Twisting the Dragonis Tail: The Zeebrugge and Ostend Raids of 1918

This essay is a reassessment of the famous raids of April 1918 in which the British attempted to block the two Belgian harbors of Ostend and Zeebrugge. Those harbors were the exits for the German inland naval base at Bruges, from which German submarines, destroyers, and torpedo-boats had accounted for roughly one-third of all British merchant shipping losses during the unrestricted submarine campaign. Finally in 1918 the Royal Navy decided to deal with them by blocking the canals connecting Bruges with Zeebrugge and Ostend. The British have generally considered the raid a limited success, but little effort previously has been made to examine the impact of the raids from the German perspective.