[Image unavailable.“GATE, THERE! GATE!”
“GATE, THERE! GATE!”
“GATE, THERE! GATE!”
“Through all the monotony of its unending vigil, the Spirit of the Fleet remains unchanged.”—Daily Paper.
“Through all the monotony of its unending vigil, the Spirit of the Fleet remains unchanged.”—Daily Paper.
A flotillaof mine-sweeping sloops entered harbour with the last of the light and secured to their buoys; they were weary sea-battered little ships, and for a while they remained as silent as a stable-full of costermongers’ donkeys at the close of a hard day’s work. The ebb tide strengthened and they swung to their moorings in an invisible “rip” that swept round a curve of the adjoining island. One by one the cables tautened and the line straightened.
“That’s better,” said one. “Now we can talk comfortably.”
“Talk!” echoed her neighbour. “Who wants to talk? I want to rest. Did you see that signal just now from the S.O.M.S.?” (Senior Officer of Mine-sweepers). “We slipat dawn, my hearties, to go over the ground again—the same old ground in the dawn—ugh!” Her tone was jerky and irritable. “I hate the dawn.”
“Hullo, hullo!” observed a Subdivisional Leader. “Nerves a bit—eh?”
“Nerves be sugared! That affair this morning was nothing. No, I don’t care about the dawn, that’s all. Diving seafowl break the surface just under my bows and give one a turn in a bad light.”
The sloop that didn’t want to talk had hove a German mine up in her sweep that morning, and brought it under her counter before anyone noticed it was there. She lay rolling in the swell with the horns missing impact by inches; to veer the wire would have probably caused the detonation, and the lieutenant in command ordered his ship’s company to abandon ship, crawled over the stern with a queer grim smile on his face and removed the primer with a spanner. It was an entirely unpleasant quarter of an hour, and he was at that moment giving a lurid summary of his sensations at the time to an assembly of three brother captains in the tiny wardroom of the next ship.
“When I was working on the east coast—” began another sloop.
“Ah!” interrupted the end ship of theline, “that was clearing the trade routes, I suppose? Of courseweclear the fleet routes—the path of the battle squadrons!” The east coast sweeper was a new arrival.
“Very useful, no doubt. On the other hand, we fed England. If the trade routes had got foul, England would have starved. They’ve trained trawlers to do the work now, but when I was on that job——”
“East coast?” chipped in another recent addition to the flotilla. “Is there a war there too? I come from the Clyde, myself.”
The Tyne-built sloop snorted. “I’ve seen our East Coast Striking Force go out past us while we were at work and be back again with wounded and prisoners within half a dozen hours of leaving harbour. War, indeed! It’s on our doorstep.”
“That’s because you haven’t got a fleet to keep it away from your doorstep. Our fighting ships have to steam south for a day and a night to find an enemy, while we sweep and wait and sweep again against their home-coming.” The speaker glanced at her neighbour through a rust-streaked hawse-pipe. “’Member Jutland? How they came back that evening all battle-stained——?”
“And didn’t forget to give us a cheer as they passed!” The sloop chuckled. “I had an artist fellow on board the other day.He came out to paint the headlands and the fleet coming back from a sweep south. He wasverysick.”
The moon swam into a windy sky from behind the blue-black hills encircling them. The vast anchored fleet that had dropped into obscurity at nightfall became distinct against the shimmer of the water. The wind was full of the voices of ships talking among themselves, and fragrant with salt heather smells from hundreds of spray-drenched islands. You could detect the deep grumbling tones of the battleships in the air, as the Romans might have heard the talk that floated into the night from the gladiators’ barracks. It mingled with the gossip of the light cruisers, whose conversation was largely technical, as they lay floating at their moorings with steam raised: nervous, high-spirited, mettlesome things, spoiling for a fight. Their talk concerned each other’s boiler tubes, turning circles, thrust bearings, and gyro compasses: rather dull to the layman, but interesting to the destroyers in the flotilla anchorage, who were their cousins. One of the T.B.D. flotillas was unmooring, and through a waterway between the islands their lights winked and flickered as they swore and fumed at each other, manœuvring in the narrow waters.
