The Raid on Zeebrugge and Ostend British Naval Exploit That Damaged Two German U-Boat Bases on the North Sea Coast

The little Belgian port of Zeebrugge fell into German hands in the Autumn of 1914, and, with the neighboring port of Ostend, became a thorn in the side of the Entente by reason of its increasing use as a base for enemy destroyers, submarines, and aircraft. The Germans, having seized the shipbuilding plants at Antwerp, began building submarines and small war craft, which could be sent by way of Bruges down the canals that connect the latter city with Zeebrugge and Ostend. Especially useful to them was the maritime canal whose mouth at Zeebrugge was protected by a crescent-shaped mole, thirty feet high, inclosing the harbor.

On the night of April 22-23, 1918, a British naval expedition under Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, commanding at Dover, aided by French destroyers, undertook to wreck the stone mole at Zeebrugge and to block the entrances to the canals both at Zeebrugge and at Ostend by sinking the hulks of old ships in the channels. The episode, marked as it was by heroic fighting, proved to be one of the most thrilling and picturesque in the naval operations of the war. To Americans it recalled Hobson's exploit with the Merrimac at Santiago, while to Englishmen it brought back memories of Sir Francis Drake and his fireships in the Harbor of Cadiz.

Though the fighting at Zeebrugge lasted only an hour, the British lost 588 men, officially reported as follows: Officers—Killed, 16; died of wounds, 3; missing, 2; wounded, 29. Men—Killed, 144; died of wounds, 25; missing, 14; wounded, 355.

Six obsolete British cruisers took part in the attack. They were the Brilliant, Iphigenia, Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis, and Vindictive. The first five of these were filled with concrete and were to be sunk in the entrances of the two ports. The Vindictive, working with the two Mersey ferryboats Daffodil and Iris, carried storming and demolition parties to the Zeebrugge mole. The object was to attack the enemy forces and guns on the mole, along with the destroyer and submarine depots and the large seaplane base upon it, and thus to divert the enemy's attention from the work of the block ships. As the attack on the mole accomplished this, the main object of the operation was successful.

The attacking forces were composed of bluejackets and Royal Marines picked from the Grand Fleet and from naval and marine depots. Sir Eric Geddes stated in Parliament the next morning that light forces belonging to the Dover command and Harwich forces under Admiral Tyrwhitte covered the operation from the south. A large force of monitors, together with many motor launches and small, fast craft took part. One of the essentials of success was the creation of a heavy veil of artificial fog or smoke. The officer who developed this phase of the attack was killed in action. The general plan was to attack the guns and works on the Zeebrugge mole with storming parties, while the concrete-laden cruisers were being sunk in the channel. Two old and valueless submarines filled with explosives were to be blown up against the viaduct connecting the mole with the shore.

STORY OF THE FIGHTING

A detailed narrative of the affair was issued by the British Admiralty on the 25th, the essential passages of which are as follows:

The night was overcast and there was a drifting haze. Down the coast a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short sea. From the Vindictive's bridge, as she headed in toward the mole, with the faithful ferryboats at her heels, there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead, as she drove through the water, rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing Commander Brock, without which, acknowledges the Admiral in command, the operation could not have been conducted.

A northeast wind moved the volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships. Beyond it was the distant town, its defenders unsuspicious. It was not until the Vindictive, with bluejackets and marines standing ready for landing, was close upon the mole that the wind lulled and came away again from the southeast, sweeping back the smoke screen and laying her bare to eyes that looked seaward.

There was a moment immediately afterward when it seemed to those on the ships as if the dim, coast-hidden harbor exploded into light. A star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells. The wavering beams of the searchlights swung around and settled into a glare. A wild fire of gun flashes leaped against the sky, strings of luminous green beads shot aloft, hung and sank. The darkness of the night was supplemented by a nightmare daylight of battle-fired guns and machine guns along the mole. The batteries ashore awoke to life.

Landing on the Mole

It was in a gale of shelling that the Vindictive laid her nose against the thirty-foot high concrete side of the mole, let go her anchor and signaled to the Daffodil to shove her stern in.

The Iris went ahead and endeavored to get alongside likewise. The fire was intense, while the ships plunged and rolled beside the mole in the seas, the Vindictive with her greater draught jarring against the foundations of the mole with every lunge. They were swept diagonally by machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and by the heavy batteries on shore.

