CHAPTER XV
Bottling up Zeebrugge and Ostend
“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.
C 3 at Zeebrugge Mole
An old British submarine, loaded with explosives, was run into the piles of the jetty at the shore end of Zeebrugge Mole and blown up, to the amazement and destruction of the defenders.
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.