CHAPTER XXV Zeebrügge and Ostend

In the course of the night April 22–23, an attack was made on the two Flemish bases, Ostend and Zeebrügge, with a view to blocking the entrances of both by the familiar method of sinking old cement-filled ships in the narrow fairway. At Ostend the block-ships were grounded slightly off their course, and a few days later a second attempt was made. The Zeebrügge block-ships got into their chosen billets and are safely grounded there. The latter port, in spite of official denials, was for many months made almost useless to the enemy, and it is probably safe to assume that the value of Ostend, where Vindictive lies across the fairway, is considerably diminished. Material results, therefore, of high importance were achieved by this enterprise.

The operations are worth examining on three quite independent grounds. First, what is the strategical value of their objective? How, that is to say, would the naval activities of Great Britain and her Allies gain by Zeebrügge and Ostend being, for some months at least out of action? And, conversely, what would the enemy lose? Unless we are satisfied that the gain must be substantial—apart altogether from the moral effect—we should obviously have a difficulty in justifying, not the losses in ships incurred, which were trivial and easily replaced, but the losses in picked men, which were irreparable. Secondly, the incident is clearly worth examining342 for its tactical interest. What were the difficulties the vice-admiral in command had to overcome? By what weapons, devices, and man?uvres did he attempt to effect his purpose? Third, what was the moral effect?
STRATEGICAL OBJECT

There is now only one theatre of the war, and in this the issue of civilization or barbarism must be decided by military action. The event depends upon the capacity of the sea power of the Allies to deliver in France all the fighting men and all the war material that Allied ships can draw from Asia, from Australia, from South America, from the United States, and from Canada, and then deliver either directly into France, or first into British ports, and then from Britain into France. To beat the German Army is ultimately a problem in sea communications. The whole of these have to pass through the bottle-neck of the Western end of the Atlantic lanes. Into an area south of Ireland and north of Ushant, a hundred miles square, every ship that comes from the Mediterranean, from the Cape, from Buenos Ayres, Rio, the West Indies, or the Gulf of Mexico, from the Atlantic seaboard of America, must come.

Secondary only to this are the areas that feed ships into it, or into which the ships that pass through it are dissipated on their way to the several ports—the Mediterranean, the Bay of Biscay, the English Channel, St. George’s Channel, the Irish Sea. It is in these, when it is driven from the main funnel point of traffic, that the submarine must do its work. The defeat of the submarine, when at large, turns upon three factors: (1) the under-water offensive—that is, mine-fields, that will tend to keep it within certain areas; (2) the efficiency with343 which ships liable to attack are protected by convoy; and (3) the skill and persistence with which submarines, once on their hunting grounds, are in turn hunted. To maintain a cross-Channel barrage, the enemy surface craft must be handicapped in every possible way. The second and third factors of anti-submarine war make heavy demands on material, on personnel, and on skill, judgment, and organization. Here the decisive material factor is the number of destroyers available for both forms of work. When it comes to a close-quarters fight, no craft that has a speed of less than thirty knots, that cannot maintain itself in any weather, that does not possess a large cruising radius, can be of the first efficiency. The larger petrol-driven submarine-chasers and the many special craft which are built for various purposes in connection with the defensive campaign, all have their field of utility. But for the final power to rush swiftly on to a submarine if it is momentarily seen afloat, and for covering the area into which it can submerge itself, while the destroyer approaches with depth bombs, the destroyer, if only from its superior speed, stands supreme as the enemy of the U-boat. From the very earliest days of the submarine work it has, then, been axiomatic that every measure which will put a larger number of destroyers at our disposal should be taken at almost any cost. How does the work at Zeebrügge and Ostend help us, both in this respect and in a mining policy?

