AT ZEEBRUGGE.

Hokitika Guardian, 27 June 1918, Page 3

AT ZEEBRUGGE.

SURVIVORS' SWIM IN OIL. LONDON, June 20. Men of the British destroyer that was lost told me thrilling talcs of their light in the jaws of Zeebrugge harbour. . , , . ~ “When we ran into the harbour, said one. “we ran out of darkness into iight brighter than daylight. They got searchlights all focussed on us and nt point-blank range they poured stuff into us and all over us from guns and little. Our port side was riddled from end to end, our aft funnel went, our wireless room was put out of a <‘tlon and then they smashed our how. The knock-out was a. torpedo in the engine

room. , . . No Jones, a salvo!" interrupted one of his mates. “Mavbe—and maybe both at once. You couldn't tell what was happening. All I remember of the end oi it was hearing the captain shout, Over the fo’castle, lads!. 1 ran for the fo’eastle and nearly fell down a great hole in the j deck. 1 dived off and swam for a vessel that, had stood so close in t_Q-rescue us that once she bumped into us.” “And we swam through a great patch of oil from our own bunkers,” said another man. “And it’s the first time that cold water didn’t scorn cold. A stoker described how, when the engine room was wrecked, he made for the deck, reached it just as tho rescuing sister destroyer closed in, and leapt over a water abyss to her decks. Immediately he hoarded her she"got ft salvo that took her midships funnel, “and I thought that she was going too. If she had. not a man of us would have come home.” ... The survivors of the destroyer were all going on special leave. Most of them had not slept for two nights, and their faces showed the strain they had hern through. All the sailors agreed that there was no tenseness among them as they stood iii, under cover of the smoko screen, to Zeebrugge, “I’ve been so near to it time after time.” said a gunner, “whqn we've tried to draw their destroyers out, that it seemed just like pa.v ing a longer call, but mother will he glad to see mo at West Ham to-night.’