Raid on Margate and Broadstairs

Late in the evening of 25 February 1917 German torpedo boats, in practice modern destroyers, shelled for some ten or fifteen minutes the coast of the county of Kent in the area of the North Foreland, at the eastern tip of the Isle of Thanet. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Edward Carson, told the House of Commons the next day that the “undefended watering-places” of Broadstairs and Margate had been shelled. The British official history of the naval war names Margate and neighbouring Westgate-on-Sea as the target. It was the second bombardment of the English coast within a month by ships from Flanders, after the night attack on Southwold in January.

The raid was part of a larger operation. According to the British official history the Germans left Zeebrugge between six and seven in the evening in three groups. One was to look for shipping on the route from England to Holland; the second, Commander Tillessen’s 6th Flotilla, was to strike at the British patrol vessels at the barrage in the Strait of Dover; and the third, five boats of the Zeebrugge 1st Half-Flotilla under Commander Konrad Albrecht, was to attack the Downs anchorage off the Kent coast. The night was very dark. At about 10.30 p.m. Tillessen’s group ran into the British destroyer Laverock. Her commander, Lieutenant Binmore, turned, passed astern of the German column and went after it, firing so rapidly that Tillessen concluded he was fighting several destroyers. The Germans abandoned the attack on Dover and returned to base.

At about 11 p.m. the crew of the armed drifter John Lincoln, on watch at the entrance to the Downs, sighted Albrecht’s boats heading north and fired an alarm rocket. The Germans first sent a few shells into the fields near the wireless station on the North Foreland, and then for several minutes shelled the towns. By 11.20 p.m. it was all over and the torpedo boats were making off to the north-east. British light cruisers and destroyers from the Downs and destroyers from Dover put to sea, but found no one. They did not even notice two German boats, V 47 and V 67, which Albrecht had incautiously sent to patrol near the anchorage, between the North Foreland and the Goodwin Sands, and which cruised there for an hour.

Carson stated that according to the information so far a woman and a child had been killed, two children wounded and two houses damaged. Some later studies, citing the work of the historian of the German navy in Flanders Mark Karau, speak of three civilians killed. The shelling of such towns was contrary to the Hague Convention of 1907, which forbade naval forces to bombard undefended towns. As early as November 1916 German destroyers had fired a few shots towards Margate before turning back.

The Admiralty accepted the report of the commander of the Dover forces, Admiral Reginald Bacon, without comment. According to the British official history, the brief bombardment and the rapid withdrawal showed that the Germans knew how strong the British forces defending the strait and the Downs were, and avoided a serious engagement with them. It was concluded that the raid had gained the Germans nothing, and that the existing disposition of forces adequately protected this important junction of British sea routes. The Germans, however, could repeat such night raids whenever they wished, and three weeks later they appeared again off Broadstairs and Ramsgate.