The steel viaduct was to be destroyed by two obsolete submarines, C-1 and C-3, the bows of which were packed with five tons of high explosive. C-3 was to carry out the task, while C-1 stood by to complete it if necessary. The blockships selected were five obsolete light cruisers, Thetis, Intrepid and Iphigenia at Zeebrugge and Brilliant and Sirius at Ostend. They were fitted with scuttling charges and additional ballast and each retained three of her guns, protected by half-inch steel shields. Duplicate steering and control stations were added and protected by splinter mats. Finally, masts were removed and smoke generators fitted to conceal the escape of their crews.
Map 6. The port of Zeebrugge showing the position of the blockships HMS Intrepid and HMS Iphigenia.
The raiding force began its short passage at 17:00 on 22 April. As it approached Zeebrugge the motor launches and CMBs surged ahead, creating a dense fog with their smoke generators. For a while, this drifted towards the land at the same speed as the ships. Then, shortly before midnight, it backed, exposing the approaching force to full view. Vindictive, now fully exposed in the glare of searchlights, became the target of every German gun that would bear. Her commander, Captain Alfred Carpenter, realising that he must gain the shelter of the mole as quickly as possible, rang down for Full Ahead and completed the last few hundred yards of the run in at speed, grinding to a halt along the outer wall. Daffodil, her captain wounded by a shell exploding on the bridge, arrived from astern and pushed the cruiser hard against the wall while Iris closed in on the mole a little ahead.
It was unfortunate that Vindictive’s speed had taken her 300 yards past the point at which the troops were to have been put ashore directly into the interior of the enemy’s defended zone at the seaward end of the mole. Again, so heavy had been the German fire that only two of the gangways had survived. Nevertheless, the troops swarmed across these and commenced their attack on the defended zone, losing heavily as they covered the additional distance despite covering fire being given from the cruiser’s fighting top until it was wrecked by shellfire. Fierce hand-to-hand fighting took place in which the enemy also sustained losses.
Now was the moment for C-3 to make her attack. At full speed her commander, Lieutenant Richard Sandford, drove her at the girders of the viaduct. One hundred yards short of the target he ordered his crew up into the conning tower and steered the little submarine in among the stanchions himself until, to the accompaniment of the scream of grinding metal, she came to a halt. While his crew launched a motor skiff he set the charge with great care. As the skiff shoved off, the water round it was flayed by rifle and machine gun fire. It was lucky that darkness and smoke made it impossible for the enemy to aim properly, as the skiff’s engine failed to start and the crew were having to resort to the oars. Most received some sort of wound and Sandford was hit twice. Twelve minutes after C-3 had been abandoned, her charges exploded, blowing the submarine and a large section of the viaduct skywards. No reinforcements could now reach those Germans defending the mole. Freed from their tormentors, the crew of the skiff rowed on until they were picked up by a picket boat which, by coincidence, was commanded by Sandford’s elder brother, Francis.
The German gunners and naval infantrymen holding the seaward end of the mole had their hands fully occupied with the landing party and were unable to pay much attention to the approach of the three blockships. Thetis, under Commander F. Sneyd, in the lead, was hit several times but diverted the enemy’s attention from Intrepid and Iphigenia. However, thanks to the damage sustained by Thetis and the tidal set, she missed the gap in the net boom and ploughed into the mesh. With the net now tangled around her propellers, she was pulled to port and, taking in water, grounded 300 yards short of the canal entrance. She had, however, pulled the net with her and so widened the gap in the boom so that Intrepid, commanded by Lieutenant S.S. Bonham-Carter, passed through and into the canal, where her scuttling charges were blown. While his crew scrambled into the boats, Bonham-Carter activated the smoke generators that would cover their retreat. The dense fog created may have blinded the defenders, but it also blinded Lieutenant E.W. Billyard-Leake, commanding Iphigenia, which nearly struck the canal’s western pier before entering the waterway. She nudged Intrepid slightly out of position, and was then scuttled and abandoned under cover of her own smoke generators. Next to arrive on this scene of sinking ships, dense smoke and gunfire was Motor Launch 282, commanded by Lieutenant Percy Dean, a Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve officer. Aged forty, Dean might have been regarded as a little too old for this sort of rough-and-tumble, but he remained perfectly calm and in full control of events, transferring over 100 men from the blockships’ boats to the launch’s deck and rescuing men from the water, despite a steering failure and the enemy’s fire. Leaving the harbour when his task was done, he later transferred his passengers to the destroyer Warwick, aboard which Keyes was controlling the operation.
At 00:50, with the blockships now in position, Captain Carpenter decided to recall the landing parties. As Vindictive’s siren had been shot away, the signal was sounded by Daffodil and Iris. For the next fifteen minutes marines and bluejackets tumbled aboard, carrying with them as many of the dead and wounded as they could. When it was clear that there was no one else to come, Daffodil assisted Vindictive away from the mole and, joined by Iris, the three ships headed for the open sea, making smoke as they did so. Most of the enemy’s fire fell astern, but by the worst possible luck a random shell exploded aboard Iris, killing 75 of the men packed into what had formerly been her saloons.
