May 2, 19 I 8 
Land & Water 
Zeebriigge : By A. H. Pollen 
IN the course of the night April 22nd-23rd an attack 
was made on the two Flemish bases Ostend and 
Zeebriijge with a view to blocking the entrances of 
both by the familiar method of sinking old cement- 
filled ships in the narrow fairway. It is suspected 
that at Ostend the block-ships were grounded slightly off their 
course. But there seems little doubt that the Zeebru|ge 
block-ships got into their chosen billets, and are safely 
grounded there. The latter port must, in spite of official 
denials, for some weeks — if not months — be useless to the 
enemy, and it is probably safe to assume that the value of 
Ostend will be considerably diminished. Material results, 
therefore, of high importance have probably been achieved 
by this enterprise. 
These operations are worth examining from three quite 
separate points of view. 
First, what is the strategical 
value of their objective ? 
How, that is to say, would 
the naval activities of Great 
Britain and her Allies gain 
by Zeebriigge and Ostend 
being, for some months at 
least, out of action ? And, 
conversely, what would the 
enemy lose ? Unless we 
are satisfied that the gain 
must be substantial — apart 
altogether from the moral 
effect — we should obviously 
have a difficulty in justify- 
ing, not the losses in ships 
incurred, which are trivial 
and easily replaced, but the 
losses in picked men, which 
are irreparable. Secondly, 
the incident is clearly worth 
examining for its tactical 
interest. What were the 
difficulties the Vice-Admiral 
in command had to over- 
come ? By what weapons, 
devices, and manoeuvres, 
did he attempt to effect his 
purpose ? Thirdly, there 
is the direct moral effect 
of this enterprise on our- 
selves, our Allies, and our 
enemies. Finally, we are 
encouraged to ask our- 
selves if the event suggests that further operations, either 
of the same kind or of a cognate order, are now shown to 
be possible ? Have we, in short, naval assets in men and 
material that we have not so far used and can use ? Let 
us begin with the strategy involved. 
Strategical Object 
There is now only one theatre of the war, and in this the 
issue of civilisation or barbarism must be decided, by mihtary 
action, in the next few months. The event depends upon the 
capacity of the sea power of the Alhes to deliver in France all 
the fighting men and all the war material that Allied ships 
can draw first from Asia, from .Australia, from South America, 
from the United States, and from Canada, and then dehver 
either directly into France, or first into British ports, and 
then from Britain into France. To beat the German Army 
is ultimately a problem in sea communications. The whole 
of them have to pass through the bottle-neck of the Western 
end of the Atlantic lanes. Into an a«a south of Ireland 
and north of Ushant, a hundred miles square, every ship that 
comes from the Mediterranean, from the Cape, from Buenos 
Ayres, Rio, the West Indies, or the Gulf of Mexico, from the 
Atlantic seaboard of America, must come, as is shown by 
the diagram on the next page. 
Secondary only to this are the areas that feed ships into it, 
or into which the ships that pass through it are dissipated 
on their way to the several ports — the Mediterranean, the 
Bay of Biscay, the English Channel, St. George's Sound, the 
Irish Sea. It is in these, when it is driven from the main 
funnel point of traffic, that the submarine must do its work. 
The defeat of the submarine turns upon two factors : the 
efficiency with which ships liable to attack are protected by 
Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes 
convoy, and the skill and persistence with which submarines, 
once on their hunting-grounds, are in turn hunted. Con- 
voying and submarine-hunting make heavy demands on 
material, on personnel, and on sldll, judgment, and organisa- 
tion. But the decisive material factor is the number of 
destroyers available for both forms of work. When it comes 
to a close-quarters fight, no craft that has a speed of less than 
thirty knots, that cannot maintain itself in any weather, 
that does not possess a large cruising radius, can be of the 
first efficiency. , 
The larger petrol-driven submarine-chasers and the mariy 
special craft which are built for various purposes in 
connection with the defensive campaign, all have their field 
of utility. But for the final power to rush swiftly on to a 
submarine, if it is momentarily seen afloat, and for covering 
the area into which it can 
submerge itself, while the 
destroyer approaches with 
depth bombs, the destroyer, 
if only from its superior 
speed, stands supreme as 
the enemy of the U-boat. 
From the very earliest days 
of the submarine work it 
has, then, been axiomatic 
that every measure which 
will put a larger number 
of destroyers at our dis- 
posal should be taken at 
almost any cost. How docs 
the stroke at Zeebi^gge 
and Ostend help us in this 
respect ? 
At these two ports our 
enemy was able to maintain 
a very considerable de- 
stroyer force. Its activities, 
as we saw last week, were 
necessarily mainly confined 
to work in darkness or in 
thick weather. But in such 
conditions its efficiency was 
of a very high order. The 
public only heard of its 
activities when it shelled 
some point of the coast of 
Kent, or raided our traw- 
lers or other patrols, and, 
in all conscience, it heard 
of these activities often 
enough. Yet we were incUned to suppose them unim- 
portant because their material results were insignificant. 
But their value to the enemy should not be measured 
by the casualties they inflicted on our light craft, nor by 
their occasional excursions into the murder of civilians 
on shore. It lay in the fact that the enemy's force 
permanently withdrew from the anti-submarine cam- 
paign numerous destroyer leaders, and destroyers which 
had to be maintained at Dover to cope with it. From 
ZeebrQgge to Emden — the nearest German port — is, roughly, 
300 miles by sea ; and it does not need elaborate argument 
to show that, with Zeebriigge and Ostend out of action, the 
problem of dealing with enemy craft in the Narrow Seas is 
totally and entirely changed. With these gone, the East 
Coast ports become the natural centres from which to com- 
mand the waters between Great Britain and Holland. They 
are fifty miles nearer Emden than is Dunkirk. If any 
German destroyers got west and south of Dunkirk, and the 
news of their presence were cabled to an East Coast base, 
destroyers could get between the enemy and his ports without 
difficulty. Thus, enemy surface craft, based upon German 
ports, would practically be denied access to Flemish waters 
altogether, and this by the East Coast and not by the Dover 
forces. In other words, the Dover patrol forces would, by 
the closing of Ostend and Zeebriigge, be set free for the 
highly important work of aiding in the anti-submarine 
campaign — and there is certainly no naval need of the moment 
that is greater. . 
The strategical objective, therefore, which Admira* Keyes 
put before himself in his expedition was to set back the 
enemy's naval bases by no less than three hundred miles. 
The direct importance of this to the submarine campaign is, 
as we saw last week, while not unimportant, of no decisive 
Vandyk 
