PLAN ILLUSTRATING THE FIGHT AT THE ZEEBRUGGE MOLE, THE BLOCKING OF THE BRUGES CANAL, AND THE LOCATION OF SUNKEN SHIPS
The propeller gathered in the net, and it rendered her practically unmanageable. Shore batteries found her and pounded her unremittingly. She bumped into the bank, edged off, and found herself in the channel again still some hundreds of yards from the mouth of the canal in practically a sinking condition. As she lay she signaled invaluable directions to others, and her commander, R. S. Sneyd, also accordingly blew charges and sank her. Motor launches under Lieutenant H. Littleton raced alongside and took off her crew. Her losses were five killed and five wounded.
The Intrepid, smoking like a volcano and with all her guns blazing, followed. Her motor launch had failed to get alongside outside the harbor, and she had men enough for anything. Straight into the canal she steered, her smoke blowing back from her into the Iphigenia's eyes, so that the latter was blinded, and, going a little wild, rammed a dredger, with her barge moored beside it, which lay at the western arm of the canal. She was not clear, though, and entered the canal pushing the barge before her. It was then that a shell hit the steam connections of her whistle, and the escape of steam which followed drove off some of the smoke and let her see what she was doing.
PERSPECTIVE MAP OF OSTEND HARBOR, WITH ZEEBRUGGE IN THE DISTANCE
Main Object Attained
Lieutenant Stuart Bonham Carter, commanding the Intrepid, placed the nose of his ship neatly on the mud of the western bank, ordered his crew away, and blew up his ship by switches in the chart room. Four dull bumps were all that could be heard, and immediately afterward there arrived on deck the engineer, who had been in the engine room during the explosion, and reported that all was as it should be.
Lieutenant E. W. Bullyard Leake, commanding the Iphigenia, beached her according to arrangement on the eastern side, blew her up, saw her drop nicely across the canal, and left her with her engines still going, to hold her in position till she should have bedded well down on the bottom. According to the latest reports from air observation, two old ships, with their holds full of concrete, are lying across the canal in a V position, and it is probable that the work they set out to do has been accomplished and that the canal is effectively blocked. A motor launch, under Lieutenant P. T. Deane, had followed them in to bring away the crews and waited further up the canal toward the mouth against the western bank.
Lieutenant Bonham Carter, having sent away his boats, was reduced to a Carley float, an apparatus like an exaggerated lifebuoy with the floor of a grating. Upon contact with the water it ignited a calcium flare and he was adrift in the uncanny illumination with a German machine gun a few hundred yards away giving him its undivided attention. What saved him was possibly the fact that the defunct Intrepid still was emitting huge clouds of smoke which it had been worth nobody's while to turn. He managed to catch a rope, as the motor launch started, and was towed for awhile till he was observed and taken on board.
THE VINDICTIVE'S STORY
Commander Alfred F. B. Carpenter, who commanded the Vindictive and who was made Captain for his successful work, gave an Associated Press correspondent an interesting description of the episode. During the attack he was at the end of the bridge in a small steel box or cabin which had been specially constructed to house a flame thrower. The Captain, with his arm in a sling, standing on the shell-battered deck of the Vindictive, said:
Exactly according to plan we ran alongside the mole, approached it on the port side, where we were equipped with specially built buffers of wood two feet wide. As there was nothing for us to tie up to, we merely dropped anchor there, while the Daffodil kept us against the mole with her nose against the opposite side of our ship. In the fairly heavy sea two of our three gangways were smashed, but the third held, and 500 men swarmed up this on to the mole. This gangway was two feet wide and thirty feet long. The men who went up it included 300 marines and 150 storming seamen from the Vindictive, and fifty or so from the Daffodil. They swarmed up the steel gangway, carrying hand grenades and Lewis guns. No Germans succeeded in approaching the gangway, but a hard hand-to-hand fight took place about 200 yards up the mole toward the shore.
The Vindictive's bow was pointed toward the shore, so the bridge got the full effect of enemy fire from the shore batteries. One shell exploded against the pilot house, killing nearly all its ten occupants. Another burst in the fighting top, killing a Lieutenant and eight men, who were doing excellent work with two pompoms and four machine guns.
The battery of eleven-inch guns at the end of the mole was only 300 yards away, and it kept trying to reach us. The shore batteries also were diligent. Only a few German shells hit our hull, because it was well protected by the wall of the mole, but the upper structure, mast, stacks, and ventilators showed above the wall and were riddled. A considerable proportion of our casualties were caused by splinters from these upper works.
Meanwhile the Daffodil continued to push us against the wall as if no battle was on, and if she had failed to do this none of the members of the landing party would have been able to return to the ship.
Twenty-five minutes after the Vindictive had reached the wall the first block ship passed in and headed for the canal. Two others followed in leisurely fashion while we kept up the fight on the mole. One of the block ships stranded outside of the canal, but the two others got two or three hundred yards inside, where they were successfully sunk across the entrance.
Fifteen minutes after the Vindictive arrived alongside the mole our submarine exploded under the viaduct connecting the mole with the mainland. The Germans had sent a considerable force to this viaduct as soon as the submarine arrived, and these men were gathered on the viaduct, attacking our submersible with machine guns. When the explosion occurred the viaduct and Germans were blown up together. The crew of the submarine, consisting of six men, escaped on board a dinghy to a motor launch.
Early in the fighting a German shell knocked out our howitzer, which had been getting in some good shots on a big German seaplane station on the mole half a mile away. This is the largest seaplane station in Belgium. Unfortunately, our other guns could not be brought to bear effectively upon it. The shell which disabled the howitzer killed all the members of the gun crew. Many men were also killed by a German shell which hit the mole close to our ship and scattered fragments of steel and stone among the marines assembling on the deck around the gangway.
Half an hour after the block ships went in, we received the signal to withdraw. The Vindictive's siren was blown, and the men returned from all parts of the mole and thronged down the gangway. We put off after having lain alongside just about an hour. The Germans made no effort to interfere with our getaway other than to continue their heavy firing.