At these two ports our enemy was able to maintain a very considerable destroyer force. Its activities were necessarily mainly confined to work in darkness or in thick weather. But in such conditions its efficiency was of a very high order. The public only heard of its activities when it shelled some point of the coast of Kent, or344 raided our trawlers or other patrols, and, in all conscience, it heard of these activities often enough. Yet we were inclined to suppose them unimportant because their material results were insignificant. The news that a cross-Channel barrage was in course of establishment gave them a new value. But their value to the enemy should not be measured by the casualties they inflicted on our light craft, nor by their occasional excursions into the murder of civilians on shore. It lay in the fact that the enemy’s force permanently withdrew from the anti-submarine campaign numerous destroyer leaders and destroyers which had to be maintained at Dover to cope with it. From Zeebrügge to Emden—the nearest German port—is, roughly, three hundred miles by sea, and it does not need elaborate argument to show that if Zeebrügge and Ostend are permanently out of action the problem of dealing with enemy craft in the narrow seas is totally and entirely changed. With these gone, the East Coast ports became the natural centres from which to command the waters between Great Britain and Holland. They are fifty miles nearer Emden than is Dunkirk. If any German destroyers got west and south of Dunkirk, and the news of their presence were cabled to an East Coast base, destroyers could get between the enemy and his ports without difficulty. Thus, enemy surface craft, based upon German ports, would practically be denied access to Flemish waters altogether, and this by the East Coast and not by the Dover forces. In other words, the Dover patrol forces would, by the closing of Ostend and Zeebrügge, be set free for the highly important work of aiding in the anti-submarine campaign—and there is certainly no naval need that is greater.

The strategical objective, therefore, which Admiral345 Keyes put before himself in his expedition was, so far as he could, to set back the enemy’s naval bases by no less than three hundred miles. Its importance as setting free new forces, both for the direct attack on submarines, and for saving the mine-layers from attack, cannot be exaggerated, for it was a step—and a great step—forward in making sure of the sea communications on which all depends. It must be conceded, then that the results Admiral Keyes had in view amply justify a very considerable expenditure both of material and men. Let us next ask ourselves what kind of material he chose, and how he proposed to use his forces with utmost economy and maximum tactical effect.
SIR ROGER KEYES’S TACTICS

The purposes of the expedition, as we have seen, were to block the exit of the canal at Zeebrügge and the entrance of the small, narrow harbour at Ostend with old cruisers filled with cement, the removal of which would be an operation of a lengthy and tedious kind. Incidentally, the plan was to effect the maximum destruction of war stores and equipment at Zeebrügge and to sink as many as possible of the enemy vessels found in either port, and finally, to inflict on the enemy the maximum possible losses of personnel. By blocking the canal the value of Zeebrügge was reduced from being an equipped base to being a mere refuge. As there were two points of attack, the expedition naturally resolved itself into two distinct, but simultaneous, undertakings. The simpler, the less dangerous, the less ambitious, but, as the event showed, the more difficult operation of the two, was the attempt to block Ostend. The larger, more complex, and infinitely more perilous undertaking, but346 because of its very complications, ultimately easier, was the attempt at Zeebrügge. In its broad outlines, the scheme was to get the ships as near as possible without detection, and then to trust to a final rush to gain the desired position. Concealment up to the last moment was to be secured by smoke screens. At Ostend the problem was simply to run two or three ships into the entrance—that is, to get them into position before the enemy’s artillery made it impossible to man?uvre. If the Ostend attempt failed, it was largely because a sudden change in the weather conditions robbed the smoke screens, which were to hide the ships, of their value, so that the operation of placing the block-ships accurately was made almost impossible. The operation of blocking such entrances has, of course, long been familiar. The exploit of Lieutenant Hobson in the Spanish-American War, is fresh in the memories of all sailors. This failed through the steering gear of the blocking-ship being destroyed by gunfire at the critical moment. The Japanese attempted the same thing on a large scale at Port Arthur but with anything but complete success. If the first Ostend effort, then, fell short of finality, we have the experience of these earlier precedents to explain and account for it.

