First German destroyer raid in the Strait of Dover

On the evening of 26 October 1916 two flotillas of German destroyers, in German terminology large torpedo boats, left the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. Under cover of a very dark night they entered the Strait of Dover, sank several drifters guarding the British net barrage, the old destroyer Flirt and the empty transport Queen, badly damaged two newer destroyers and returned to base before dawn without loss. The British chronology of the war calls this action the first German destroyer raid in the Strait of Dover. Indeed, for two years the Germans had used the ports of occupied Belgium almost exclusively as submarine bases, and their few torpedo boats seldom ventured far from their own coast.

Flotillas from Germany

After the Battle of Jutland the German High Seas Fleet (Hochseeflotte) no longer sought battle with the Grand Fleet, and its command was turning ever more clearly to submarine warfare. The British barrage in the Strait of Dover, made of mines and nets watched by dozens of armed fishing boats, obstructed the passage of the Flanders submarines to the English Channel. Since the spring the British had also been laying mines and nets off Zeebrugge. The Germans decided to strike at these forces with a night raid by light craft. On the night of 23–24 October Commodore Andreas Michelsen, commander of the High Seas Fleet’s torpedo boat flotillas, brought the 3rd and 9th Flotillas to Zeebrugge, 24 modern vessels in all, armed with 88 mm or 105 mm guns and six torpedo tubes each. British forces from Harwich came out to meet them, but the Germans slipped along the Dutch coast at night and no action took place.

The Admiralty thus knew that a strong destroyer force lay at Zeebrugge, but had no idea where it would strike. The commander of the forces at Dover, Vice-Admiral Reginald Bacon, had to cover at the same time the seaward flank of the army in Flanders, the Downs anchorage, where ships carrying supplies for London gathered every night, the barrage nets, and the transport route between Folkestone and Boulogne. He judged the Downs and the Belgian coast to be most at risk and sent most of his ships there. The barrage nets, stretching from the southern end of the Goodwin Sands to the Outer Ruytingen shoal off the French coast, were watched by four divisions of drifters, fishing boats taken into the navy, armed with only a few rifles and without wireless. Their support was to be a single old destroyer, Flirt.

The night of 26–27 October

The 9th Flotilla left Zeebrugge at 5.30 p.m. and the 3rd Flotilla three quarters of an hour later. Beyond the Goodwin Sands they split into four half-flotillas: two were to attack the drifters at the barrage, two the transport route through the strait. At about 9.35 p.m. one of them passed Flirt. The officer of the watch challenged the unknown ships with the recognition signal, they repeated it and vanished into the darkness. The destroyer’s commander, Lieutenant R. Kellett, took them for British and did not report the encounter.

Shortly after 10 p.m. the German ships, led by Michelsen himself, came upon the drifters of the 10th Division. The fishermen, more suspicious than Kellett, opened fire on them with rifles. The Germans switched on their searchlights and opened fire. Three drifters sank at once, and a fourth, Waveney II, caught fire. Kellett turned towards the flashes, convinced that the drifters were fighting a submarine. When he saw the burning drifter and men in the water, he stopped his ship and lowered a boat to rescue them. He took the destroyers standing nearby for French. At that moment the Germans opened fire, and Flirt sank within a few minutes. Only the men in the rescue boat survived.

Another German half-flotilla meanwhile passed through the strait west of the Varne shoal. At about 11 p.m. it stopped the empty transport Queen, returning from Boulogne. The German officer allowed the crew to take to the boats, and the ship was then sunk. The Germans were also seen from hospital ships passing through the strait, but these, in accordance with international law, could not take part in hostilities and sent no warning. Shortly after 11 p.m. the Germans attacked the drifters again. They sank more boats, although the skipper of one of them, under fire, kept sending up rockets to warn the others.

Pursuit in the dark

The alarm reached Dover at about 10.30 p.m. Bacon sent six Tribal-class destroyers to sea and called up a division of destroyers from Dunkirk. Two errors in passing on orders added to the confusion in the darkness. In a signal to the division in the Downs the word “warships” became “airships”, and the name of the ship Lawford was heard over the telephone as Laforey. The Tribal-class destroyers left harbour in two groups and quickly became separated. At about 12.40 a.m. the destroyer Nubian ran into the returning German ships. Her commander took them for British, challenged them and, before he realised his mistake, came under murderous fire at close range. As he tried to ram the last ship in the line, a torpedo blew off his bow. A few minutes later the Germans passed the destroyer Amazon, which also challenged them, and hit her twice. Their last clash was with the destroyers Viking, Mohawk and Tartar. Mohawk was hit, and the German ships disappeared into the gloom. By morning they were back at Zeebrugge and Ostend.

Towed stern first, Nubian broke her tow at dawn and went ashore under the South Foreland. Her wounded were taken off, at great risk, by the tug William Gray. The wreck was salvaged and later her stern was joined to the bow of the destroyer Zulu, which had lost her stern section to a mine. The two ships became one, named Zubian.

Losses and lessons

According to the British official history of the war at sea, the Germans sank Flirt, the transport Queen and six drifters, and damaged further drifters, a trawler and three destroyers. Figures for the dead differ between accounts. Some give 45 killed and 10 taken prisoner. However, the nominal rolls of Royal Navy dead compiled by the naval-history.net website list about 60 names from Flirt alone and more than 40 from the drifters. The Germans returned without any casualties.

Bacon defended his dispositions. He wrote to the Admiralty that stopping a night raid by ships steaming at 33 knots in waters as wide as the Channel was like stopping engines rushing through Clapham Junction at night without lights. The attackers knew that every ship they met was an enemy, while the British commanders each time lost precious seconds checking whether they had their own ships in front of them. The Admiralty agreed with him on the disposition of his forces, but not on his tactics. It concluded that at night destroyers must operate in compact groups. The raid missed the most important targets, since the Germans did not attack the Downs anchorage and no troop transports were crossing the strait that night. It did, however, show how weak the defence of the barrage was. The Germans repeated such sorties in the following months, and in April 1917 another night destroyer battle was fought in the strait.