The Zeebrugge Raid, 1918: storming the Mole on St George's Day

The Zeebrugge Raid is remembered as one of the boldest operations of the First World War at sea, and its eight Victoria Crosses made it a legend in Britain. As a military operation it largely failed. The story lies in the distance between those two facts.²

Why Zeebrugge

The Germans had held the Belgian coast since 1914. Bruges, a few miles inland, sheltered submarines, torpedo boats and destroyers, which reached the sea through two outlets: a ship canal to Zeebrugge and a smaller channel to Ostend. From there it was a short run into the Channel, where U-boats sank merchant ships and laid mines. The UK government's history blog notes that German submarines sank a third of Allied merchant shipping over the war, and that Admiral Sir John Jellicoe believed Britain had to neutralize the Flanders ports to stay in the war.³

Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, who took over the Dover Patrol, built on plans of his predecessor Admiral Sir Reginald Bacon. The idea was simple to state and very hard to carry out: sail old cruisers filled with concrete into the mouth of the Zeebrugge canal and at the entrance of Ostend harbor, sink them there, and so cork the bottle. A first attempt on 2 April was called off when the wind turned against the smoke screen on which everything depended.⁴

The plan of attack

The canal entrance at Zeebrugge was guarded by the Mole, a curved breakwater about a mile long carrying gun batteries, a seaplane station and machine-gun posts. To draw the defenders' fire away from the blockships, the elderly cruiser HMS Vindictive would come alongside the Mole and land storming and demolition parties of sailors and Royal Marines. Two Mersey ferries, Iris and Daffodil, chosen for their shallow draft, double hulls and room for troops, would carry more men and help hold Vindictive against the wall.⁵

At the same time the old submarine C3, packed with explosives, would ram the iron viaduct that joined the Mole to the shore, so that no German reinforcements could cross. Smoke screens devised by Frank Brock of the fireworks family would hide the approach. In February 1918 a call for volunteers went through the Grand Fleet, and a force of about 1,700 was raised and trained.⁶

Alongside the Mole

The force sailed on 22 April, and just after midnight Vindictive closed the Mole. About half an hour before she arrived the wind changed and blew the smoke screen away. The shore batteries saw her and opened fire, and many of the leading marines and their officers were hit before the ship touched the wall. Vindictive came alongside farther along the Mole than planned and had to be pushed against it by Daffodil, and the steep angle between her deck and the parapet made it hard for the men to get across.⁷

Those who reached the top found the Mole swept by machine-gun fire. Iris could not make fast at all: men who climbed the wall to secure her anchors were killed, among them George Bradford, commander of the storming parties in Iris, who received a posthumous Victoria Cross. Vindictive stayed alongside for about an hour under heavy fire before she took off the survivors of the fighting ashore.⁸

Meanwhile C3, under Lieutenant Richard Sandford, ran in on the surface and wedged herself between the iron pillars of the viaduct. The crew lit the fuses and escaped in a small boat, and at about 12.15 the submarine blew up and took most of the bridge with it.⁹

The blockships

While the Germans were busy with the Mole, the three blockships ran past it into the harbor. Between about 12.15 and 12.45 all three were sunk. Thetis did not reach the canal entrance: she grounded on a sandbank and went down in the outer harbor. Intrepid and Iphigenia were scuttled across the mouth of the canal, Intrepid in the best position of the three. Motor launches picked up their crews. By about 1.15 a.m. Vindictive, Iris and Daffodil were clear of the Mole and heading for Dover.¹⁰

At Ostend that same night the attack failed outright. The wind wrecked the smoke screen there too, and a marker buoy had been moved, so the two blockships ran aground well to the east of the harbor entrance. A second attempt on 10 May used the battered Vindictive herself, filled with concrete; she reached the harbor in fog but grounded at an angle and was blown up, and her commander, Commander Godsal, was killed.¹¹

The price and the verdict

Figures for the British losses at Zeebrugge vary. The UK government's history blog puts them at about 200 killed, 400 wounded and a few prisoners, against 24 German losses; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission counts more than 200 sailors and marines killed and over 300 wounded. The dead are buried at Zeebrugge Churchyard, Blankenberge and Ostend in Belgium and in Dover (St James's) Cemetery, and those with no known grave are named on the naval memorials at Chatham, Portsmouth and Plymouth.¹²

Eight Victoria Crosses were awarded for Zeebrugge and three more for Ostend, with more than 500 other awards. The 4th Battalion Royal Marines as a whole was chosen for the Cross, so under the rules the men themselves balloted for the two recipients. King George V let the two ferries add 'Royal' to their names, and Royal Iris and Royal Daffodil went back to carrying passengers on the Mersey.¹³

The canal was blocked, but not for long. Within a few days the Germans had dredged a channel past the wrecks, and submarines could use it at high tide. The British press called the raid a triumph, and the German press called it a German success because the Mole had held. Both were partly right. Zeebrugge did not shut the U-boats in, but in the fourth year of the war it gave the country a story of daring when it badly needed one.¹⁴