On April 5, 1916, Paris announced that French and British warships had sunk a submarine at an unnamed point and captured the crew. In this connection it should be said that many reports were current of frequent captures made by the Allies of enemy submersibles. The British seldom admitted such captures, seeking to befog Berlin as to the fate of her submarines. But there was little doubt that numbers of them had been taken by both French and British.
An Austrian transport was torpedoed by a French submarine and lost in the Adriatic, April 8, 1916. Neither the loss of life nor the name of the vessel was made public by Vienna.
Two days later a Russian destroyer, the Strogi, rammed and sunk an enemy submersible near the spot where the hospital ship Portugal was torpedoed.
Reports from Paris, April 18, 1916, stated that the French had captured the submarine that torpedoed the Sussex. It was said that her crew and commander were prisoners, and that documentary evidence had been obtained on the vessel to prove that she sank the Sussex. The report could not be verified, but Paris semiofficially intimated that she had indisputable proof that the Sussex was a submarine's victim. The two incidents coincided so well that the capture of the vessel was believed to have been made.
Trebizond fell April 18, 1916, the Russian fleet cooperating in a grand assault. This gave Russia possession of a fine port on the Turkish side of the Black Sea and marked important progress for her armies in Asia.
Zeebrugge, Belgium, was shelled by the British fleet, April 25, 1916, the city sustaining one of the longest and heaviest bombardments which it had suffered since its capture by the Germans. As a convenient base for submarines it was a particularly troublesome thorn to the Allies, and the bombardment was directed mainly at buildings suspected of being submarine workshops, and the harbor defenses. Several vessels were sunk and much damage wrought, the German batteries at Heyst, Blankenberghe, and Knocke coming in for the heavy fire.
Naval vessels on guard engaged the Germans and succeeded in driving them off, although outnumbered. Two British cruisers were hit, without serious injury. The attack was part of a concerted plan which contemplated a smashing blow at the British line, while the Irish trouble engaged attention.
One British auxiliary was lost and her crew captured and a destroyer damaged in a scouting engagement off the Flanders coast on April 25, 1916. The identity of the vessel was never learned. The E-22, a British submarine, went down April 25, 1916, in another fight. The Germans scored again when they sank an unidentified guard vessel off the Dogger Bank after dusk April 26, 1916.
Reports from Holland, April 28, 1916, told of the sinking by an armed British trawler of a submarine near the north coast of Scotland. The enemy vessel had halted two Dutch steamers when the trawler appeared. The submersible was said to be of the newest and largest type and sixty men were believed to have been lost with her. The British announced the sinking of a submarine on the same day off the east coast, one officer and seventeen men being taken prisoners. It was believed that the two reports concerned the same craft.
London also admitted the loss on April 28, 1916, of the battleship Russell, which struck a mine or was torpedoed in the Mediterranean. Admiral Freemantle, whose flag she bore, was among the 600 men saved. The loss of life included one hundred and twenty-four officers and men.