The flotilla leader slipped out into the broader expanse of the bay and slowed down. “Now then,” she called, “who are we hanging on to the slack for? Z.19—you again?”
“No,” said 19 in tones of tense exasperation, “not this time.... But if 73 tries to cut in under my stern again as she did just now, she’ll get a kick in the ribs one of these days——” her syren hooted angrily. “Gang-way!That damned drifter!”
Destroyers are as short-tempered as athletes before a “Sports.” They are always at short notice, and always trained to a hair, which, as every schoolboy knows, is a very touchy state. “Don’t forget,” said the leader, “until sunrise the challenge and reply is ‘St. George!’ and ‘England!’”
She rang down for half speed, and one by one the long, slim forms slipped out after her and picked up station in the darkness with the ease and sureness that belied all their abuse of each other.
The patient mine-sweepers rocked in the swell as the line went by. They were modest, hard-working little ships who did their jobs without talking about theories and the complications of their interiors. Sufficient unto each day was the labour and calamity thereof, without burdening the night with conjecture about the morrow.
“Hope you old plumbers did your job all right this afternoon!” shouted a destroyer as they passed. “My word, we’re a trusting lot of innocents!”
The sloops nodded and dipped, rather pleased in their humble way at being taken notice of. “You’re all right!” they chorused back.
The destroyers were slipping into their stride and their tempers were sweetening like a long-distance runner as he gets his second wind. “Who’s all right?” hailed the last boat in the line.
“We’re all all right!” roared the flotilla. They were nearing the light cruiser lines, and the light cruisers, swung to a turn of the tide, all looked the other way.
“Come on, all you fire-eaters!” called the flotilla leader, “ain’t you coming on the trail with us to-night? We’re the Y.M.C.A. off for a jaunt: quite respectable, my dear fellars, sure you.... You know all about our respectability, don’t you—’smarvellous!”
“Won’t mother let you come?” sniggered a quivering, palpitating black shadow as it slipped past, and then broke into ribald song:
“Hi! For the crest of a breaking sea!Ho! For the deep sea roll!Stanchions down and tubes trained free—Ain’t you comin’ along wi’ we,Or d’you know of a better ’ole?”
“Hi! For the crest of a breaking sea!Ho! For the deep sea roll!Stanchions down and tubes trained free—Ain’t you comin’ along wi’ we,Or d’you know of a better ’ole?”
“Hi! For the crest of a breaking sea!Ho! For the deep sea roll!Stanchions down and tubes trained free—Ain’t you comin’ along wi’ we,Or d’you know of a better ’ole?”
Irritating doggerel to anyone whose orders are to remain at their moorings at three hours’ notice. The singer broke off and they all started halloing:
“Hi! Gate, there! Gate! The sun’ll be scorching our eyes out before we’re through!’
The roar of their fans died away down wind and the flotilla passed through the distant gates and was swallowed by the misty moonlight of the outer sea.
The boom-marking trawlers, the humblest of all units of His Majesty’s Fleet, reeled and staggered and nodded to each other after they had passed.
“Yon destroyers,” said one, “they’re gey witless bodies, A’m thinkin’.”
“Aye,” said a companion dourly, “aye, juist that.”
They settled down again to silence and the heart-breaking monotony of their toil. A quarter of an hour elapsed before the silence of the boom line was broken again; then the youngest of the trawlers spoke:
“Eh!” he said, and sighed to the bellying floats, “A’d like fine to be a destroyer.”
Then silence again.
The light cruisers in the meanwhile were fuming among themselves: even members of the same family do not relish gratuitous insult. “Funny little fellows!” said onebitterly. “But there! What can you expect from a destroyer: neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. I took a couple out last month for a blow through; had to send the poor little things back because it was too rough for them.”
