“Their Lordships desire to express to all ranks and ratings concerned in the recent gallant and successful enterprise on the Belgian coast their high admiration of the perfect co-operation displayed, and of the single-minded determination of all to achieve their object. The disciplined daring and singular contempt of death exhibited by those who were assigned the posts of greatest danger places this exploit high in the annals of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, and will be a proud memory for the relatives of those who fell.”—General Order to the Fleet.

Prevention is better than cure, even in the Navy. To bottle up the U-boats was obviously a far quicker way of ridding the sea of the vermin than scouring the ocean highway for them. It required no effort of genius to come to that conclusion. But how? Many minds had puzzled over the problem and evolved all kinds of devices for the purpose, most of them more ingenious than practical. Zeebrugge and Ostend were within a comparatively few miles of the Essex coast, and from these ports there issued U-boats that played the part of maritime highwaymen every hour of the twenty-four, and surface craft that stole along in the darkness of night and raided the Straits. The importance attached by the enemy to Zeebrugge and Ostend was so great that they said they would never give them up. That defiant attitude, suggestive of a rude little boy putting his fingers to his nose in token of profound disrespect, was calculated to make every British son all the more determined that the Germans should be compelled to clear out.

Napoleon I quite rightly regarded Antwerp as a pistol held at the heart of England; when William II ravished Belgium he brought his weapons nearer still. Under German domination Zeebrugge and Ostend became vastly important bases for submarines and torpedo-boats. Together they formed a veritable pirates’ lair. From time to time since August 1914 they had been heavily bombarded by the Navy and from the air, but always with surprisingly little effect on their fiendish activities. Warships came and warships went, tons of high explosive shells and bombs were rained on them, until one dismally surmised that they must be invulnerable.

Zeebrugge was the more important because it was directly connected by canal with medieval Bruges. Previous to the outbreak of hostilities the City of the Golden Fleece was a sort of Sleepy Hollow kept awake by its carillon and tourists. The German invaders transformed the place into a naval arsenal. Torpedo-boats and submarines found shelter in the port, making their entry and exit via Zeebrugge Harbour, with its broad mole extending about a mile and a half seaward. The latter was connected with the shore by a wooden jetty of enormous strength. This arrangement prevented the harbour from silting up, which otherwise it would have done. The long concrete arm sheltering the canal was something more than a mere breakwater. It had been converted into a fort, with batteries and machine-guns, seaplane hangars and stores, and was strongly garrisoned. No fewer than 120 guns guarded the littoral of Zeebrugge and Ostend.

Could the ports be sealed, despite the difficulties presented by the treacherous nature of the coast, the mine-fields that shielded them, the batteries that bristled on the sand-dunes, the aircraft that kept watch and ward, the warships that lay in hiding? The question was entertained seriously by Rear-Admiral Sir Reginald Tyrwhitt. There seemed to be little likelihood at that date that the Army would achieve the result by military means, and so if these places were to be rendered useless as sea bases the task, it was clear, must be accomplished by the Navy.

The scheme was laid before Sir John Jellicoe, at that time First Sea Lord, and given to Vice-Admiral Roger Keyes, in command at Dover, to carry out. We have already met the latter as Commodore of Submarines in August 1914; he now returned to a task he had undertaken on a much smaller scale in 1900, during the Boxer Rebellion in China. With a dozen men he stormed a fort and blew it up, despite the opinion of some of his seniors that the attempt was little more than a forlorn hope. While he and his associates were planning the multitudinous details of the Zeebrugge-Ostend expedition, the memory of the former ‘impossible’ task must have crossed his mind more than once. Here was an operation ten thousand times more difficult, requiring the most minute calculations, an efficient fighting force, a considerable fleet, and an exact time-table. Chinamen can fight, and fight desperately, but the garrison Keyes purposed to attack was officered and manned by the German Army, and the place defended by the most modern weapons.

