under extremely heavy fire, was one of the finest things in the operation. ‘The second and third ships, the Intrepid (Lieutenant Stuart Bonham-Carter) and Iphigenia (Lieutenant E.W. Billyard-Leake), both went straight through the canal entrance until they actually reached a point some two or three hundred yards inside the shore lines, and behind some of the German batteries. It really seems very wonderful. How the crews of the two ships ever got away is almost beyond imagination.’ Lieutenant Bonham-Carter, after running Intrepid into the canal bank, ordered his crew away in the boats, and blew her up himself. He then escaped on a Carley float, a kind of patent buoy which lights a flare when it takes the water. Very fortunately, Intrepid was still smoking and the smoke partially hid both him and his flare. He was picked up by a motor launch (Lieutenant Deane, R.N.V.R.) which had actually gone inshore to take off another officer who had swum to the bank, and brought away both together. Iphigenia, too, after ramming a dredger and carrying away a barge with her up the canal, was even more successfully placed across the channel and blown up with her engines still going, to ensure her sticking her nose fast in the mud. Her crew escaped, some in the motor launches and some in their own boats, rowing for miles out to sea before they were picked up by the destroyers.

‘The situation, rather more than an hour after the Vindictive got alongside, was this: The block-ships had passed in, had come to the end of their run, and had done their work. The viaduct was blown up and the Mole had been stormed.’ Even the lighthouse had been sacked, for Wing-Commander Brock had announced before starting that after seeing to the smoke-screen work, his first objective would be the range-finding apparatus which he knew was up in the lighthouse top. He carried out his intentions. He was seen going into the lighthouse, and coming out again laden with an armful of stuff; then charging a gun single-handed; and, last of all, lying desperately wounded under the parapet wall of the Mole. This was only reported afterwards, and his fate is unknown to this day. If he died, he died as he would have wished, for he was a big man with a big heart, and did his fighting gladly. ‘Nothing but a useless sacrifice of life could have followed if the three boarding vessels had remained by the Mole any longer. The signal to withdraw was therefore given, and the ships got away under cover of the smoke-screens as quickly as they could. The signal was given by siren, but the noise of the guns was so loud that it had to be repeated many times. Twenty minutes passed before it was definitely reported that there was nobody left on the Mole who could possibly get on board the withdrawing ships.

‘All three ships got away from the wall; they went at full speed and were followed all the way along their course by salvos from the German guns. Shells seemed to fall all round the ships without actually hitting them. The gunners apparently had our speed but not our range, and with remarkable regularity the salvos plopped into the sea behind us. In a short time the ships were clear of imminent danger, owing to the large amount of smoke which they had left behind them.’ Two of the three destroyers also got away safely; the third, North Star, was sunk by gunfire near the block-ships but her crew were brought off by Phoebe. Her loss was balanced by that of the German destroyer, sunk by bombs under the inner wall of the Mole. Of our motor-launches (under command of Captain R. Collins), many of which performed feats of incredible audacity at point-blank range, all returned but two.

‘There is no doubt about the complete success of the enterprise. Photographs taken by our flying-men show that two of the block-ships are in the mouth of the Bruges Canal, well inside the shore line, and lying diagonally across the channel. The third is outside the canal mouth, blocking the greater part of the channel across the harbour. An officer assured me that the bottoms having been blown out of the ships, they are now simply great solid masses of concrete. Blasting, even if it could be attempted without risk to the surroundings (e.g., the walls of the canal and docks) would only divide one solid mass into several masses, just as obstructive as the whole. Moreover, owing to the shallowness of most of the harbour area, every tide will cause sand to silt up about the obstacles and make their removal more difficult. The photographs reveal a clean break in the viaduct at the landward end of the Mole. They also show that the Germans have tried to bridge the gap by planking.’ But planking will hardly carry the railway; and as for the block-ships, they were still in position three months later, with dredging parties at work who only offered an excellent target to the bombs of our seaplanes.

During the attack at Zeebrugge the wind changed and blew the smoke off shore. This helped us in the end by enabling the ships to cover their retirement with a thick screen of miscellaneous smoke; but at Ostend it caused a partial failure of the blocking operations. Commodore Hubert Lynes, who commanded this little expedition, successfully laid his smoke-screen, and sent in his motor-boats behind it to light up the ends of the two wooden piers with flares, visible to our ships but not to the enemy. He then sent in two old cruisers, Sirius and Brilliant, which were to be sunk between the piers. But the moment the wind changed, the enemy, seeing the flares, at once extinguished them, sinking the motor-boats by gunfire, and the block-ships were no longer able to find the entrance. They ran aground about 2000 yards to the east of the piers and were there blown up. Their crews were taken off under heavy fire in motor-launches commanded by Lieutenant K.R. Hoare, R.N.V.R., and Lieutenant R. Bourke, R.N.V.R.