“Poorlittle things!” said another acidly. “Their platingisthin, isn’t it?... Well, as I was saying when all this vulgar interruption happened, my Chief rigged a Weston’s purchase and lifted off the top of my L.P. cylinder ...” and they plunged into their private affairs again.
The destroyers remaining in the T.B.D. anchorage felt that somehow the last word remained with the light cruisers.
“Always talkin’ obstetrics ...” floated across the heave and uneasy motion of the moonlit harbour from the flotilla trot.
“I know. Disgustin’....”
After which, conversation among the light cruisers perceptibly dwindled.
From out of the wind-swept spaces of the North Sea as the night wore on came a murmur of voices: it grew nearer and deepened: “Ho, there! Gate, gate!”
Position lights winked amongst the assembled fleet as a squadron of battle cruisers loomed up, black as doom, in the entrance of the bay. One by one in line ahead theypassed to their anchorage and picked up their berths with a thunderous roar of cables.
“Clear hawse!” cried the battle squadrons from their orderly lines. This is the greeting from ships at anchor to those that enter harbour.
“Clear hawse to you,” said the new-comers. They were on a visit from a more southerly base and there was a good deal of ceremonious exchange of compliments between them and the battleships. “Hope you’ll find the billets to your liking,” said the latter, “plenty of swinging room and so on. Oilers will be alongside at daybreak, but in the meanwhile if there is anything you’d like ...?”
The visitors said they wanted nothing, and were most comfortable. As if to show how at home they were, they all swung in different directions and sprawled their 25,000-ton bulks abroad on the dark face of the waters.
“Waal, boys!” drawled a voice from the American battle squadron. “What’s the noos from down your way?’
“Hullo, old flick!” exclaimed the battle cruiser flagship. “Hope you’re keeping gay up here?”
The American chuckled and the laugh ran round the lattice-masted ships. “Wesurely are,” was the reply. “Say, you missed a joyous stunt last week——” he lowered his voice, for the fleet flagship has long ears. “Fleet exercises, an’ we came back in the durndest fog ever. Tumbled slap on top of a U-boat cruiser; guess he got sucked to the surface in the wash of ourpro-pellors; we were churning up most of the cod banks of the North Sea. Sir, he was the sickest-looking U-boat that ever jined the flotilla of the dead men when we’d finished with him.”
The battle cruisers expressed courteous credulity and congratulation.
“Couldn’t see the British flagship,” said the ship who had done most of the business of dispatching the enemy. “But when it was all over, my cap’n—say, d’you know my cap’n? Some seaman!—waal, he jest flicked a wireless signal along to the British admiral: ‘Sunk a German U-boat cruiser, latitood so an’ so, longitood something else—WHERE AM I?’”
Again the laughter rippled round the American squadron. It made you think of some family chuckling in obscure enjoyment of one of its own jokes.
The battle cruisers considered it, chewed the cud of it in silence, and gave it up. “You don’t tumble? Waal, Commander-in-chiefdidn’t tumble either. Took a long time to think it over an’ then answered: ‘Your signal received. Last sentence not understood. Congratulate you.’”
The battle cruiser flagship felt that the time had come to say something. “Well, that was very nice. What—what would an American commander-in-chief have said?”
“An Ammurican? An Ammurican admiral, sir, would have answered: ‘Where are you? TOP OF THE CLASS, MY SON!’ You Britishers are very im-purturbable....”
“Meaning dull,” said a battleship in the nearest line. “I’ll not deny we are. You’ll be dull in about three years’ time if we’re still here. But I must say you’ve brightened things up for us no end.”
“That so? Waal ... you put us wise first. Guess we were children at some of the monkey-tricks you call tactics.”
The battleships murmured polite indistinctnesses, and one or two remembered things that happened in the later days of 1914 when war was still in process of becoming a reality to their serried squadrons.
“Wait a bit,” said the American flagship. “We ain’t blooded yet.Youain’t properly blooded yet. No, boys, Jutland was a gameof tag to what we’ll face together one of these days.”
“How long, how long?” rumbled down the lines of the battle fleet.
