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Bottling Up Zeebrugge and Ostend: Elliot

Vindictive was fitted along the port side with a high false deck, whence ran the eighteen brows, or gangways, by which the storming and demolition parties were to land. The men were gathered in readiness on the main and lower decks, while Colonel Elliot, who was to lead the Marines, waited on the false deck just abaft the bridge, and Captain H. C. Halahan, who commanded the bluejackets, was amidships. The gangways were lowered, and scraped and rebounded upon the high parapet of the Mole as Vindictive rolled; and the word for the assault had not yet been given when both leaders were killed, Colonel Elliot by a shell and Captain Halahan by the machinegun fire which swept the decks. The same shell that killed Colonel Elliot also did fearful execution in the forward Stokes Mortar Battery.