In total, British casualties during the raid amounted to 160 killed, 28 mortally wounded, 383 wounded, 16 missing and 13 captured. The destroyer North Star had been sunk by the enemy’s coast defence batteries, and Motor Launches 110 and 424 had also been lost. No accurate figures for German personnel losses exist. That they were lower is beyond doubt, but as the eminent historian Barrie Pitt points out in his own study of the operation, Zeebrugge – Eleven VCs Before Breakfast, there exists a school of historians willing to accept the ‘official’ German version of events which tends to dismiss the question of casualties altogether, despite serious inconsistencies in the narrative.
Nevertheless, the object of the operation was not to create a large butcher’s bill for the enemy, but to deny him the use of the Zeebrugge exit from the Bruges naval base. For some time, the Germans could not even make a start on reopening the canal as the local dredger had been sunk beside the mole by a coastal motor boat during the fighting. This meant that the Bruges U-boats already at sea would have to return to more distant bases in Germany, ending their patrols prematurely. In the end it became necessary to widen the canal opposite the sunken blockships so that by dredging a channel through the silt under their sterns it was possible for a small coastal U-boat to be warped past the obstruction, but only at high tide. Those ocean-going U-boats and destroyers caught in Bruges at the time of the raid stayed there for the rest of the war. Even after hostilities ended it took a year to restore the canal to working order.
The results of the raid on Ostend were less than satisfactory. The raiders were relying on two buoys as navigational markers, but these had been moved. Brilliant, the leading blockship, emerged from the smokescreen to find herself brightly illuminated by the defenders’ searchlights. Having relied on dead reckoning her captain, Commander A.E. Godsall, was temporarily blinded and on recovery found that he was some distance to the east of the canal entrance. Before the course could be corrected, Brilliant had run on to a sandbank. Godsall went astern but before his ship could free herself she was struck on the port quarter by Sirius, the second blockship, which had been severely damaged and was in a sinking condition, and forced further aground. All that remained was to blow the scuttling charges and take off the blockship crews into motor launches.
A second attempt was made on 9 May. Vindictive, now converted to the blockship role and commanded by Godsall, accompanied by an even more ancient cruiser, Sappho, which had been launched in 1891. Unfortunately,
Sappho’s antique engines gave so much trouble that she had to turn back. Prior to the attack itself, monitors would deliver a bombardment and heavy bombers would unload their cargos directly over the defences. On this occasion the usual dense fog created by the smokescreen was supplemented by a natural mist but Godsal, a fine navigator, brought the old cruiser precisely to the canal mouth. He had been about to swing her across the main channel when he was killed by a shell bursting on the bridge. Lieutenant Victor Crutchley, despite being wounded, tried to complete the manoeuvre but by then it was too late and Vindictive had run aground beside the channel. As they had done on previous occasions, the motor launches performed prodigies of courage rescuing the crew under heavy fire after the scuttling charges had taken effect.
If the raids on Ostend had not been the successes that had been hoped for, that on Zeebrugge was in the British naval tradition stretching back as far as Drake. It restored the public’s confidence in the Royal Navy and the fact that it had taken place on St George’s Day, the day of England’s national saint, provided the icing on the cake. Despite the grim ordeal that the Army was undergoing on the Continent, victory once more seemed to be a possibility.
For the Germans Zeebrugge had the opposite effect. It was alarming that such an assault had been made into the flank of their major offensive, and if it had happened once it could happen again. It was also depressing that after four years of war, Great Britain was still capable of mounting such an operation. Were these the reasons that ‘official’ versions of doubtful veracity were prepared and later offered to foreign historians?
After the Zeebrugge and Ostend raids neither side mounted major operations in the North Sea. Elsewhere, the German offensives ran down and finally came to a halt. On 8 August the British launched a massive counter-offensive at Amiens, using hundreds of tanks. The German armies never recovered from the blow and thereafter retreated slowly but steadily towards their homeland. Those troops holding Ostend, Zeebrugge and the Belgian coast were forced to conform to the general movement and abandoned their bases. If the news from the front depressed those at home, the news from home depressed the troops at the front. Food shortages were reaching starvation proportions while wage and price inflation were creating widespread unrest. The promised victories had not materialised, and those who promised them were no longer trusted.
The crew of HMS Mary Rose.