Commander (now Captain) Carpenter conned the Vindictive from the open bridge until her stern was laid in, when he took up his position in the flame thrower hut on the port side. It is marvelous that any occupant should have survived a minute in this hut, so riddled and shattered is it.

The officers of the Iris, which was in trouble ahead of the Vindictive, describe Captain Carpenter as handling her like a picket boat. The Vindictive was fitted along her port side with a high false deck, from which ran eighteen brows or gangways by which the storming and demolition parties were to land.

The men gathered in readiness on the main lower decks, while Colonel Elliott, who was to lead the marines, waited on the false deck just abaft the bridge. Captain Halahan, who commanded the bluejackets, was amidships. The gangways were lowered, and they scraped and rebounded upon the high parapet of the mole as the Vindictive rolled in the sea-way.

The word for the assault had not yet been given when both leaders were killed, Colonel Elliott by a shell and Captain Halahan by machine-gun fire which swept the decks. The same shell that killed Colonel Elliott also did fearful execution in the forward Stokes mortar battery. The men were magnificent; every officer bears the same testimony.

The mere landing on the mole was a perilous business. It involved a passage across the crashing and splintering gangways, a drop over the parapet into the field of fire of the German machine guns which swept its length, and a further drop of some sixteen feet to the surface of the mole itself. Many were killed and more wounded as they crowded up the gangways, but nothing hindered the orderly and speedy landing by every gangway.

Lieutenant H. T. C. Walker had his arm shot away by shell on the upper deck, and lay in darkness while the storming parties trod him under. He was recognized and dragged aside by the commander. He raised his remaining arm in greetings. "Good luck to you," he called as the rest of the stormers hastened by. "Good luck."

The lower deck was a shambles as the commander made the rounds of the ship, yet those wounded and dying raised themselves to cheer as he made his tour. * * *

Heroic Work on the Iris

The Iris had troubles of her own. Her first attempts to make fast to the mole ahead of the Vindictive failed, as her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieut. Commander Bradford and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ashore and sat astride the parapet trying to make the grapnels fast till each was killed and fell down between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer, though wounded, took command and refused to be relieved.

The Iris was obliged at last to change her position and fall in astern of the Vindictive, and suffered very heavily from fire. A single big shell plunged through the upper deck and burst below at a point where fifty-six marines were waiting for the order to go to the gangways. Forty-nine were killed. The remaining seven were wounded. Another shell in the ward-room, which was serving as a sick bay, killed four officers and twenty-six men. Her total casualties were eight officers and sixty-nine men killed and three officers and 103 men wounded.

Storming and demolition parties upon the mole met with no resistance from the Germans other than intense and unremitting fire. One after another buildings burst into flame or split and crumbled as dynamite went off. A bombing party working up toward the mole extension in search of the enemy destroyed several machine-gun emplacements, but not a single prisoner rewarded them. It appears that upon the approach of the ships and with the opening of fire the enemy simply retired and contented themselves with bringing machine guns to the short end of the mole.

BLOCKING THE CANAL

Describing operations of the three block ships, the official narrative says:

The Thetis came first, steaming into a tornado of shells from great batteries ashore. All her crew, save a remnant who remained to steam her in and sink her, already had been taken off her by a ubiquitous motor launch, but the remnant spared hands enough to keep her four guns going. It was hers to show the road to the Intrepid and the Iphigenia, which followed. She cleared a string of armed barges which defends the channel from the tip of the mole, but had the ill-fortune to foul one of her propellers upon a net defense which flanks it on the shore side.

The propeller gathered in the net, and it rendered her practically unmanageable. Shore batteries found her and pounded her unremittingly. She bumped into the bank, edged off, and found herself in the channel again still some hundreds of yards from the mouth of the canal in practically a sinking condition. As she lay she signaled invaluable directions to others, and her commander, R. S. Sneyd, also accordingly blew charges and sank her. Motor launches under Lieutenant H. Littleton raced alongside and took off her crew. Her losses were five killed and five wounded.

The Intrepid, smoking like a volcano and with all her guns blazing, followed. Her motor launch had failed to get alongside outside the harbor, and she had men enough for anything. Straight into the canal she steered, her smoke blowing back from her into the Iphigenia's eyes, so that the latter was blinded, and, going a little wild, rammed a dredger, with her barge moored beside it, which lay at the western arm of the canal. She was not clear, though, and entered the canal pushing the barge before her. It was then that a shell hit the steam connections of her whistle, and the escape of steam which followed drove off some of the smoke and let her see what she was doing.

