on of the defenders and make it easier to sink the
concrete laden cruisers in the channel. Two old and useless
submarines, filled with explosives, were to be blown up against the
viaduct joining the mole and the shore.

A heavy protective curtain of smoke was essential to the success of the
plan. Commander Brock, who was killed during the action, planned the
smoke screen and carried it out so successfully that the _Vindictive_
was able to get almost to the mole before being discovered. At Ostend
the wind blew from such a direction that the smoke screen did not hide
the boats and the attack there on that night was for that reason a
failure. It succeeded better later, on May 9, when the battered
_Vindictive_ was sunk in the channel.

The following is the story of the action at Zeebrugge taken from the
official report of the British Admiralty:--

"The night was overcast and there was a drifting haze. Down the coast
a great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and
short sea. From the _Vindictive's_ bridge, as she headed in toward the
mole, with the faithful ferryboats at her heels, there was scarcely a
glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead, as she drove through the
water, rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of invisibility, wrapped
about her by small craft. This was the device of Wing Commander Brock,
without which, acknowledges the Admiral in command, the operation could
not have been conducted.

"A northeast wind moved the volume of it shoreward ahead of the ships.
Beyond it, was the distant town, its defenders unsuspicious. It was
not until the _Vindictive_, with blue-jackets and marines standing
ready for landing, was close upon the mole that the wind lulled and
came away again from the southeast, sweeping back the smoke screen and
laying her bare to eyes that looked seaward.

"There was a moment immediately afterward when it seemed to those on
the ships as if the dim, coast-hidden harbor exploded into light. A
star shell soared aloft, then a score of star shells. The wavering
beams of the searchlights swung around and settled into a glare. A
wild fire of gun flashes leaped against the sky, strings of luminous
green beads shot aloft, hung and sank. The darkness of the night was
supplemented by a nightmare daylight of battle-fired guns and machine
guns along the mole. The batteries ashore awoke to life.

"It was in a gale of shelling that the _Vindictive_ laid her nose
agains