In the meanwhile Lieutenant-Commander Harrison led a desperate rush to the westward against a machine-gun that was causing heavy casualties. He was killed at the head of his men, and all old Rugby Internationals will mourn that gallant forward who led his last rush to the muzzle of a German gun. Lieutenant-Commander Adams subsequently returned and searched for his body without avail amid the dead and litter of the shrapnel-spattered causeway.
Details of that wild brave hour’s work on Zeebrugge mole will doubtless come to us, as such details do, piecemeal in the years ahead; and many, all too many, will for ever go unrecorded. In all the dashing gallantry of that deathless assault none played a finer part than the Royal Marines, the Corps that wears a laurel wreath in its proud crest. And when the work was done and the syren eventually hooted the Recall through the din and crashing uproar of bursting shell, it was the Marines, shoulder to shoulder, who covered the retreat.
Of the retirement itself mere imagination tells enough to stir the blood and quicken a man’s heart. The enemy had concentrated the fire of every gun that would bear upon the mole and brows leading to the Vindictive: back through this savage barrage came the remnants of those gallant companies, reeling along with their wounded on their backs, to be struck down and to rise again and stagger on with their burdens, turning every now and then to shake bloody fists at the flaming docks and town beneath its pall of smoke....
The blockships in the meanwhile had made the entrance, and led by Thetis crashed through the obstruction at the mouth of the harbour. Thetis, finding that her propellers were foul of wires and nets, and that she was rapidly losing way, signalled to her two consorts to pass to starboard of her by firing a green rocket. She then grounded, and riddled by gunfire from shore batteries and enemy craft in the harbour, firing on her at almost point-blank range, took a heavy list. Plastered with high explosives and gas, helpless and immovable, she nevertheless engaged the nearest shore battery with her forecastle gun until her own smoke made it impossible to continue firing. Engineer-Lieutenant-Commander Boddie fearlessly stuck to his post in the engine-room and succeeded in restarting one engine. This swung her head into the dredged channel of the canal, up which the Intrepid and Iphigenia had already passed cheering wildly and blazing fury from every gun. Here the Thetis quietly sank. A motor launch under command of Lieutenant H. A. Littleton, R.N.V.R., who had followed devotedly at her heels, embarked the surviving members of the ship’s company and, turning, ran the gauntlet of the harbour mouth and regained the outer sea.
The Intrepid, on passing the Thetis, made for the canal mouth, which was clearly visible in the pale unearthly light of the star-shell. The enemy fire at this moment being concentrated on the upper works of the Vindictive alongside the mole and the already disabled Thetis, Intrepid was enabled to reach the mouth of the canal, where Lieutenant Bonham Carter calmly manœuvred her into position and fired the charges which sank her.
It will be remembered that the additional steaming parties carried by the blockships had disembarked before the ships neared the zone of operations. A number of Intrepid’s party, however, determined to participate in the coming fight, had contrived to remain on board. These surplus ratings, with the whole of the Intrepid’s crew, then coolly abandoned the ship in two cutters and a skiff. In these boats they rowed down the canal and were picked up in the harbour by a British destroyer and a motor launch in command of Lieutenant P. T. Dean, R.N.V.R. Lieutenant Bonham Carter, together with his First Lieutenant and Sub-Lieutenant, and four petty officers, remained behind to ensure that the ship was sunk properly. The seven then launched the Carley float, and in this unwieldy craft, lit by searchlights and with machine-gun fire spurting all round them, paddled calmly down the canal and across the harbour. They were also picked up by Lieutenant Dean, whose handling of the crowded motor launch under a withering fire, and blinded by searchlights, was described by Lieutenant Bonham Carter (whose standard of gallantry may be presumed to be no mean one) as “simply magnificent.”
This motor launch subsequently picked up the survivors of the Iphigenia, and succeeded in conveying her freight of over one hundred survivors in addition to her crew outside the harbour and alongside the destroyer flying Admiral Keyes’ flag. Of all the officers and men who formed Intrepid’s ship’s company (and never surely was a ship’s name more happily chosen), only one man, Stoker Petty Officer H. L. Palliser, was killed.
H.M.S. Iphigenia, the third of the blockships to enter the harbour under heavy shrapnel fire, followed in the wake of the Intrepid. The steam-pipe of her syren was severed, enveloping the bridge in steam and rendered navigation no easy matter. She rammed a dredger with a barge in tow, crashed clear, and drove the barge ahead of her into the canal. Lieutenant Billyard-Leake caught sight of the Intrepid aground with a gap between herself and the eastern bank, and manœuvred his ship into the vacant space. He then cleared the engine-room of its heroic complement, fired the sinking charges, and abandoned ship in the only remaining cutter. The motor launch that had already picked up Intrepid’s crew dashed in to the rescue, finally backing out stern first (her bows being badly holed) and losing half her little complement of deck hands from machine-gun fire ere she reached comparative safety.
As has already been said, the Brilliant and Sirius failed to block Ostend completely, but were sunk where they grounded. The rescues of officers and men were effected by motor launches with the same fearless dash as was shown by the officers commanding these little craft at Zeebrugge. Lieutenant K. R. Hoare, D.S.O., R.N.V.R., embarked practically all the men from the Sirius and sixteen from the Brilliant’s whaler, sunk by gunfire. The remainder of the Brilliant’s crew were taken off by Lieutenant R. Bourke, R.N.V.R.
After leaving the Sirius an officer and a number of men were found to be missing; a Coastal Motor Boat, commanded by Sub-Lieutenant P. B. Clarke, R.N.R., with Lieutenant-Commander Hardy, R.N., and Lieutenant E. L. Berthon, D.S.C., R.N., on board, thereupon returned, boarded the ship under a heavy and accurate fire, and searched for their missing comrades. They found no signs of life in either ship, but the missing officer and men were subsequently picked up by a British cruiser thirteen miles out to sea, still pulling gamely.