Zeebrugge in the First World War

Zeebrugge, the seaport of Bruges on the coast of Belgium, was during the war the German navy’s most important way out to sea in Flanders. The Germans took it in October 1914 and held it for four years. From here sailed the submarines, torpedo boats and seaplanes that attacked shipping in the English Channel and in the Strait of Dover. In April 1918 the British tried to close the port in a raid, their navy’s most famous action of the war, and in October 1918 the Belgians recovered it.

The port of Bruges (1914)

In Dutch the name means “Bruges-on-Sea”. The port was linked to Bruges, lying inland, by a canal about 12 kilometres long, closed off from the sea by locks. The canal entrance was sheltered from the waves by a great curved mole, joined to the land by a steel viaduct.

In the first days of the war the port still served the Allies. On the morning of 6 October 1914 the British 7th Division began to land here, sent to the rescue of besieged Antwerp. It arrived too late and could only cover the retreat of the Belgian army. On 12 October the Belgians left Ostend and Zeebrugge, and on 15 October the Germans entered both ports without a fight. The coast was taken over by the Naval Division of Admiral Ludwig von Schröder, expanded at the end of the year into the Marine Corps Flanders, with its headquarters in Bruges.

The way out of Bruges (1914–1917)

The German ships were not based at Zeebrugge itself but in the inland port of Bruges. According to the researcher Johan Ryheul, it was there that floating docks and concrete shelters for submarines were built, while little was added at Zeebrugge, chiefly protection for the seaplane base on the mole. As early as 21 December 1914 a seaplane from Zeebrugge dropped bombs near Dover, which the British counted as the first German air raid on England.

From 1915 the small U-boats of the Flanders Flotilla put to sea through Zeebrugge and Ostend, laying mines and sinking ships on the approaches to England and France. According to some sources the submarines from Flanders sank about 2,500 ships during the war, losing about 80 boats themselves. In June 1916 German torpedo boats brought into Zeebrugge the British steamer Brussels, whose master, Charles Fryatt, was later shot at Bruges. The British answered with a barrage of mines and nets laid off the port in April 1916. In the autumn, however, two flotillas of German destroyers sailed from Zeebrugge on the first raid against the British patrols in the strait.

The port troubled the Admiralty more and more. A bombardment of the locks by monitors in May 1917 had no lasting effect, and in June Admiral John Jellicoe warned that unless Zeebrugge and Ostend were taken from the Germans, Britain might not hold out until 1918. This was one of the reasons why the navy strongly backed the Third Battle of Ypres. The offensive never reached the coast, however, and ended with the capture of a few kilometres of ground.

The raid (April 1918)

On 1 January 1918 command at Dover passed to Vice-Admiral Roger Keyes, who wanted to close the canal by sinking old cruisers filled with concrete in its entrance. On St George’s night, just after midnight on 23 April, the cruiser Vindictive came alongside the mole and landed a storming party, the submarine C3 blew up the viaduct, and two blockships, Intrepid and Iphigenia, were sunk in the canal. According to Keyes’s report 176 men were killed, 412 wounded and 49 missing. Eight Victoria Crosses were awarded for that night.

The effect was shorter-lived than announced. The Germans dredged a passage past the wrecks that ships could use at high tide, and as early as 25 April the first submarine again put to sea through Zeebrugge. The raid nonetheless lifted spirits in Britain in the darkest days of the spring, while the Germans were attacking on the Lys. A second attempt, this time against Ostend, was made on the night of 9–10 May.

Liberation (October 1918)

As the front drew near the coast, the Germans recalled their submarines home, and on 5 October they scuttled those that could no longer put to sea, among them UB-59 at Zeebrugge. After the front was broken at Kortrijk they withdrew from the whole coast, and on 19 October the Belgians entered Bruges and Zeebrugge. Keyes, who had fought the flotillas from Bruges since the beginning of 1918, rode into the city on 25 October beside King Albert I. In 1943 he was created Baron Keyes of Zeebrugge and Dover, and after his death he was buried at Dover, beside the men who fell in the raid.