“Quien sabe?That’s what they say down Manilla. You don’t know Manilla though, I guess. But when it comes—it’ll be——”
“Our turn!” interrupted a clear, quiet voice in under the lee of one of the islands. It proceeded apparently from a row of low-lying shadows on the surface of the water. “We’ve done some waiting too.” An ocean-going submarine was talking. “Quiet and deep ... down among the flatfish and the mine moorings where you never go—er—at least we hope you’ll never go. Off the Terschellings ... Heligoland Bight ... the mouth of the Ems. Coming up to breathe at night with a conning-tower awash among the wave-tops ... letting the little ships go by in the hope of bagging a big one.... We can teach you how to wait, my masters, we of the Watch Below.”
It was a long sentence for a submarine, accustomed as they are to holding their breath rather than to waste it in mere conversation. It is their pent-up breath that spits the deadly torpedo at its quarry a couple of miles away.
The battleships were silent. They didn’t altogether like the reference to flatfish and mine moorings and depths their keels left undisturbed in their majestic passage.
A seaplane-carrier chuckled out of the darkness, where she lay like a hen with her brood under her wing. “I don’t know whether you submarines are trying to make us surface craft feel uncomfortable, but I could tell you a story or two about what goes on in the air that would make you feel giddy—very giddy indeed.”
“I don’t want to know what goes on in the air, thanks,” said an armed merchant cruiser. She had called in for oil that afternoon, and was distantly related to the seaplane-carrier. “A German submarine missed me with two torpedoes last week; I came quite near enough to going up into the air then formytaste, thanks very much.”
“You’re all deplorably self-centred,” observed the theatre ship, speaking for the first time. She was a condemned cargo boat that had been gutted, and her interior transformed into a lecture room and theatre. She was a sort of convivial missionary who ministered to the fleet irrespective of class or creed or function. “Not to saycliquey. Each one of you seems to think that the fate of the Empire depends on you individually. It’s not a bad spirit, I admit,but it can be carried too far. Individually you count for very little without each other’s help. Where would the destroyers be without the mine-sweepers—where would you all be without the mine-sweepers? Where would the battleships and battle cruisers be without the destroyers and light cruisers to screen and scout? A seaplane-carrier without support would be a sad sight ten minutes after the Germans heard she was in the neighbourhood. Submarines—er—submarines ...”
“Well?” asked the submarines quietly. The theatre ship was delivering her oration on the strength of a lecture some staff officer had recently given on board her to a number of yawning brother officers. It had been called “The Co-ordination of Fleet Units,” or some such title, but unhappily the theatre ship couldn’t remember how it went on when you got to the part about submarines.
The rest of the fleet said nothing, but contented themselves with winking to each other mischievously. They loved the theatre ship and owed her a debt immeasurable, but there were times when she adopted the “Mission to Seamen” pose and became rather tedious.
“Well?” repeated the submarines moored in rows alongside their parent ship, and nudged each other in the ribs. As all thefleet knew, submarines are the Ishmaels of the Navy, who at sea vanish instantly on the sight of either enemy or friend.
“Who mightwebe dependent on to help us do our jobs?”
“Er—as I was saying,” continued the theatre ship rather lamely, “where should weallbe without the submarines ...?”
“We!” echoed the submarines’ parent ship, jealous of her charges. “I like that, you old tub-thumper! Where are your bally innards?” Actually she said neither “bally” nor “innards.”
Pandemonium ensued, squadrons and flotillas all talking at once: jest and repartee, personalities and retorts flickering across the harbour like summer lightning. Above it all, quelling the noisy tumult on the instant, boomed the voice of the fleet flagship: “Still!”
A night bird called in some far-off bay, and the water lapped against the smooth grey flanks of the ships, but there were no other sounds. Then—
“Battle and battle cruiser squadrons and light cruisers raise steam for full speed with all dispatch. Report by squadrons when ready. Nth Battle Squadron, destroyers, and submarines proceed instantly and rendezvous in execution of previous orders.” The echoesbroke back from the quiet hills and died away.
