THE ZEEBRUGGE RAID

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20190, 30 August 1927, Page 9

THE ZEEBRUGGE RAID

"NOBLEST PAGE OF HISTORY.” UNVEILING OF MEMORIAL. (Press Association—By Telegraph—Copyright.) BRUSSELS, August 28. The Zeebrugge memorial was unveiled in the presence of relatives of the victims and numerous visitors. Guns roared as,, headed by a Belgian band, the survivors, led by British, Belgian, and French officers, proceeded to the mole. Colonel Straghlander (Belgian initiator of the movement) said that here the British Navy wrote the noblest page in its history. Four members of the crew of C 3 unveiled the memorial, and received commemorative medals. The tablet is of bronze, ,Bft high, and depicts the scene at the moment of the explosion. A female figure arising from ,the smoke points to England with her right hand, and holds in her left hand the Victoria Cross, which was awarded Lieutenant Sandford,—A. and N.Z. and Sydney Sun Cable. Zeebrugge is a Belgian seaport nine miles north-west of Bruges, with which it is connected by direct ship canal. In the Great War a cavalry division, part of Rawlinson’s corps, landed at Zeebrugge in order to cover the Belgian retreat from Antwerp on October 8, 1914. It was occupied by the Germans, and became an important submarine, destroyer, and seaplane base, which was frequently bombarded from the sea and attacked from the air by the Allied units. On St. George’s Day (April 23, 1918) Zeebrugge was attacked by a British flotilla, under Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. The vessels approached under a smoke screen, but the wind blew it aside, and the Germans opened an intensive fire on the mole. In spite of heavy losses, storming parties were landed, and began the work of destruction, aided by the obsolete submarine C 3, which was run against the railway viaduct connecting the mole with the land, and successfully blew it up. The purpose of this was to distract attention from the hlockships. Two ships penetrated the .entrance to the Bruges Canal, and were sunk there in a V position, which almost blocked the fairway. The survivors of the crews and landing parties were then rc-ombarked. Zeebrugge was retaken by the Belgians in October, 1918, the Germans sinking several ships in the harbour mouth before they evacuated the place. A monument was erected in 1920 to commemorate this “ classic exploit of sea warfare.”