- from the British newsmagazine ‘The War Illustrated’, 11th May, 1918
- 'The Blockships'
- by Edward Wright
The Immortal Story of the Great Naval Raid on Zeebrugge
after the raid - heroics in newsmagazines
Ever since the Germans organised submarine and destroyer bases on the Flemish coast the younger men of the British Navy had been eager to make a swoop upon the enemy fortresses. For long, however, they were restrained by cautious admirals of the old school. By the time some of the daring spirits rose to flag rank at Dover and Harwich the strength of the fortifications at Zeebrugge and Ostend excelled that of the German works along the North Sea in August, 1914.
But there were inventive minds in the Dover Patrol. Brilliant among them was Wing- Commander Frank H. Brock, son of the fireworks manufacturer. He altered the conditions of landing operations by devising an immense artificial fog.
Then Vice-Admiral Roger J. B. Keyes, who had conducted submarine operations in the Heligoland Bight, and taken part in the Gallipoli landing battles, found a new use for underwater craft. He took a n old submarine, filled it with tons of high-explosive, leaving just enough room for a small crew to work the gigantic torpedo across the Channel. Next, he aroused loud indignation at Liverpool by commandeering the Iris and Daffodil — two double-decked ferry-boats used in. conveying passengers across the Mersey at an unwarlike crawl of nine knots. The special virtue of these boats was that they drew only seven feet of water, and had a carrying capacity of seventeen hundred men.
- top left: Daffodil, top right: Iphigenia,
- bottom HMS Vindictive
Preparing the Stroke
He connected the ferry-boats with the second-class cruiser Vindictive — an old thing, launched in 1897, with only one-inch armour on part of her deck, and a nominal speed of twenty knots. She was refitted with gangways of peculiar design, and furnished with three new howitzers, trench-mortars, and flame-throwers.
Five other cruisers—Brilliant, Sirius, Intrepid, Iphigenia, and Thetis, varying in displacement from 3,400 to 3,600 tons, and, in age, from oldishness to senility — were more strangely transformed. "Thought you was a bluejacket, didn't you?" said one transformer to his mate. "You're only a dock-labourer. You're no good for fighting!" Neither were the cruisers, apparently. They were converted into cargo-boats, and loaded with Portland cement until they could still just float. Despite appearances, however, the cement freighters were as romantic objects as the fireships which Gianibelli prepared for Drake in the same port when the Armada was expected.
General von Ludendorff did all he could to assist the Dover Patrol. So bent was he upon driving the British Army into a corner that he neglected his own positions along the Flemish coast, and removed many of his Marines inland to Dixmude, the Lys, and the Somme, replacing them with thousands of Landsturmers. Admiral Keyes, therefore, had a double design in proceeding with his audacious plan. He intended to relieve some of the pressure on the British Army by compelling the enemy to reinforce the coast-line, and he aimed at interfering in the campaign of submarine piracy by blocking one or both sea outlets of the Antwerp Canal.
By April, 1918, weather study had become the supreme interest of the young admiral. He wanted a clear night, with a fairly smooth sea and a steady breeze blowing westerly. Several practice trips were made, till, finally, in the afternoon of April 22nd, conditions seemed promising, and the naval forces of Dover and Harwich converged upon Zeebrugge and Ostend, with some French destroyers co-operating.
The operations began with an ordinary monitor bombardment, with numerous motor- boats throwing up an ordinary smoke-screen to hide the attacking vessels. Only in the intensity of the gun fire was there anything' unusual. When the smoke barrage thickened, the enemy did not become alarmed, for the weather was misty and rainy on his side of the water, and to him it merely seemed that the sea-fog was growing denser.
Wonder of the "Fog"
Precisely at midnight the midget-like motor-boats, still pouring out the new smoke, explored all the passages in the enemy's minefield, and pushed up towards the Zeebrugge Mole and the piers of Ostend. There they lighted calcium flares to guide the blockships and storming ships, and for some minutes their artificial fog was so overwhelmingly dense that the enemy could not even see the British signal-fires burning at the end of his works.
Vindictive, having towed Iris and Daffodil across the Channel, steamed ahead of them to the great high Mole of Zeebrugge Harbour, guarded by the destroyer Warwick, in which Admiral Keyes flew his flag, and by two other destroyers, North Star and Phoebe. Three of the blockships (Intrepid, Iphigenia, and Thetis) slowed down outside the Bruges Harbour, while Sirius and Brilliant were steaming past the Stream Bank at Ostend.
