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Bottling Up Zeebrugge and Ostend: Sirius

The wind that blew back the smoke-screen at Zeebrugge served us even worse off Ostend, where that and nothing else prevented the success of an operation ably directed by Commodore Hubert Lynes, C.M.G. The coastal motor boats had lit the approaches and the ends of the piers with calcium flares and made a smoke-cloud which effectually hid the fact from the enemy. Sirius and Brilliant were already past the Stroom Bank buoy when the wind changed, revealing the arrangements to the enemy, who extinguished the flares with gunfire.

The Sirius runs aground.

The Sirius was already in a sinking condition when at length the two ships, having failed to find the entrance, grounded, and were forced therefore to sink themselves at a point about four hundred yards east of the piers, and their crews were taken off by motor launches.

Operations cannot be rehearsed.

The difficulty of the operation is to be gauged from the fact that from Zeebrugge to Ostend the enemy batteries number not less than 120 heavy guns, which can concentrate on retiring ships, during daylight, up to a distance of about sixteen miles. This imposes as a condition of success that the operation must be carried out at night, and not late in the night. It must take place at high water, with the wind from the right quarter, and with a calm sea for the small craft. The operation cannot be rehearsed beforehand, since the essence of it is secrecy, and though one might have to wait a long time to realize all the essential conditions of wind and weather, secrecy wears badly when large numbers of men are brought together in readiness for the attack. The Vindictive makes for Ostend.

The Sirius lies in the surf some two thousand yards east of the entrance to Ostend Harbor, which she failed so gallantly to block; and when, in the early hours of yesterday morning, the Vindictive groped her way through the smoke-screen and headed for the entrance, it was as though the old fighting-ship awoke and looked on. A coastal motor-boat had visited her and hung a flare in her slack and rusty rigging; and that eye of unsteady fire, paling in the blaze of the star-shells or reddening through the drift of the smoke, watched the whole great enterprise, from the moment when it hung in doubt to its ultimate triumphant success.

Unforeseen conditions add to the difficulties.