ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND
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), _Phœbe_ (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.
[Illustration: ‘A tremendous explosion was seen at the shore end of the
Mole.’]
‘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
_Phœbe_. 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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Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
Some illustrations were moved closer to the relevant text.
Page 125: Text appears to be missing after “netting” in “wire and
netting it was”.
End of Project Gutenberg's Submarine and Anti-submarine, by Henry Newbolt