ON THE SEA.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 April 1918, Page 6

ON THE SEA.

THE ZEEBRUGGE RAID. FULL OFFICIAL NARRATIVE. THRILLING EPISODES AND EXPERIENCES. MAGNIFICENT DEEDS OF HEROISMLondon, April 20. The Admiralty has issued a full narrative of the raid on Zeebruggo and Ostend. It is full of thrilling episodes and experiences of the individual vessels engaged and the storming party on the mole. Naturally the most striking of these are the experiences of the Vindictive and her attendant ferry boats, the Iris and the Daffodil. As the Vindictive lay alongside tbe mole, rolling and 'bumping against the foundations, she was swept diagonally with machine-gun fire from both ends of the mole and the heavy batteries ashore. Landing parlies of ma-rines-gathered on the main and lower decks. The commanders were both killed before the word to assault was given. The men were magnificent- They rushed across the swaying, splintering gangways, and dropped over a parapet into the field of fire of German machine-guns. I Then came a further drop of 16 feet on to the mole itself. But nothing stopped their orderly sweeping landing. Meanwhile the lower deck had become a shambles. The crew of a howitzer mounted forward were all killed. A second crew was likewise destroyed, and a third crew took over the gun. The Daffodil, which was engaged in pressing the Vindictive against the mole, only lost one man killed and eight wounded, Meanwhile the Iris, which was attempting to make fast to the mole ahead of the Vindictive, was in trouble. Her jsrapnels were not large enough to span the parapet, so two officers climbed ashore and sat astride the parapet trying to fasten the grapnels till each was killefl. The Iris' commander had both legs shot off. A single shell, piercing the upper deck, exploded among 56 marines, killing 49 and wounding the other 7- Another exploded in a ward room used as a hospital, killing 4 officers and 26 men. Altogether the Iris lost 77 killed and 103 wounded. The storming and demolition parties on the mole met with no resistance apart from the intense unremitting fire, the Germans having, on the approach of the ships, retired to the shore end of the more. The demolition parties carried out their work in perfect order, destroying building after building. Meanwhile the blockships were stealing into the mouth of the canal. The Thetis was the first of these to come into the tornado of shells from the shore batteries. The bulk of the crew had already been taken off. Unfortunately the propeller fouled a net of the defences, wMeh rendered the ship unmanageable. The shore batteries pounded her, and she found herself sinking while still hundreds of yards from the mouth of the canal. After signalling invaluable information the commander blew up his charges and sank her. A motor launch rescued the crew of the Thetis, which lost five killed and five wounded. x The Intrepid and Iphigenia were more successful. They steered straight into the canal and beached themselves according to arrangement, one on the eastern bank and the other on the western bank, where they were blown up with their sterns stretching well across the canal. They are now Iving across th» canal, and it is probable the work set them to do was accomplished and the canal effectively blocked. A motor launch brought away the crews. The officers described the explosion of the old submarine as the greatest eHer seen. It tore the jetty in half and left a gap of over a hundred feet. Claims that one la/inch sank a torpedo boat alongside the .jetty are supported by many observers, including the officers of the Vindictive, who saw her mast and funnel across the mole and then saw them disappear. The North Star, one of the three destroyers which guarded the Vindictive from an enemy destroyer while alongside the mole, lost her way in the smoke screen and suddenly emerged into the light of a star-shell and was sunk. The statement of the German communique that "only a few of the crew could be saved by the British" is, as usual, inaccurate, for the Phoebe, another of the three destroyers, came up under heavy fire and rescued nearly all. Throughout the opctation, monitors and the siege guns of Flanders heavily bombarded the enemy's batteries. A change of wind at Ostend served us even worse than at Zeebrugge. The motor boats had already lighted the approaches and the ends of the piers with calcium flares and made a smoke cloud which effectively hid the fact from the enemy, when the wind changed, revealing everything. The enemy extinguished tbe flares with gun-fire, and thus prevented the blockships finding the entrance, and as they were soon in a sinking condition they were compelled to smk themselves about four hundred yards east of the piers, motor launches removing the crews. THE KAISER VISITS THE RUINS. Amsterdam, April 26. The Kaiser visited Zeebrugge o n Tuesday and inspected the damage. Durin" his visit a British aviator dropped some bombs. The German papers admit that the English succeeded in nearly blocking the whole passage, tat claim that submarines are still able to leaveRenter's correspondent states that, according to a Berlin telegram, the Kaiser gathered an account of the fighting from a captured British captain of Marines, who said the attack was prepared and started on four previous occasions, but was postponed owing to the vigilance of the German outpost boats. SPANISH VESSELS SUNK. Madrid, April 26. Three Spanish cargo steamers have been submarined in four days. This has intensely incensed shipping circles. The Government is urged to seize all German ships in Spanish ports.