I have dealt with Ostend first because, after the preliminary bombardment, nothing more could have been attempted than to force the ships into the harbour entrance and sink them there. But at Zeebrügge a far more intricate operation was possible. Zeebrügge is not a town. It is just the sea exit of the Bruges Canal, with its railway connections, round which a few streets of houses have clustered. The actual entrance to the canal is flanked by two short sea walls, at the end of each of which are guide lights. From these lights up the canal347 to the lock gates is about half a mile. A large mole protects the sea channel to the canal from being blocked by silted sand. The mole is connected to the mainland by five hundred yards of pile viaduct. The mole is nearly a mile long, built in a curve, a segment amounting to, perhaps, one-sixth of a circle, the centre of which would be a quarter of a mile east of the canal entrance, while its radius would be three-quarters of a mile. It is a large and substantial stone structure, on which are railway lines and a railway station, and has been turned to capital military account by the enemy, who erected on it aircraft sheds and military establishments of many kinds.

The general plan was to bombard the place for an hour by monitors and, under cover of this fire, for the attacking squadron to advance to the harbour mouth. Then, when the bombardment ceased, Vindictive was to run alongside the mole, disembark her own landing party and those from Iris and Daffodil, who were to overpower the enemy protecting the guns and stores while the old submarines were run into the pile viaduct to cut the mole off from the mainland, thus isolating it. Meanwhile, other forces were to engage any enemy destroyers or submarines that might be in the port. Finally, the block-ships were to be pushed right up into the canal mouth and there sunk. The success of the latter part of these operations turned upon the extent to which the enemy could be made to believe that the attack on the mole was the chief objective.

To ensure success against the mole, several very ingenious devices were brought into play. The main landing parties were placed in Vindictive. This cruiser—which displaced about 5,600 tons, and had a broadside of six 6-inch guns—was fitted, on the port side, with348 “brows,” or landing gangways, that could be lowered on the mole the moment she came alongside. All the vessels of the squadron were equipped with fog- or smoke-making material, which would veil the force from the enemy until he sent up his star shells and, in the artificial light, would conceal the character, numbers, and composition of the force as completely as possible. It seems that a shift of wind at the critical moment—here, as at Ostend—robbed this plan of some of its anticipated efficiency. At some point of the approach, then, apparently just before Vindictive rounded and got abreast of the lighthouse, the presence of the invaders was detected, and they were saluted first by salvoes of star shells and next by as hot a gunfire as can be conceived. Vindictive lost no time in replying. Her six 6-inch guns—and no doubt her 12-pounders as well—swept the mole as long as they could be fired, and, once alongside, the “brows”—only two out of eighteen seem to have survived the heavy gunfire—were lowered, and officers and men “boarded” the mole.

The earlier accounts stated that this landing was effected in spite of the stoutest sort of hand-to-hand fighting, that the enemy was overcome and driven back, and that the landing party then proceeded to the destruction of the sheds and stores. The plans had included the blowing-up of the pile viaduct, which connects the stone mole with the mainland—by means of one or two old submarines charged with explosives, and so virtually converted into giant torpedoes. These did their work most effectively, and had the enemy been in occupation of the mole, his force would have been isolated. But, as a fact, the mole was not occupied, and the enemy relied upon machine- and gun-fire organized from the shore end349 of the mole for making the landing impossible. In spite of a withering fusillade, a considerable landing party of marines and bluejackets got ashore, though Colonel Elliott and Commander Halahan and great numbers of their men were killed in the attempt. Those that got on the mole proceeded to destroy, as far as possible, the sheds, stores, and guns, and then turned their attention to the destroyers moored against its inner side.