“Gee!” muttered an irrepressible American ship. “Hold tight, Emma! we’re off!”
“Gate!” yelped the destroyers, “stand by the gates!” and presently they sped forth to meet the dawn and their destiny. The grinding sound of cables crawling through the hawsepipes as the squadrons shortened in filled the harbour. The dark water eddied and swirled as each ship tried her engines; then one by one from the flagships of squadrons came the deep-toned “Ready, aye, ready!”
Each time, like the chanted responses to a litany, the hospital ships echoed “God go with you!” So the last hour of night passed.
Outside, as the dawn was paling in the sky, the night patrols encountered the van of the battle fleet forming up across the waste of grey waters beneath its pall of smoke.
“St. George!” rang the challenge. In one great breath came the fleet’s reply:
“England!”
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“ ... Let a plain statement suffice.”—Rudyard Kipling.
“ ... Let a plain statement suffice.”—Rudyard Kipling.
“ ... Let a plain statement suffice.”—Rudyard Kipling.
Itmay be well to emphasise at the outset that the forces which participated in the raids on Ostend and Zeebrugge on the night of April 22nd-23rd, did not set out with the mere intention of giving the world an exhibition of gallantry and dash—a sort of grim Naval and Military Tournament for the benefit of newspaper readers. The enterprise had three clearly defined military objectives: the first of which was the blocking of the Bruges ship canal at its entrance into the sea at Zeebrugge; the second, the bottling up of Ostend harbour from the sea; and thirdly, the infliction of the maximum damage possible in the time upon the enemyin occupation of these two ports. The casualties, considering the desperate nature of the undertaking, were light and scarcely to be compared with those along the British front during a single night of trench raids; and those among that gallant band of volunteers who did not return, died in the knowledge that they had added to history a page as fair as any the Navy has yet contributed.
The heavily fortified coastline between these two nests of the enemy forms the base of a triangle with Bruges at the apex, affording protection to a number of German torpedo-craft and submarines within easy striking distance of the British coast and commerce routes. The scheme adopted for sealing the two exits of this system was roughly as follows.
It was proposed that obsolete craft filled with concrete and manned by volunteers should proceed under their own steam and be sunk in the entrances of the canal opening into Zeebrugge harbour, and of the port of Ostend. A storming force was to disembark on Zeebrugge mole with demolition materials, bombs, and machine-guns, and destroy the seaplane sheds and other establishments. Simultaneously with the disembarkation of this force the viaduct connecting the curved arm of the mole to the mainland was to beblown up, thus preventing the enemy from despatching reinforcements to support the guns’ crews and defenders of the mole. While these assaults were in progress, a force of monitors and aerial bombing squadrons were detailed to maintain a furious bombardment by sea and air of all coastal batteries and works of military importance in the neighbourhood.
The broad outline of the plan having been decided upon, the necessary blocking craft were selected from the Knackers’ Yards of the Navy, ships whose names conjure up forgotten commissions in tropic seas and a Navy fast passing into legend.Thetis,Intrepid, andIphigeniafor Zeebrugge,SiriusandBrilliantfor Ostend. To carry the assaulting parties to the mole, H.M.S.Vindictivewas brought from distant waters, and two Mersey ferry-craft, theIrisandDaffodil, were commissioned to pass down to posterity as her consorts in this desperate undertaking.
The ships were easier to select than the men. Invitations were sent to the Grand Fleet, the Home Port Depots, and the “Red” and “Blue” Marines to supply the requisite volunteers; the Royal Australian and Canadian Navies claimed their right to participate, and were also invited to send representatives. The response would havefurnished a force sufficient to block half the ports of Germany had such an enterprise been contemplated.
Eventually, however, the selections were made, and the flower of the Sea Service set its hand to the task. Acting Captain A. F. B. Carpenter, R.N., was appointed in command of theVindictive, Commander Valentine Gibbs, R.N., to theIris, and Lieutenant H. G. Campbell, R.N., to theDaffodil. In these three ships the storming and demolition parties were to embark, and the latter was also charged with the duty of pushing theVindictivealongside the mole and holding her there if her specially designed mole-anchors failed to grapple.