An absolutely amazing surprise stroke seemed about to be delivered, at light cost to the deliverers, when, suddenly, the wind changed, and, blowing away, the Brock fog, revealed to the startled enemy the presence of British forces. With innumerable searchlights and hundreds of star-shells he changed night into day. The coast blazed with electric radiance, and the hundred and twenty heavy guns lining it opened fire at point-blank range.
At Ostend the expedition was a failure. By his gun fire the enemy extinguished the flames in the approaches and at: the end of the piers. Sirius and Brilliant, failing to find the entrance, grounded and sank themselves four hundred yards-east of the canal outlet.
At Zeebrugge complete success was attained, in spite of the change of wind. When the smoke blew away, Vindictive, under Commander A. F. B. Carpenter, was within three hundred yards of the great Mole, with Iris and Daffodil equally close. Raked by fire from the battery at the end of the great breakwater, swept by machine-guns, and hammered by the mighty German siege-guns, the old cruiser and the two ferry-boats suffered terribly.
- left: an artist's impression of the raid
- right: storming the Mole
Critical Moments
Vindictive's decks were crowded with storming-parties, with the Marines (under Colonel Elliott), and the bluejackets (under Captain H. C. Halahan). All men were volunteers, who knew they were going to their death, and, instead of drawing back when the peril was explained to them, some of them had almost mutinied over the privilege of getting into a storming-party.
From the open bridge Commander Carpenter conned his ship with superb skill, but as he was working under a warehouse on the thirty-foot wall of the Mole, a big German shell struck the ship, killing the colonel of the Marines and wounding and maiming many men. The machine-gun fire, that swept the decks, slew Captain Halahan and many bluejackets, while the forward Stokes mortar battery was horribly smashed by the shell that killed the leader of the Marines. . So great was the damage and loss of life that Vindictive seemed to be out of action. Her eighteen gangways, running from a high false deck on the port side, were smashed, and the German gunners on the high sea-wall continued to fire into the crowd of Marines and seamen. To add to the trouble, the remaining gangways could not be lowered. The vessel rolled so much in the swell that they rebounded upon the high parapet. Then it was that Commander Carpenter showed what seamanship is. He directed Daffodil to close in on him and push him against the Mole to prevent him rocking to wreck upon it.
Then the crashing, splintering gangway planks were again lowered, and across them the stormers climbed the sea-wall, and, by means of rope ladders, dropped off it to the Mole, sixteen feet below. They fought to the death with the enemy gunners manning the battery on the Mole.
The Iris had a harder task to land her men on the huge breakwater. She tried to make fast ahead of Vindictive, but found her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers climbed ashore and tried to make the holding-irons fast, but were killed. Iris was compelled to change position behind Vindictive, and while she was moving one heavy shell put fifty-six Marines out of action, and another killed four officers and twenty-six men.
The storming-party of the pushful little Daffodil clambered into Vindictive, and reached the Mole by the cruiser's gangway. In the meantime^ most of the German garrison on the vast curving wall retreated to the shore end, and brought their machine-gun fire to bear upon the bombing-parties and demolition-parties exploring the railway, hangars, warehouses, and other buildings. The enemy was waiting for strong reinforcement to make a counter-attack, but this never took place.
For a British submarine, commanded by Lieutenant R. D. Sandford, came to the timber-built jetty of the great breakwater, and appeared to be bent on getting through the piles, in order to make a flanking attack upon enemy vessels in the harbour.
Submarine as Torpedo
Apparently the Germans thought they would be able to capture the submarine intact when it became fixed in the woodwork. They crowded the crossing above to watch the British underwater craft run into the trap. Lieutenant Sandford fixed his boat well under the piles, emerged, and, with his small crew, entered a little 'motor-skiff. A few yards from the submarine the propeller of the skiff became fouled, and, with only two oars, the men ha'd to row away for life, for the fuse had been touched off in the novel, gigantic torpedo. They were just clear enough to escape entire destruction when the cargo of high-explosive in the submarine went off, destroying a hundred feet of timber-built jetty, together with many of the Germans who had retreated from the Mole.