Meantime, the only enemy destroyer that seems to have had steam up tried to escape from harbour, and was either rammed or torpedoed and instantly sunk. Others, less well prepared, were either boarded, after the resistance of their crews had been overcome, and, it must be presumed, sunk also. Others, again, were attacked by motor launches, which preceded and helped clear a way for the block-ships. Whether an attempt on the lock gates was made or even contemplated, we have not been told; but the main purpose of the expedition, the sinking of at least two out of the three old Apollos in the right place, was achieved with precision. The moment the block-ships were in place, the purpose for which the mole was occupied was gained, and the order was rightly given for an immediate retreat. The work had been done, and there was no knowing what new resources the enemy could have brought to bear had time been wasted. Many of the vessels, including Vindictive, had been holed by 11-inch shells. But Vindictive’s damages were not of a serious kind, and the whole force was able to withdraw in safety, with the exception of one destroyer and two motor launches. The destroyer is known to have been sunk by gunfire. The successful withdrawal of the expedition is conclusive evidence that the enemy was demoralized.

350 For such close-quarters work Admiral Keyes, naturally enough, armed his forces as for trench fighting. Vindictive carried howitzers on her forward and after decks, and her boarding parties were liberally armed with grenades and flame-throwers as well as with rifles, bayonets, and truncheons. Machine guns also seem to have been landed, so that hand-to-hand fighting was prepared for in the full light of the most recent war experience. The plan, it should be noted, was to have included aeroplane co-operation to supplement, if not to assist, the work of the monitors; but the change in the weather appears to have interfered with this part of the programme, and may quite easily have made any accurate work by the monitors impossible also.

It is, first of all, patent that the expedition was thoroughly thought out in all its details, and therefore closely planned. An accurate study of the enemy’s defences had been made, and suitable means of avoiding his attack or overcoming his defences had been elaborately worked out. It is equally clear that almost to the moment when the attack was made, the weather conditions were those which the plan contemplated as necessary to success, and that it was only the sudden, unexpected change in the wind that threatened the Ostend part of the operations with partial failure and made the Zeebrügge operations more costly in life than they should otherwise have been. When it is remembered that the approaches to Ostend and Zeebrügge are commanded by very formidable batteries, armed with no less than 120 guns of the largest calibre, and that the mole and the sides of the canal bristled with quick-firing 12-pounders and larger pieces, it will be realized that, to the enemy, any attempt actually to bring an unarmoured vessel, with her cement-laden consorts,351 right up either to the mole or to the actual mouth of the canal must have appeared an undertaking too absurdly hare-brained for any one but a lunatic to have attempted. It was just because Sir Roger Keyes had evaluated the enemy’s defences with exactitude and had thought out and adopted, first, methods of evading his vigilance and, next, man?uvres that would for the necessary period make his weapons useless, that it was possible not only to make the attempt, but to realize the very high degree of success that has apparently been won.

The essence of the matter, of course, was to take the enemy by surprise. At first sight, it may appear a curious way of putting him off his guard, that he should for an hour be bombarded by monitors and aeroplanes. But the Vice-Admiral probably reasoned that this would lead, as it often does, to the crews of the big guns taking shelter underground until the attack is over. If the monitors were placed at their usual great distance from ports, and were concealed by smoke or fog screens, the enemy gunners would know that it was merely idle to attempt to reply to their fire. If nothing was to be possible in the way of response until daylight, the gun-layers were just as well in their shell-proofs as anywhere. Under cover, then, of this long-range bombardment, and concealing his squadron by the ingenious fog methods invented by the late Commander Brock, Sir Roger Keyes made his way within a very short distance of the veiled lights at the end of the mole. It was at this point that the wind shifted and the presence of the squadron was revealed to the enemy. There was a brief interval before the big guns could be manned, and it was doubtless owing to this that Vindictive got alongside before more than one 11-inch shell had struck her. Once under the shelter of352 the mole, she was safe from the larger pieces, and only her upper works could be raked by the smaller natures.
ATTACK ON THE MOLE