The commands of the various blockships were distributed as follows:Thetis, Commander R. S. Sneyd, D.S.O., R.N.;Intrepid, Lieutenant S. S. Bonham Carter, R.N.;Iphigenia, Lieutenant E. W. Billyard-Leake, R.N. The officer originally placed in command of the last-named ship, and who actually superintended the early preparations of all the blockships, was Lieutenant I. B. Franks, R.N. After weeks of labour and indefatigable enthusiasm, this officer was laid low by appendicitis two days before the actual attack, and he had in consequence to be removed to a neighbouring hospital.
The two ships destined for Ostend,BrilliantandSirius, were commanded respectively by Commander A. E. Godsal, R.N., and Lieutenant-Commander H. N. M. Hardy, D.S.O., R.N. The attempt to block Ostend proved only partly successful, as it transpired, and on a later date Commander Godsal made a second effort to close the entrance that cost him his life. TheVindictive, patched and battle-scarred, was used for the second venture, and lies, at the time of writing, amid the silt at the entrance of Ostend harbour, a fitting monument to the sturdy spirit who took and left her there.
The Naval storming and demolition forces, under the command of Captain H. C. Halahan, D.S.O., R.N., and the Marine storming force under Lieutenant-Colonel B. N. Elliott, Royal Marines, were distributed between theVindictive,Iris, andDaffodil. The Naval storming party was in charge of Lieutenant-Commander A. L. Harrison, R.N., and the demolition force under the orders of Lieutenant C. C. Dickinson, R.N.
Finally the two submarines which, filled with high explosive and manned by volunteers, were to be launched against the viaduct to blow it up, were assigned to Lieutenant Aubrey C. Newbold, R.N., and Lieutenant R. D. Sandford, R.N., and escorted bya picket-boat commanded by the latter’s brother, Lieutenant-Commander F. H. Sandford, D.S.O., R.N., who personally organised this most desperate coup.
An attack of this nature, involving the use of very light craft, smoke screens, air-craft, and a disembarkation alongside a pier in an open seaway, necessarily depended for success upon a variety of factors. Sea, tides, wind, and visibility all played their part, a conjunction of ideal conditions being such that it could only occur at rare intervals, and then by chance. The ships and men having been selected, and the entire scheme rehearsed, perfected, and elaborated, ships and men settled down to the long wait. The men in the front-line trench waiting to go “over the bags” are not expansive in describing their sensations. Something of that tense grim anticipation should have found a place on board those crowded ships. Nevertheless, a spirit of pure picnic appears to have reigned, coupled with a discipline maintained by the awesome threat of not being allowed to participate in the “show” when it came off.
The day came at length, and on May 22nd—St. George’s Eve—the force proceeded from its place of assembly and, escorted by destroyers and air-craft, passed up Channel. It was a brave and unusual array that sweptto the north-east as the light faded from the sky. Modern destroyers steamed on the wings of the columns, one of which flew the flag of Vice-Admiral Roger Keyes, C.B., C.M.G., D.S.O., M.V.O., the oldVindictivein the van of the centre column with theIrisandDaffodilin tow, for all the world like veteran hound on the trail with her two puppies on her flanks; the five valiant blockships followed, each with specially detailed parties below stoking for all they were worth, that their old ships’ last voyage should be made at a seemly speed. A cloud of motor launches filled the waterways between the columns, and the two obsolete submarines, with their escorting picket-boat, proceeded in tow of destoyers.
Meanwhile, from far and wide below the misty horizon the storm was gathering. Monitors, supported by British and French destroyers, moved quietly towards their allotted stations preparatory to the attack. From the Grand Fleet’s eyrie in the far north to the base of the East Coast Striking Force, covering and supporting squadrons were under weigh as the night wore on. The destroyer flotillas swung into position like cats round a mouse-hole lest any of the enemy’s torpedo-craft should be tempted to bolt for the open when the attack began.The night air was resonant with the drone of aerial craft on the wing.
