The commanding officer and the chief engineer entered the conning-tower and ordered their men to open one of the forward hatches. If this could be done, though the crew would have little hope of pushing their way up through the incoming torrent, the air-pressure inside the boat would be so greatly increased that the officers would be probably enabled to open the conning-tower and escape. But the outside pressure was too great for the hatch to be moved. The most violent efforts were made, the men working in relays and using their strength desperately, while their companions urged them on with terrible cries. Meantime it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe; the salt water was penetrating the batteries and giving off chlorine gas. The stern of the vessel was now fully flooded and the internal air pressure was rapidly increasing as the free space grew less. The moment of suffocation was near. But the hatch could not be raised.
At this point, some of the crew lost control and behaved like madmen. They crammed cotton waste into their ears and nostrils, and plunged beneath the water, which was now knee-deep. One man turned his revolver upon himself; it missed fire; he hurled it from him and plunged after his comrades. One, who still kept his head, with a final effort forced open one of the torpedo tubes and let in the water to end the struggle one way or another. Hope returned for a moment. The internal air pressure increased to such a pitch that the conning-tower and forward hatch could both be opened. Officers and men sprang and fought their way upwards through the inrush.
Perhaps twenty in all made their way out of the ship; but it was only passing from one death to another. Human lungs are not adapted for the sudden change from a deep-sea pressure to surface conditions. The shrieks of these unfortunate men were heard by a trawler which happened to be passing near; but before she could reach them all were dead but two, and those two were broken men, bleeding from the lungs and crushed in spirit. They had digged a cruel pit and fallen into the midst of it themselves.
CHAPTER XVII
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!