The policy of attacking the mole and making that appear to the enemy the central affair, was a fine piece of tactics. The engagement which developed there was in fact, a containing action, which left the execution of the main objective to the other forces, and its purpose was to prevent the enemy from interfering too much with them. Nelson, it will be remembered, cut out a block of ships in the centre of the enemy’s line at Trafalgar, occupying them so that their hands were full, and preventing both them and the van from coming to the succour of the rear. The main operation was the destruction of the rear by Collingwood. Here it was Vindictive, her landing party, that played the Nelson r?le while the Vice-Admiral, in Warwick, himself directed the crucial operation, namely, the navigation of the block-ships to their billets. The moment they were blown up and sunk the purpose of the expedition was fulfilled, and Vindictive’s siren recalled all those from the mole who could get back to the ship. The actual fortunes of the fight on the mole itself, while of thrilling human interest owing to the extraordinary circumstances in which it was undertaken, were of quite subsidiary importance. The primary object, it must be borne in mind, was not the destruction of the mole forts, or of the aeroplane shed, or of whatever military equipment was there, or even of killing or capturing its garrison. These were only important in so far as their partial realization was necessary to relieving the block-ships from the danger of premature sinking.

This is a matter of real capital importance and of very353 great interest, for it is, I think, not difficult to realize that, had similar circumstances existed at Ostend—had it been possible, that is to say, to occupy the defenders and distract their attention on some perfectly irrelevant engagement—the requisite time would have been given to those in command of the block-ships to make sure of getting them into the right position. As things were, they were threatened by the fate which made Hobson’s attempt at Santiago a failure. With the whole gun-power of Ostend concentrated upon the blocking-ships, there was not a minute to be wasted. But with the enemy’s fire drawn there would have been the leisure which alone could make precision possible.
MORAL EFFECT

The attack on Zeebrügge and the two successive attacks on Ostend, carefully planned and boldly and resolutely carried out, achieved a very high measure of success. It was natural enough, on the first receipt of the news, that we should all have been carried away by our wonder and admiration at the astonishing heroism that made it possible to carry through so intricate a series of operations, when every soul engaged was seemingly aware of the desperate character of the enterprise, when no one could have expected to return alive, when the enemy’s means seemed ample, not only for the killing of everyone engaged, but for the immediate frustration of every object that they had in view, and so made most of the astounding gallantry and daring of all concerned. For over four years now we have had a constant recurrence of such feats of courage, and repetition does not lessen their power to intoxicate us with an overwhelming admiration of those who are the heroes of these great adventures. But we354 should be misconceiving the significance of these events if we were to measure their importance either by the ordered daring of those engaged, or by their successful execution, or by their immediate military results, great and far-reaching as these were.

The thing was more important as affording conclusive evidence that the British Navy, as inspired and directed from headquarters, had now abandoned the purely defensive r?le assigned to it by ten years of pre-war, and three and a half years of war, administration. It meant that the Fleet had escaped from those counsels of timorous—because unimaginative and ignorant—caution, which had checked its ardour and limited its activities since August, 1914. The effect may be incalculable. The doctrine that every operation which involved the risk of losing men or ships must necessarily be too hazardous to undertake, was thus shown to be no longer the loadstone of Whitehall’s policy. The Navy was at last set free to act on an older and a better tradition.

It is indeed on this tradition that on almost every occasion the Navy has, in fact, acted when it got a chance. When Swift and Broke tackled three times their number of enemy last year, and Botha and Morris six times their number this year, the gallant captains of these gallant vessels did not wait to ask if the position of their ships was “critical” or otherwise; but, with an insight into the true defensive value of attack—which, seemingly, it is the privilege only of the most valorous to possess—went straight for their enemies, fought overwhelming odds at close quarters, and came out as victorious as a rightly reasoned calculation would have shown to be probable.

