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Just a paragraph to the effect that "Several seaplanes last night bombed Zeebrugge or Cuxhaven." They dashed out into the frigid North Sea with an errand, but their share in the fights and the valuable assistance they have been to Great Britain as scouts are seldom mentioned. Still, they "carry on," asking for no encouragement.
In a sea battle off Zeebrugge, Holland, on January 23, fourteen German torpedo-boat destroyers, attempting to leave port, were attacked by a British flotilla and seven of them were reported sunk. Victorious advances were made in Mesopotamia during the month of January by the British forces, who were determined to wipe out the reverse sustained in the surrender at Kut-el-Amara in 1916.
To block the entrance to Ostend: Sirius and Brilliant. At Dover Warwick, flagship of Vice-Admiral Keyes; Phoebe, North Star, Brigadier, Trident, Mansfield, Whirlwind, Myngs, Velox, Morris, Moorsom, Melpomene, Tempest and Tetrarch. To damage Zeebrugge Submarines C-1 and C-3. A special picket boat to rescue crews of C-1 and C-3.
At Zeebrugge, two of the three block ships, the Iphigenia and the Intrepid, got past the heavy guns on the mole, through the protective nets, and into the canal, where they were sunk athwart the channel by the explosion of mines laid all along their keels.
A bombardment of Zeebrugge by the British fleet caused much damage, the Germans losing forty dead and some hundred wounded. Here the submarine port, with two submersibles and two guns on the harbor wall were destroyed, while the central airship shed, containing at the time two dirigibles, was also severely damaged. The semaphore tower was shot to pieces and some sluices crippled.
A British squadron bombarded the German fortifications on the Belgian coast, from Zeebrugge to Ostend, for two hours on November 30, 1915. The weather suddenly changed on the entire western front. Rain, mist, and thaw imposed a check on the operations, which simmered down to artillery bombardments at isolated points.
At Zeebrugge and Ostend do not forget the Vindictive she dealt with submarines in April and May, 1918 but I'll skip that; I cannot set down all that she did, either at the start, or nearing the finish, or at any particular moment during those four years and three months that she was helping to hold Germany off from the throat of the world; it would make a very thick book.
This armored train was under the command of the blue-coated, one-armed old commander Young, hero of the Zeebrugge Raid, who parked his train every night on the switch track next to the British Headquarters car, the Blue Car with the Union Jack flying over it and the whole Allied force. Secretly, he itched to get his armored train into point-blank engagement with the Bolshevik armored train.
The British steamship Brussels, carrying freight and a number of passengers, most of whom were Belgian refugees bound from Rotterdam to Tillbury, a London suburb, was captured in the channel by German destroyers and taken to Zeebrugge, Belgium on the night of June 23, 1916. The incident proved that German warcraft were again far afield.
It has been stated that the English Navy has planted mines in channels leading from Zeebrugge and other submarine bases; but it is necessary only to recall the exploits of the E-11 and the E-14 of the British Navy at the Dardanelles, to see that it would not be impossible for the Germans to pass in their U-boats through these mine-fields into the open sea.
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