The resources that Keyes asked for were a covering force, half a dozen obsolete cruisers—there is sometimes a good deal of ‘kick’ in a ship marked for the scrap-heap—a couple of ferry-boats, and a number of auxiliary vessels. Of the six old-timers, five were to be filled with concrete and sunk in such a position that navigation would be blocked (hence the term block-ships) and one was to land the main storming party; the ferry-boats were to convey additional fighting men, and the auxiliaries were to pick up any survivors there might be. For mark this: the desperate nature of the enterprise made annihilation possible. None expected to get back, but all had made up their minds to dam up the raiders. That was the sole and sufficient object of the expedition. It formed part of no invasion project.

There was urgency but no hurry, a naval paradox which meant that while the Service fully realized the importance of bottling up the U-boats, it also understood that delay in executing the operation was preferable to a tragic anti-climax. Twice the armada set out and returned without having accomplished its purpose. On St George’s Day 1918 Keyes and his men showed their mettle in the most dashing naval exploit of the Great Conflict.

The cruiser Vindictive, accompanied by the Daffodil and the Iris, both Mersey ferry-boats, carried storming and demolition parties of bluejackets and ‘jollies,’ all picked men. The Vindictive, armed with various species of things Satanic, was to focus the attention of the enemy. The Intrepid, the Iphigenia, and the Thetis, cargoed with concrete, were to be sunk by explosives detonated from their respective bridges in the channels and entrances to Zeebrugge; the Brilliant and the Sirius were to perform similar operations at Ostend.

The night was hazy and overcast. Navigation in mined waters is not easy, but there were no casualties. As the Vindictive and her consorts headed for Zeebrugge Harbour they shrouded themselves in a smoke-screen so dense that the strongest search-light could not penetrate it. Everything went splendidly until the old cruiser and the ferry-boats were just off the mole. Then the wind turned Hun. The star-shells and search-lights that suddenly awakened, lighting up the harbour almost as though it were day, revealed the visitors to the enemy. Batteries thundered, machine-guns on the mole awoke to life, shells burst above, about, and on the incoming cruiser. In addition to the immediate din the boom of the guns of the supporting monitors and of siege guns in Flanders could be heard. The Vindictive held on her way through the inferno as though the reception was nothing more formidable than fireworks sent up to welcome her.

Commander Alfred F. B. Carpenter, standing on the exposed bridge of the cruiser, brought the bows of his ship alongside the mole, while the Daffodil ran a grave risk of bursting her boilers in a giant effort to shove her stern in. As the parapet of the mole was thirty feet high the Vindictive had been fitted with a temporary deck, from whence eighteen gangways were speedily run out. Before they had ordered their men to land both Colonel Elliot, of the Marines, and Captain H. C. Halahan, who was to lead the sailors, were lying dead. When the word was given the fighters moved down the brows in face of a withering fire, an operation made more difficult by the rolling of the ship in a heavy swell. Many were killed and wounded as they attempted to land. Lieutenant H. T. C. Walker, with one arm blown off, was trodden under before he could be dragged away. “Good luck!” he yelled, “good luck!”

The howitzer mounted forward in the Vindictive was fed and fought with uncanny precision, though two crews were wiped out. In the foretop a solitary man alone remained to work one of the Lewis guns, and he was grievously wounded. Near by, sitting in a little cabin, a mere landsman fired rockets for the guidance of the block-ships with as little concern as if he were managing a benefit performance at the Crystal Palace. Commander Carpenter’s coolness was infectious. There was no ‘panic party,’ real or fancied, on this mystery ship. The Daffodil, still holding the cruiser in position, was ordered to maintain her station and withhold landing her storming party. The Iris, owing to the failure of her grapnels to grip the parapet, fell astern of the cruiser, though Lieutenant-Commander Bradford and Lieutenant Hawkins clambered up and tried to fix them, sitting at work on the wall until they were shot dead.