Similarly, on May 31, 1916, Sir David Beatty, when355 his force of battle-cruisers, by the loss of Indefatigable and Queen Mary, had been reduced below that of the enemy, persisted in his attack upon Von Hipper and, by demoralizing the enemy’s fire, provided most effectively for the safety of his own ships. Losses did not make him retreat then, nor, when Scheer came upon the scene with the whole High Seas Fleet, did he withdraw from the action—his speed would have made this easy—though the odds were heavy against him. He kept, on the contrary, the whole German Fleet in play, drawing them dexterously to the north, where contact with the Grand Fleet would be inevitable. And, when the contact was made, his last effort to break up the German line was to close from the 14,000 yards, a range he had prudently maintained during the previous two hours, to 8,000, where his guns would be more certainly effective, realizing perfectly that no loss of ships in his own squadron would signify, if only the entire destruction of the German Fleet were made possible by such a sacrifice. It would not be difficult to give scores of incidents in which individual admirals and captains have shown the old spirit under new conditions.

But, save only for the crazy attack on the Dardanelles forts—and this is hardly a precedent we should rejoice to see followed—we have looked in vain for any sign of naval initiative from Whitehall. The explanation lies in the fact that we had no staff for planning operations, nor the right men in power for judging whether any proposed undertaking was based on a right calculation of the value of the available means of offence and defence. The events, therefore of the night of the 22nd and the early hours of the 23rd were of quite extraordinary importance, for they marked an undertaking needing356 long and elaborate preparation, and one which could not have been brought to a successful issue had it not enjoyed from its first inception the enthusiastic support of the Admiralty. But this is not all. Not only was this an Admiralty-supported undertaking, it was one that, unlike the Gallipoli adventure, was carried through on right staff principles. There was a definite, well-thought-out plan—careful preparation for every step in the right selection of men and means for its execution.

I think it is right to put this forward as the most important aspect of a significant, stirring, and successful enterprise. It is the most important because the news meant so very much more than that Zeebrügge was blocked, that Ostend was crippled, and that an expedition—at first sight perilous beyond conception—had been carried through with losses altogether disproportionate, either to its dangers or to the results achieved. The news meant that a new direction either had been, or certainly can, and therefore must, now be given to our naval policy. In the spring of 1917 sceptics were asking if the Army could win the war before the Navy lost it. Why, they said, if our land forces can force a way through what we were told were impregnable fortifications, should the greatest sea force in the world be impotent against an enemy who slinks behind his forts with his surface craft, while devastating our sea communications with his submarines? Is naval ingenuity, they asked, so crippled that we can neither protect our trade against the submarine at sea, nor block the enemy’s ports so that the submarine can never get to sea? The critics replied that all was well with the Navy, but that all was sadly wrong with its official chiefs. The reorganization of the Admiralty was immediately followed by the adoption of the357 convoy principle—and submarine losses were reduced to half. This long-advocated measure, the recently inaugurated barrage at Dover, and now the events of the morning of April 23, have justified the critics and the changes in method and men which they urged. Zeebrügge had been in the enemy’s hands since September, 1914, and it took us three and a half years, not to discover a man capable of attacking it, but in developing an Admiralty capable of picking the man and giving him the right support before the attack could be made. If a similar spirit had actuated a properly constituted Admiralty all these years, what might not the Navy have accomplished?

In the previous year the emancipation of the Navy had gone forward apace. And not the least significant of the stages in the process were first the appointment of Admiral Sir Roger Keyes to be head of the Planning Division at the Admiralty, next his removal from the Admiralty to Dover, next the inauguration of the Channel barrage, and finally his surprising and masterly stroke at the Flemish ports. The enumeration of these stages is worth making, for they mark the genesis of the plan we have seen achieved. It was, if I am correctly informed, quite understood when Admiral Keyes went to Dover that his mission was temporary. If he was sent to do the things which he has done, and now that he has done them is taken back to Whitehall, then it might seem as if we might look forward to an aggressive policy at sea more worthy of the superb force which we possess, and more consonant with its glorious heritage than anything which we have witnessed in the past. And if Sir Roger cannot be spared from his new command, so auspiciously inaugurated, then we must trust that some other of equal358 brains and spirit has already taken or will take his place. Zeebrügge and Ostend, then, will figure in naval history, not only as the names of achievements unique and splendid in themselves, but more famous as the harbingers of still greater things to come.

The End