The Mole then became a long, narrow island, upon which the demolition-parties worked explosively for sixty-five minutes, while the enemy gunners flogged the great bank with shell, and slashed at the funnels and fighting top of the Vindictive, showing above the high seaward wall, where Commander Carpenter was watching the scene from- his flame-thrower hut, and directing the ships in the harbour.
Entering the Harbour
At the end of the Mole, veiled by the smoke-screen that would no longer blow into the harbour, Admiral Keyes continued to control operations by means of various communication devices. As soon as the attention of the enemy was concentrated on his lost breakwater and his exploded shoreward jetty, a swarm of small motor-boats, making all the smoke they could, entered the harbour in preparation for the grand stroke. One launch sank an enemy torpedo-boat lying, along the Mole, with mast and funnel at first visible to the officers of the Vindictive.
They thought she had escaped when her funnel disappeared, but -a torpedo caught her as she was trying to make out to sea. Other enemy craft were attacked by the stinging little mosquitoes of the Dover and Harwich Patrols, and more of them were reckoned to have been sunk, but the confusion was so great, owing to the way in which the smoke-screen drifted about on the changing wind, that the full tale of the German losses could not be officially stated.
There can be little doubt that the enemy" thought only a raid was intended. His ships scattered for safety at a time, when they should have gathered to guard the entrance to the canal, and his batteries gave overmuch attention to the Vindictive and her small consorts, and to the water-flea-like dance of small British motor-craft, instead of massing their fire upon the blockships:
At twenty-five minutes past twelve Thetis, under Commander Sneyd, Intrepid, commanded by Lieutenant S. Bonham-Carter, and Iphigenia, under Lieutenant E. W. Billyard-Leake, rounded the light at the end of the Mole, exactly according to time- table, and steamed into the boom defending the passage running from the tip of the breakwater.
The Thetis led, camouflaging herself with' a cloud of smoke, and yet blazing away with her four guns at the hostile shore batteries. Under a tornado of German shell she burst through the string of armed barges, but, unfortunately, fouled one of her propellers in the enemy's anti-submarine net. Getting off her course she bumped into a bank, edged off into the channel again, but began to sink some hundreds of yards away from her goal. Even there she was not useless, for Commander Sneyd acted as long distance pilot to the other two' block-ships, until he and his reduced crew were taken off by a motor-launch with- the remarkably small loss of only five killed and five wounded.
Most of her men had been taken off just outside the harbour, but Intrepid, which followed her, had missed her motor-launch and was full of men. She went straight along the channel, and, pushing a German barge before her, entered the canal, smoking like a volcano and somewhat unable to see what she was doing. A German gunner helped her, by hitting one of her steam connections. The steam blew the smoke away, and gave Lieutenant Bonham-Carter a clear view. He placed the nose of his ship on the western bank, ordered his crew into the attendant motor-launch, and, from switches in the chart-room, blew his concrete-laden ship up in four places.
Then he departed on a large lifebuoy, lighted with a flare, upon which a German machine-gun fired continuously. It did not, however, succeed in hitting the distinguished officer, who caught a rope hanging from a motor-launch, and was towed along until he attracted attention.
map of Zeebrugge harbor and mole
Sinking of the Blockships
Lieutenant Billyard-Leake, steering Iphigenia, in accordance with classic tradition, to sacrifice in battle, had a most difficult time of it. He was blinded by the smoke blowing back from the other blockship, and his course was at first rather wild. But, with fine ability, he managed to beach his ship on the eastern bank of the canal, bringing her stern alongside the stern of the Intrepid, so that the two concrete-laden vessels formed a V-shaped obstacle entirely filling the fairway used by the enemy.
While this last act of the blocking expedition was proceeding Daffodil, having most skilfully held Vindictive to the Mole for more than an hour, towed her off. Then, with broken, bent funnels, streaming with flame and. covering the deck with a blaze of sparks, the old cruiser whipped up the extraordinary speed of seventeen knots, and, looking like a total wreck, gloriously returned to port. The only considerable British loss was one destroyer, North Star, that lost her way in the smoke-screen and got sunk in the harbour, where most of her crew were rescued by the Phoebe.
Altogether the attack upon the German submarine outlet at Zeebrugge was the finest thing of its kind in naval history. The enormous increase in the defensive power of land fortifications made it seem impossible of success. Yet heroism and inventiveness conquered all difficulties.