Once the motley little fleet stopped, while the surplus steaming parties were disembarked, with many a fierce hand-grip and the muttered “Good luck, mate!” that is the fighting man’sAve atque vale! At the prearranged parting of the ways the force divided, steering separate courses for Ostend and Zeebrugge, where, under the respective commands of Commander Ion Hamilton Benn, M.P., R.N.V.R., and Captain Ralph Collins, R.N., the motor launches were already close inshore, trailing their smoke screens across the eyes of an uneasy and apprehensive enemy. A cloud of Coastal Motor Boats, under the command of Lieutenant Welman, R.N., had preceded them and were busily laying smoke floats and aids to navigation.
Half an hour before the Zeebrugge force arrived at its destination, star-shell began to curve skyward from the menaced harbour, fruitlessly searching the darkness and artificial mist that enveloped the mole and batteries. A little later, however, the wind (on which the smoke screen depended for its success) wavered, died down, and awoke lightly again from a contrary direction. Groping through the white billows of fogrolling back upon her, theVindictivecame out into a clear space lit by star-shell, and saw, a cable ahead, her destination. A single gun on the mole opened fired with a bark like a challenge, and the next instant loosed a hellish uproar of guns from ship and shore. Through a tornado of shrapnel and machine-gun fire, Captain Carpenter brought his veteran command alongside the mole, and before St. George’s Day was a minute old theVindictive, blazing defiance from battery and top, was grating against her fenders in the swell that surged across the outer wall.
According to the carefully thought-out scheme, Lieutenant Campbell in theDaffodilthrust the bows of his ship against theVindictive’squarter and held her bodily alongside, enabling the already splintered and shattered “brows,” or gangways, to reach the mole.
By this time the point-blank fire had taken heavy toll amid the closely packed ranks awaiting disembarkation. Colonel Elliot and Major Cordner, the two senior officers of the Royal Marine storming parties, and Captain Halahan, Royal Navy, were already dead. Commander Valentine Gibbs brought theIrisalongside in the wake of theVindictiveand endeavoured to grapple; Lieutenant Hawkins, R.N., reached the mole, securedthe grappling anchor, and died. He was instantly followed by Lieutenant-Commander Bradford, R.N., who was swung from a derrick with a second anchor, and succeeded in securing it before he, too, was killed, his riddled body falling into the water. A number of his men laboured with fruitless devotion to recover his corpse, one, Petty Officer Hallihan, giving his life in the attempt.
No sooner had the two foremost brows been launched from theVindictivethan the storming parties, led by Lieutenant Commanders A. L. Harrison and B. F. Adams, and Major B. G. Waller, Royal Marines, hurled themselves across. The men were burdened with Lewis guns, bombs, and demolition impedimenta; the scend of the swell caused theVindicitveto plunge heavily, and the brows rocked above a dizzy 30 feet drop, rising and falling as the ship rolled. Yet the landing was accomplished in the face of a gusty machine-gun fire that swept the face of the mole like the breath of Death.
The first stormers of the mole found themselves on a pathway about nine feet wide inside, and about four feet below the parapet of the mole. Two German destroyers were alongside the mole on the harbour side, but showed no activity, and the handful of the enemy found on the mole who subsequentlyattempted to regain these vessels were killed, the destroyers being liberally bombed. One of these craft was torpedoed alongside by a Coastal Motor Boat.
Followed by his men, Lieutenant-Commander Adams captured the look-out station on the mole, and was joined here by Wing-Commander F. A. Brock, R.N.A.S., who had come in search of certain information, risking the hazard of that bullet-swept mole to gain it. This gallant and public-spirited officer was missed shortly after, and not seen again.
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 thatwears 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 theVindictive: 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 byThetiscrashed 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 theIntrepidandIphigeniahad already passed cheering wildly and blazing fury from every gun. Here theThetisquietly 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.