Main Object Attained

Lieutenant Stuart Bonham Carter, commanding the Intrepid, placed the nose of his ship neatly on the mud of the western bank, ordered his crew away, and blew up his ship by switches in the chart room. Four dull bumps were all that could be heard, and immediately afterward there arrived on deck the engineer, who had been in the engine room during the explosion, and reported that all was as it should be.

Lieutenant E. W. Bullyard Leake, commanding the Iphigenia, beached her according to arrangement on the eastern side, blew her up, saw her drop nicely across the canal, and left her with her engines still going, to hold her in position till she should have bedded well down on the bottom. According to the latest reports from air observation, two old ships, with their holds full of concrete, are lying across the canal in a V position, and it is probable that the work they set out to do has been accomplished and that the canal is effectively blocked. A motor launch, under Lieutenant P. T. Deane, had followed them in to bring away the crews and waited further up the canal toward the mouth against the western bank.

Lieutenant Bonham Carter, having sent away his boats, was reduced to a Carley float, an apparatus like an exaggerated lifebuoy with the floor of a grating. Upon contact with the water it ignited a calcium flare and he was adrift in the uncanny illumination with a German machine gun a few hundred yards away giving him its undivided attention. What saved him was possibly the fact that the defunct Intrepid still was emitting huge clouds of smoke which it had been worth nobody's while to turn. He managed to catch a rope, as the motor launch started, and was towed for awhile till he was observed and taken on board.

THE VINDICTIVE'S STORY

Commander Alfred F. B. Carpenter, who commanded the Vindictive and who was made Captain for his successful work, gave an Associated Press correspondent an interesting description of the episode. During the attack he was at the end of the bridge in a small steel box or cabin which had been specially constructed to house a flame thrower. The Captain, with his arm in a sling, standing on the shell-battered deck of the Vindictive, said:

Exactly according to plan we ran alongside the mole, approached it on the port side, where we were equipped with specially built buffers of wood two feet wide. As there was nothing for us to tie up to, we merely dropped anchor there, while the Daffodil kept us against the mole with her nose against the opposite side of our ship. In the fairly heavy sea two of our three gangways were smashed, but the third held, and 500 men swarmed up this on to the mole. This gangway was two feet wide and thirty feet long. The men who went up it included 300 marines and 150 storming seamen from the Vindictive, and fifty or so from the Daffodil. They swarmed up the steel gangway, carrying hand grenades and Lewis guns. No Germans succeeded in approaching the gangway, but a hard hand-to-hand fight took place about 200 yards up the mole toward the shore.

The Vindictive's bow was pointed toward the shore, so the bridge got the full effect of enemy fire from the shore batteries. One shell exploded against the pilot house, killing nearly all its ten occupants. Another burst in the fighting top, killing a Lieutenant and eight men, who were doing excellent work with two pompoms and four machine guns.

The battery of eleven-inch guns at the end of the mole was only 300 yards away, and it kept trying to reach us. The shore batteries also were diligent. Only a few German shells hit our hull, because it was well protected by the wall of the mole, but the upper structure, mast, stacks, and ventilators showed above the wall and were riddled. A considerable proportion of our casualties were caused by splinters from these upper works.

Meanwhile the Daffodil continued to push us against the wall as if no battle was on, and if she had failed to do this none of the members of the landing party would have been able to return to the ship.

Twenty-five minutes after the Vindictive had reached the wall the first block ship passed in and headed for the canal. Two others followed in leisurely fashion while we kept up the fight on the mole. One of the block ships stranded outside of the canal, but the two others got two or three hundred yards inside, where they were successfully sunk across the entrance.

Fifteen minutes after the Vindictive arrived alongside the mole our submarine exploded under the viaduct connecting the mole with the mainland. The Germans had sent a considerable force to this viaduct as soon as the submarine arrived, and these men were gathered on the viaduct, attacking our submersible with machine guns. When the explosion occurred the viaduct and Germans were blown up together. The crew of the submarine, consisting of six men, escaped on board a dinghy to a motor launch.

Early in the fighting a German shell knocked out our howitzer, which had been getting in some good shots on a big German seaplane station on the mole half a mile away. This is the largest seaplane station in Belgium. Unfortunately, our other guns could not be brought to bear effectively upon it. The shell which disabled the howitzer killed all the members of the gun crew. Many men were also killed by a German shell which hit the mole close to our ship and scattered fragments of steel and stone among the marines assembling on the deck around the gangway.

