ZEEBRUGGE HARBOR.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 14596, 4 May 1918, Page 7

ZEEBRUGGE HARBOR.

CANAL AND RAILWAY WORKS.

A description of ;Zeebrugge has been given to a Dunedin paper by the Rev. H. D. Fenton frQin^recollections of a .visit a.few. few yeara ages'- ."How tn6 naval raid brings back the scene I" he writes. "First the mole, whose length of a mile and three-quarters is so' deceptive when one imagines one can easily stroll to the end and back m half an hour after dinner. Extend your left hand and crook the first finger, and you get an idea of its shape. The part of the knuckle near the thumb represents the portion of the mole where the railway line is supported on piles. This is to allow the tide to scour away the sand. The rest of the pier is concrete.* It was at these piles that one of our submarines was -exploded, thus isolating a mile and a- half of concreto mole from the mainland. Shorewards the railway led past the flag tower and Customhouse ■ to a platform labelled 'Zeebrugge. ' On the left of the railway lies the Bruges Canal, Bruges being about nine miles away. The main coast road and the railway line from Brussels to Hevst^are carried across the canal on swing bridges. Standing on one of these, with one's back to the land, one notices the canal bending seawards between two "light wooden piers. Between these piers the two obsolete cruisers filled with cement will have been sunk, thus blocking the fairway. The water is quite shallow at low tide. If the lock gates have been destroyed, as later accounts seem to indicate, the material damage will run into a vast sum. and the canal, now exposed to the considerable rise and fall of the. tide, will be useless for traffic purposes. If our airmen can prevent their repair, the value of the raid is scarcely measurable/