The end of it all. On 21 November most of the High Seas Fleet, having landed its ammunition, torpedoes, breech blocks, gun sights and gun control equipment, sailed from its bases into internment under the guns of the Grand Fleet and its allies and the watchful eyes of non-rigid naval airships. In contrast to the fleet that had fought at Jutland, the German ships presented a dirty, unkempt appearance and the majority of their crews consisted of mutineers only too pleased that their discharge was imminent. Following a brief stop in the Firth of Forth, the High Seas Fleet made its final voyage to Scapa Flow where, in erroneous belief that they were to be surrendered to the Allies, its ships were scuttled by their crews. The photograph shows the battle cruiser squadron on 21 November with (left to right) Seydlitz, Moltke, Hindenburgh and Derfflinger. (IWM Q.20614)
CHAPTER 14
Envoie – The End of the High Seas Fleet – Mutiny, Internment and Scuttling
On 14 November 1918 a light cruiser flying the Imperial German Naval ensign and a rear admiral’s flag entered the Firth of Forth, receiving the curious stares of British service personnel and civilians alike. She was the Konigsberg, the replacement for the cruiser that had been destroyed in the Rufiji River during the war’s early days. The spectators noted a handsome ship with two very tall masts, three funnels, the foremost of which was higher than the other two, and eight 5.9-inch guns. Having taken up a position close to Queen Elizabeth, Admiral Beatty’s flagship, Konigsberg dropped anchor. Her admiral’s barge was called away and rowed across to the British flagship, where Rear Admiral von Meurer and his small staff climbed the accommodation ladder, exchanged stiffly formal compliments with those waiting above, and were led below.
The Armistice ending the Great War had been signed three days earlier. Its provisions required the Imperial German Navy to hand over for internment under the supervision of the Royal Navy eleven dreadnought battleships, five battle cruisers, eight light cruisers, fifty destroyers and all its surviving U-boats. There was no question of Meurer negotiating any improvement on these terms; he was aboard Queen Elizabeth to receive orders from Beatty as to how they were to be implemented and returned to Konigsberg knowing that his service was to be totally and very publicly humiliated.
The seeds that had germinated into mutiny and revolution had been present for a while. It was not just the long periods of idleness that had followed Jutland, although they had contributed to the rot. In some respects the social structure of the Navy mirrored that of the Army. Deck officers tended to be drawn from the upper classes and looked down on engineering and technical officers. Likewise, seamen were drawn from the merchant service and the fishing fleet, while men in the engineering branch were recruited in the country’s industrial areas. Promotion to petty officer tended to be awarded to regulars rather than conscripts. At sea, living conditions were crowded, to the extent that in harbour a proportion of crews were housed in barracks. The winter of 1917/18 became known as the ‘turnip winter’ as little else was available to eat and cooks became adept at serving the vegetable in various guises. Even in better times good food was in short supply and was not distributed fairly. On the mess decks, bread was baked from potato flour, while the officers enjoyed wheaten rolls, plus cakes on Sundays. One senior officer with a weakness for fried eggs had them cooked and carried to the wardroom along the mess decks, where the men may not have seen an egg for weeks. Naturally, such things were resented and did nothing to improve morale.
Having spent so much time in harbour, the seamen could see that the civilians were even worse off than they were. The influence of the Russian revolution began to spread throughout the mess decks, where the most commonly held opinion was that, since Germany’s allies were collapsing round her and the Army had failed to win victory during the recent offensives, the war was a complete waste of time. Among those expressing this view most forcefully were those who had just returned from the Belgian coast.
At the beginning of August 1918 Scheer became Chief of Admiralty Staff and Hipper assumed command of the High Seas Fleet. Watching events, he recognised beyond doubt that the Army was being roundly beaten and would disintegrate before long. In October he planned one final sortie which would prove that the Navy was still a power to be reckoned with. Some, but by no means all, senior officers, supported the idea, which would involve an operation similar to those with which the war had begun. On the mess decks, however, the agitators spread the word among the seamen that they were being taken on a death ride for the sake of the Navy’s honour, and that was something the seamen were simply not prepared to tolerate.
As the fleet began assembling at Schillig Roads on 27 October, serious acts of sabotage took place to prevent its sailing. These included the deliberate absence of stokers, the extinguishing of furnaces, the opening of water cocks and the jamming of capstans so that anchors could not be hoisted. By the evening of 29 October all the battleships and light cruisers were affected. Aboard the Thuringen and Helgoland the red flag of revolution was hoisted. Officers were simply told to stay out of the way. On 31 October naval infantry and smaller warships were called in to restore order. For a while there was a standoff and a serious risk that blood would be shed. Finally, those involved in the disturbance surrendered. Some 1,000 of them were arrested and marched off, weakening the crews to the extent that the fleet could not put to sea anyway.
On 3 November a demonstration by seamen, soldiers, workers and their wives took place in Kiel, demanding the release of the arrested men. The demonstration was followed by a march towards the city centre. Its progress was blocked by an officer’s patrol which opened fire when the crowd refus
ed to disperse, killing eight of the demonstrators and wounding 29. During the night of 4 November the seamen formed councils, disarmed their officers and took control of their ships and barracks. Professional political agitators arrived to organise them and during the next few days they spread across Germany, being welcomed wherever they went. At the top of their list of demands were the abdication of the Hohenzollerns and the release of their comrades.
North Sea Battleground: The War at Sea 1914-1918 Page 13