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Updated: July 25, 2025
The coveted Belgian coast had at last to be abandoned: Ostend fell on the 17th, Zeebrugge and Bruges on the 19th, and by the 21st the Germans were twenty miles from the sea, striving to stand on the Lys canal in front of Ghent.
Reducing the land fortifications after a terrific bombardment, the combined fleet had "rushed" the harbor in the wake of their mine-sweepers, engaged and overwhelmed the larger units of the German fleet there assembled, and driven some of the smaller craft into the Zeebrugge Canal.
When he got back to Zeebrugge he must have been at the end of his tether, and whether by chance or design it was when Karl was, as he would have said, "at a low mental ebb" that Zoe made her last and successful attack upon his resolution not to see her again unless she consented to marry him.
It was a strategic position directly on the course that would be taken by German destroyers out of Zeebrugge bound for a raid off Dunkirk or Calais. Lying under the sea, the Dewey could hear approaching vessels. Furthermore, Lieutenant McClure had reason to believe that German destroyers were making a rendezvous of the little harbor of Blankenberghe.
Once out on the broad Atlantic their chances of roaming about undetected by destroyers or other patrol boats are almost unlimited. But we know where they come from, from Kiel, Antwerp, Wilhelmshaven, Ostend, and Zeebrugge. Catch them there and you will destroy them as boys destroy hornets by smoking out their nests.
This force, as it developed, was instrumental in patroling and directing the movements of detached craft in both directions, and relieved Admiral Keyes of all anxiety on that score. At the moment of departing the forces were disposed as follows: In the Swim For the attack on the Zeebrugge Mole: Vindictive, Iris, Gloucester. To block the Bruges canal: Thetis, Interprid and Iphigenia.
The comparatively small size of the submarines made it possible for the German admiralty to load them on to trains in sections and transport them where needed, and in this manner some were sent from the German ports on the North Sea to Zeebrugge, there assembled and launched. Others were sent to the Adriatic, arriving at Pola on the 25th of February, 1915.
But there are also to be remembered the unheralded stories of heroism and skill, such as the dash of the submarine-chasers and destroyers through the mine fields at Durazzo, and the work of our naval guns in the attack on Zeebrugge.
We passed along the tremendous stone quay of the artificial port of Zeebrugge; it extends several kilometers, and was built by Leopold II with English money; it had cost many, many millions, and was intended to serve quite another purpose than its present one.
On the very day the Narcissus left Galveston the German submersible V-l4 left her base at Zeebrugge, with oil and torpedoes sufficient to last her on an ordinary three weeks' cruise, and promptly headed for that section of the Atlantic where information and belief told her commander the hunting would be good.
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