Half an hour after the block ships went in, we received the signal to withdraw. The Vindictive's siren was blown, and the men returned from all parts of the mole and thronged down the gangway. We put off after having lain alongside just about an hour. The Germans made no effort to interfere with our getaway other than to continue their heavy firing.

RESCUE FROM BLOCK SHIPS

One of the most thrilling incidents was the rescue by two American-built motor launches of nearly 200 members of the crews of two block ships sunk at the entrance to the Bruges Canal. The feat was accomplished under a heavy fire and the actual transfer was made in less than five minutes. One launch delivered ninety-nine men to the destroyer.

The dead and wounded could not all be brought away, but the loss of personnel in this way was declared to be remarkably small.

Stoker Bendall of the submarine which blew up the Zeebrugge mole said:

It was silent and heavy business. We were going full tilt when we hit the viaduct. It was a good jolt, and we ran right into the middle of the viaduct and stuck there, as we intended to do. I don't think anybody said anything except, "Well, we are here all right."

We lowered a skiff and stood by while the commander touched off the fuse and then tumbled into the skiff and pushed off. By bad luck the propeller fouled the exhaust pipe and left us with only two oars and two minutes to get away. The enemy lights were on us, and the machine guns were firing from the shore.

Before we made 200 yards the submarine went up, and there was a tremendous flash and roar, and lots of concrete from the mole fell around us. Luckily, we were not struck.

Photographs taken from an airplane a few days later showed that the effort to block the canal entrance had been successful. The Intrepid and Iphigenia had reached the precise positions in which they were intended to be sunk, while the exploded submarine had blown a gap of sixty to a hundred feet in the shore end of the mole. The Frankfurter Zeitung, in commenting on the affair, said: "It would be foolish to deny that the British fleet scored a great success through a fantastically audacious stroke in penetrating into one of the most important strongholds over which the German flag floats."

ATTACKS AT OSTEND

At Ostend the operations on the same night were unsuccessful, largely owing to a shift of wind. Small craft with smoke apparatus ran in according to program, set up a screen, and lit two large flares to mark the entrance to the harbor for the two concrete-laden cruisers that were to be sunk in the channel. Before the cruisers could arrive, however, the wind shifted and blew away the smoke screen, after which the German gunfire quickly destroyed the flares. The cruisers tried to proceed by guesswork under heavy fire, but their efforts were in vain. One of the block ships was sunk, but not in a position to obstruct the channel.

A second attempt to close the Ostend harbor was made on the night of May 9-10, when the battered old Vindictive, which had borne the brunt of the shellfire at the Zeebrugge mole, was sunk in the channel with her inside full of concrete. A member of the expedition gave this account:

As the Vindictive neared Ostend it became apparent that the Germans had got wind of our presence, for suddenly there was a regular pyrotechnic display of star shells. The effect was brilliant, but quite undesirable from our point of view. Immediately guns of all sizes opened fire on us, and there was a terrific din.

The Vindictive and one or two other vessels received hits, and a few casualties were caused by this gunfire. The firing was heavily returned by our ships. Most of the crew of the Vindictive were taken off when the ship was at a little distance from the Ostend piers, only a few officers and men being left to navigate her between the piers and sink her there. A motor launch which was assisting in picking up the crew was hit several times by shellfire, and was in a sinking condition when it came alongside the Admiral's vessel, the destroyer Warwick, to which they were transferred. The motor launch had extensive damage in the fore part, and by order of the Admiral was sunk, as it was apparent that it could not get back to Dover. There was a heavy explosion when the Vindictive sank between the piers.

The casualties in the second Ostend raid were forty-seven, of whom eighteen were killed or missing, the rest wounded.

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The British Admiralty, in its official report of the second Ostend action, issued May 14, stated that the Vindictive was "lying at an angle of about 40 degrees to the pier, and seemed to be hard fast." Commander Godsal, who was on deck during the critical moments, was missing and was believed to have been killed; Lieutenant Crutchley blew up the auxiliary charges in the forward 6-inch magazine from the conning tower. Lieut. Commander William A. Bury, who blew up the main charges by a switch installed aft, was severely wounded. The Admiralty reported that the sunken ship would make the harbor impracticable for any but small craft and difficult for dredging operations.

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