The Thetis, with a nucleus crew—the others had been taken off by motor-boats—approached the mole, but failed to reach it. One of her propellers got entangled in a steel defence net. Becoming unmanageable, she struck the edge of a shoal and refused to budge. Shell after shell crashed against her old sides, but it was not until she was virtually a wreck that Commander R. S. Sneyd, D.S.O., exploded the charges in her hold and sank her. Then he signalled the course to the other ships.

The Intrepid and the Iphigenia came bowling along, sorry for their consort’s ill-luck but anxious only to get on with the immediate task in hand. Lieutenant S. Bonham-Carter beached the Intrepid on the muddy spot marked as her grave, blew a great hole in her side, and was smilingly told by the chief engineer, who had remained below, that the performance was eminently satisfactory. Surely that engineer was the embodiment of dignity and impudence, that peculiar combination that marks the true Briton. Lieutenant E. W. Billyard-Leake, in command of the Iphigenia, also entered the canal and carried out his task with splendid efficiency. Both ships were sunk about 200 yards up the fairway.

The officers and men of the block-ships were picked up with conspicuous gallantry by perky little motor launches that were all the while subjected to the attention of land batteries as they bustled about their business. Lieutenant Bonham-Carter sent away his boats before leaving the ship, trusting to a Carley float for his own salvation. The calcium flare, which is an integral part of this apparatus, showed him up to the Germans, who kindly turned on a machine-gun for his special benefit. Probably the smoke from his own vessel saved him. He was subsequently picked up by a launch.

The most dramatic incident was yet to come. Suddenly the shore end of the mole was lit up by a sheet of livid flame that seemed to sear the sky. C 3, an old submarine commanded by Lieutenant R. D. Sandford, R.N., had been jammed into the great piles that supported the jetty. No ordinary submarine this, but one loaded with several tons of high explosive. Her little crew of heroes got away in a boat before the charge was fired, but not before the craft had been driven right home. The explosion severed the communications of the mole with the shore, a break 60 feet wide being effected. The Germans crowding the wooden structure were blown to bits.

The landing parties, working under a galling fire, blew up buildings, destroyed gun-emplacements, and did as much damage as was possible before being recalled. Not a few of the enemy felt the cold steel of British bayonets, and at least two of their guns were captured and turned on them. Fifty minutes elapsed before the siren of the Vindictive sounded for the men to return.

The operation against Ostend was not so successful. Owing to the change of wind the Sirius and the Brilliant were revealed by means of the calcium flares lit to guide them, which had previously been hidden by the smoke-cloud. These lights were promptly extinguished by the enemy’s gunners. Unable to find the entrance, the two ships grounded east of the piers, and were there sunk.

Taking all things into consideration, the casualties in these two dare-devil actions were small, although they totalled over 600. Vice-Admiral Keyes, who was present in the destroyer Warwick, was knighted in recognition of his distinguished service, and Commander Alfred F. B. Carpenter was promoted to Captain and received the V.C. Sandford, of C 3, Lieutenant P. T. Dean, R.N.V.R., who performed wonders in rescuing men from the Intrepid and the Iphigenia, Captain E. Bamford, D.S.O., who landed three platoons of the Marines on the mole, Sergeant N. A. Finch, who fought in the foretop of the Vindictive, and Able Seaman A. E. Mackenzie, who worked a machine-gun in an exposed position, were also decorated with the Victoria Cross.

Battle-scarred and holed in many places, the Vindictive was patched up at Dover for a final exploit. The British Navy does not like leaving things half done. The affair at Ostend had miscarried through sheer bad luck. It must be completed. In the early hours of the morning of the 10th May, 1918, the brave old cruiser, now rigged up as a block-ship, faced 15–in. guns and found the entrance, though twice she lost her way. She got a terrible pasting from the defenders of the port. The after-control was wiped out, the conning-tower struck by a heavy shell. On reaching the eastern pier she swung round to an angle of about forty degrees to the structure, the charges were fired, and she settled down. The casualties reached 136 officers and men.

That these stirring episodes in the War in the Underseas aided and abetted in the final surrender of the U-boats in November 1918 cannot be doubted.