TheIntrepid, on passing theThetis, 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 theVindictivealongside the mole and the already disabledThetis,Intrepidwas 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 ofIntrepid’sparty, however, determined to participate in the coming fight, had contrived to remain on board. These surplus ratings, with the whole of theIntrepid’screw, 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 theIphigenia, and succeededin 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 formedIntrepid’sship’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 theIntrepid. 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 theIntrepidaground 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 upIntrepid’screw 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, theBrilliantandSiriusfailed 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 theSiriusand sixteen from theBrilliant’swhaler, sunk by gunfire. The remainder of theBrilliant’screw were taken off by Lieutenant R. Bourke, R.N.V.R.
After leaving theSiriusan 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.
The part played by the submarine which destroyed the viaduct, and by her attendant picket-boat, must not be overshadowed by the deathless tale unfolding in the bullet-whipped waters of the adjoining harbour, and along the bloodstained parapet of the mole. It is deserving of a Saga all its own, but until that is written, the tale is best told simply, halting though the prose. Owing to a breakdown, only one submarine reached Zeebrugge, under the command of Lieutenant Sandford, R.N. The mole was sighted silhouetted against the blaze of guns and searchlights: and under a heavy fire of 4-inch shell the craft, with her cargo of high explosives, was launched at full speed at the rows of piers supporting the viaduct. She struck at right angles, riding up on to the horizontal girders and penetrating up to the conning-tower. The crew then launched the skiff, ignited the fuses, and pulled clear, while a company of riflemen on the viaduct above opened fire upon them with machine-guns, rifles, and pompoms. They continued pulling against a strong tide, and although nearly all were wounded (Lieutenant Sandford twice) and the boat only kept afloat by use of a specially designed pump, succeeded in getting about 300 yards clear before the explosion took place. As was anticipated, a gap of 150 feet was blown in the viaduct: concrete, girders, men, guns, and searchlights being hurled to the skies in a column of flame. The attendant picket-boat then swoopeddown and rescued the occupants of the skiff, transferring them later to one of the destroyers in the offing. The rescue was carried out under most hazardous conditions, and the little steamboat, manned by a crew of volunteers, with her fore compartment full of water, returned to England under her own steam, and thus completed a journey of 170 miles.
One British destroyer which lost herself in the smoke, found herself, when a gust of wind blew the smoke clear, well inside Zeebrugge harbour; she had time, however, to discharge all her torpedoes at the vessels alongside the mole before she was disabled by shell fire. She struggled a couple of hundred yards outside the entrance to the harbour and lay there a helpless log, sinking fast. A sister destroyer, under command of Lieutenant-Commander H. E. Gore-Langton, R.N., swooped down upon her and circled round until she was enveloped in smoke, under cover of which the crew were disembarked. Attempts were made to take her in tow, but the hawser was twice shot away. Her Captain, Lieutenant-Commander K. C. Helyar, R.N., remained on his shattered bridge to the last, and only abandoned her when she was sinking under him.
Back across the Channel as the day wasbreaking came theVindictive,Iris, andDaffodil, their task accomplished, and their names flashing proudly to the uttermost outposts of the Empire.
Commander Valentine Gibbs, R.N., who had been struck by a shell while theDaffodilwas getting clear, died during the passage, but recovered consciousness before the end to ask faintly if all went well. They eased the passing soul with the assurance that all had gone very well; and in that comfortable knowledge his brave spirit fled.
The dawn broadened into day and lit the smouldering docks and debris-strewn mole and the motionless outstretched figures still lying where they fell. It lit the shell-torn upper works of five of His Majesty’s ships which had finished their last commissions:Thetis,Sirius,Brilliant,IntrepidandIphigenia, lying at the gates of the enemy that none might pass out.
To these, at a later date, was added theVindictive, and though in time the enemy may dredge and blast the passages clear, though weed and rust will creep over the battered hulls, something will long remain for a testimony of the achievement; something—because of the blood which once stained the splintered decks—