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Updated: July 25, 2025
But the British from the Aisne were moving up towards their positions on Maud'huy's left, the Aire-La Bassée Canal being fixed as the point of their junction, and the 7th Division, with a division of cavalry, had landed at Ostend and Zeebrugge while the Naval Division was sent to assist in the defence of Antwerp.
This time the submarine was to act jointly with a convoy protecting the passage of troopships across the English Channel to Calais, and thence into action off Zeebrugge against the German destroyers making that port their rendezvous.
The Monitor led off in the battle array. Copies of the chart of Zeebrugge, the original that had been found on the converted U-boat at the time of her capture, had been given to every submarine skipper in the fleet. Each had his orders for this all-important night. "Here we go!" murmured McClure to his aides as he signaled his fleet of submarines forward into the fray.
Fourteen days later Mike Murphy dropped round to Cappy Ricks' cabin. "We're in the danger zone, sir," he announced. "And from now on we're liable to meet one of the larger type of U-boats that operate a couple of thousand miles from the base at Zeebrugge." "Very well," Cappy replied calmly. "Whether torpedoed or shelled, your instructions are the same.
To-night at midnight we report our position to Zeebrugge, up till now we have maintained wireless silence for fear of the British and French directional stations picking up our signals and fixing our position. After supper this evening Von Weissman explained to me the general plan of our operations for the next eight days.
Bruges was their headquarters; situated inland, but connected by canal with Zeebrugge and Ostend, it afforded a base immune from any attack save those of aircraft, and Bruges was the real objective of our Flanders campaign.
From the end of 1914 onwards the activities of the Royal Naval Air Service in this theatre of operations continually increased, the chief objectives being the gun emplacements at Middelkerke and Blankenburghe, the submarine bases at Zeebrugge and Bruges, the minefield and dock of Ostend, the airship sheds near Brussels, and the dockyards at Antwerp.
On March 30, 1915, ten British and some French aviators flew along the coast from Nieuport to Zeebrugge and dropped bombs on magazines and submarine bases. The last day of the month saw the destruction of the German captive balloon at Zeebrugge and the death of its two observers.
During the war submarine parts have been assembled at Trieste, Zeebrugge, Kiel, Bremerhaven, Stettin, and half a dozen other places in Germany unnecessary to relate. With commendable foresight, Germany sent submarine parts packed as machinery to South America, where they are being assembled somewhere on the west coast.
But Kiel and Wilhelmshaven were too heavily defended to make an attack by sea seem at all practicable. The lesser ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend had been successfully raided from the air and made practically useless as submarine bases.
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