Germans occupy Ostend and Zeebrugge

On 15 October 1914 German troops occupied Ostend and Zeebrugge, the two most important ports on the Belgian coast, without a fight. Only a week earlier British divisions had been landing there, and for a few days Ostend had been the seat of the Belgian government. Now that the Germans had reached the sea, both ports were in their hands for four years.

Uhlans in Ostend

The course of that day in Ostend was described in his diary by a local tramway employee, Charles Castelein. According to his notes the Germans entered the town on Thursday 15 October at 10.20 a.m. The first to appear was a soldier on foot with a bicycle, to whom a local doctor was showing the way to the town hall. Behind him rode uhlans, leading a Belgian soldier captured at the lock. Six cavalrymen went to the station and cut the telegraph and telephone wires. Then came cars carrying senior officers, and a company of infantry marched in. By about noon there were already some 2,000 Germans in the town.

Ostend was by then largely deserted. In the preceding days thousands of inhabitants and refugees had fled west by ship, boat and tram. In the following days tens of thousands of soldiers passed through the town, marching along the roads to Torhout and Nieuport, towards the front on the Yser. The Germans shipped home saltpetre from the harbour warehouses, as well as locomotives and wagons. On 17 October the first three hundred or so sailors arrived. Zeebrugge was occupied on the same day as Ostend, as was the seaside resort of Blankenberge, which lies between them.

Naval ports

The coast was taken over by Admiral Ludwig von Schröder’s Naval Division, expanded at the end of 1914 into the Marine Corps Flanders (Marinekorps Flandern). Its headquarters was in nearby Bruges, linked to both ports by canals. The Germans manned the coast from the Dutch border to the front on the Yser and set up powerful coastal batteries on it to deter British warships.

Zeebrugge and Ostend became the outlets to the sea for the vessels based at Bruges. From 1915 they were used by the Flanders U-boat flotilla, as well as by German torpedo boats and destroyers. Lying only a few dozen miles from the Thames estuary and the routes through the Strait of Dover, the bases allowed German submarines to reach the English Channel quickly. According to some sources the Flanders U-boats sank some 2,500 ships during the war, losing about 80 boats themselves.

The British repeatedly shelled both ports from the sea and bombed them from the air. On 23 April 1918 they carried out the raid on Zeebrugge and Ostend, trying to sink old cruisers in the canal entrances. At Zeebrugge this was only partly successful, and at Ostend the operation failed. German vessels were soon putting to sea again. Ostend was liberated only on 17 October 1918.