One object had been accomplished—the Ostend garrison had been thoroughly distracted from giving any warning or assistance to Zeebrugge; but the block-ships had only made the harbour entrance dangerous—they had not closed it. There was no doubt on either side that the attempt would be renewed. Our men were all ready and eager for a fight to a finish; the Germans were quick to take every precaution possible. They removed the Stroom Bank buoy, which marked the entrance to the harbour, cut the wooden piers through, to prevent landing parties from advancing along them, and tried to keep up a patrol of the coast with some nine destroyers. But, in spite of all, they were once more taken by surprise, and this time they lost the game at Ostend as they had lost it at Zeebrugge.

The new expedition sailed on May 9 under command, as before, of Commodore Hubert Lynes. Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes was also present himself, in the destroyer Warwick. The flotilla was this time on a larger scale, and the block-ship (which was entrusted to Commander Godsal, late of the Brilliant) was none other than the Vindictive herself, and was to double her glory by a triumphant death.

The night was a perfect one, calm with light airs from the north, a few faint stars and no moon. The ships came on in silence; for though the monitors were already anchored in their firing positions, and the heavy land batteries towards Nieuport were trained ready for the bombardment, not a shot was to be fired until the signal was given for every arm to attack at the same moment. The whole German front was shrouded in a delicate haze, like a genuine sea fog, but even more impenetrable to sight or searchlight. Under cover of this, Commodore Lynes first took his destroyer in and laid a burning light-buoy as a mark for the block-ship. Vindictive followed, and from this point bore up for another flare, lighted by Lieutenant William Slayter on the former position of the Stroom Bank buoy. Four minutes before she arrived there, and fifteen minutes before she was timed to reach the harbour mouth, the signal was given for a general engagement. Instantly the whole force got to work. Two motor-boats, under Lieutenant Albert Poland and Lieutenant Darrel Reid, R.N.R., dashed in and fired their torpedoes at the two wooden pier ends. The western pier had a machine-gun mounted, and that too went up in the explosion. Then the seaplanes began to bomb the town and the monitors were heard thundering from far out to sea. The German star shells were useless in the mist, but every gun in the batteries and land-turrets opened at once, and the Royal Marine guns on our front replied to them with flanking fire.

At this moment a real sea fog drifted in and mixed with the smoke-screen; our destroyers had to keep touch by siren signals, and Vindictive found herself in danger of missing her mark, like Sirius and Brilliant. She had a motor-boat escorting her on each side with huge Dover flares, but the darkness was too dense even for them. Twice she passed the entrance, and came back at last to her first position. Then, by a happy chance, a breeze cleared the fog for a moment and she saw the piers close to her with the opening dead ahead. Acting-Lieutenant Guy Cockburn, in his motor-boat, saw them too; he dashed in under heavy fire and laid his flare right in the channel; Vindictive went straight over it and into goal.

The enemy were now blazing at her with everything they had. A shell hit the after-control and killed Sub-Lieutenant Angus MacLachlan with all his men. Machine-gun bullets made the chart-room and bridges untenable, and Commander Godsal took his officers into the conning-tower. There, after steaming about 200 yards along between the piers, he left them, and went outside, calling back to them to order the ship to be laid bow on to the eastern pier and so swing across the channel. The order was no sooner given than a shell struck the conning-tower full. It killed the Commander outside and stunned Lieutenant Sir John Alleyne, who was inside with Lieutenant V.A.C. Crutchley. Lieutenant Crutchley shouted through the observation slit to the Commander, but, getting no reply, he coolly went on with the swinging of the ship by ringing full speed astern with the port engine. But he soon found that she had ceased to move, so he gave the order to abandon ship and sink her. The main charges were accordingly blown by Engineer-Lieut.-Commander William Bury and the auxiliary charges by Lieutenant Crutchley himself. Vindictive heaved, sank about six feet, and settled on the bottom at an angle of forty-five degrees across the channel. ‘Her work was done,’ says the official narrative.

The losses were two officers and six men killed, two officers and ten men missing, believed killed, and four officers and eight men wounded. The greater number of these were hit while leaving the Vindictive. They were taken off under very heavy machine-gun fire by motor-launches under Lieutenant Bourke, R.N.V.R., and Lieutenant Geoffry Drummond, R.N.V.R. When the latter reached the Warwick his launch was shot to pieces and unseaworthy, he himself was severely wounded, his second in command, Lieutenant Gordon Ross, R.N.V.R., and one seaman, were killed, and a number of others wounded. Day was breaking and they were still within easy range of the forts, so the good ship motor-launch 254 was sunk by a charge in her engine-room. The triumphant return was made without even the most distant attempt at interference by the nine German destroyers. It was a fine chance for a counterstroke with superior force, but the nine did not see it. Ostend remained, like Zeebrugge, a complete British victory.

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