ABOARD THE VINDICTIVE

From Our Special Correspondent. Dover, Thursday.

In “our rough island story” no more daring or hazardous adventure has ever been carried out by the men of our fighting ships than the attack on Ostend and Zeebrugge. This, of course, has been said many times already, but it is only when, by visiting the ships which returned, you have visualised the tremendous risks entailed and the terrific nature of the ordeal through which they passed, that the shining valour of the exploit stands out in all its full meaning. Therefore, having been aboard the battered Vindictive, the Iris, and the Daffodil, having had engraved on one’s mind the results of the enemy’s fire, there seems an imperative call to say once again that no finer piece of work than this is in the annals of the Navy. Officers who were there are strictly modest in their accounts of the affair. A man who had escaped death in a providential manner made this significant remark: “Not many in the whole shoot thought there was much more than a sporting chance of coming back. It is certain that those on the block ships did not.” These quietly spoken words, few though they be, are eloquent of the bravery which inspired those who set out to do this deed. As to the Zeebrugge end of the story, an officer gave his version of the results thus: “It will take the enemy many months to remove the obstruction. Some people think he will do it in six months, but he may not succeed before the war is over. It was not a ‘bluff’ business in any sense, and if we have stopped 50 submarines from coming out it means, naturally, much greater security for merchant shipping. That definite object, I feel certain, was attained.” Regarding Ostend, it is not possible to quote so confident an assurance, as a sudden shift of the wind blew the fog screen across the entrance to the harbour, and the exact position in which the block ships were sunk between, the two piers flanking its narrow entrance, was difficult to ascertain. Therefore, whether the obstruction is as complete as is the case at Zeebrugge is a point which remains to be settled. It is not necessary to tell here the stirring tale of the Vindictive’s part in the enterprise. That can be read elsewhere, in the words of the captain himself, who emerged from the fight with a shrapnel wound in the arm, and a feeling of pride that will be with him all his days at the splendid behaviour of every man under his command. But of the ship lying peacefully in safe harbourage – bruised, shattered, shell-ridden in all her upper works – something may well be written. As the motor launch sped across the harbour and the vessel came in full view, one glance sufficed to show how punishing had been the fire to which she was subjected. Her foremost and after funnels, though still standing, are literally riddled with wounds, some great, gasping apertures caused by the passage of a whole shell, others smaller holes to be counted by the hundred, where jagged lumps of shrapnel had torn a way through the metal. The middle funnel had suffered comparatively little damage. I was told that Vice-admiral Roger Keyes gave the ship’s company a horseshoe before starting, and it was affixed to the middle funnel, where it remained until this morning. Aboard the ship the eye rested everywhere on the litter and the wreckage of a great fight. “They have mucked her up right and good,” said a sailor. It just about expressed the truth. Forward, the ship caught it particularly hot. The bridge was smashed up, the signal room reduced to fragments, and the “flammenwerfer” house damaged. On every side were evidences of the destructive effect of modern shellfire in a confined space like a ship. The fighting-top is still standing, though a shell bored its way right through the supporting mast. Another shell unhappily burst in the top itself, and killed or wounded all the occupants except two. A senior officer had left the platform only two minutes earlier. Today I ventured to congratulate him on his escape. “Yes, it was a piece of luck,” he replied, quite simply.