Zeebrugge and Ostend Raids 1918, The (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The Zeebrugge Raid is one of the most exciting small actions, not just of the First World War but in British history. The purpose was to counter the U-boat menace. Submarine attacks on Allied shipping caused great difficulty. The Admiralty claimed that the war would be lost unless the submarine attacks were curtailed.

Admiral Keyes proposed blocking the ports. At Zeebrugge, a diversionary landing on the Mole - an enormous breakwater - would divert attention from the blockships as they entered the harbor. The defences were extremely strong. Surprise and daring were essential. Despite over 600 casualties, the attacks were a great boost to civilian morale in Britain. Eleven Victoria Crosses were awarded, eight of them for the Zeebrugge raid alone. Some recipients were chosen by the survivors, one of the very few times this has been done.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pen and Sword (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0850528704
• ISBN-13: 978-0850528701
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,006,300 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Zeebrugge and Ost End Raids, 1918, February 9, 2003

By	Dwight Messimer (Mountain View, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is by far the best account of the Royal Navy's attempts to block Zeebrugge and Ostend during WWI. Deborah Lake uses a tightly written, smoothly flowing style that makes this book a page-turner. Her criticisms of VAdm. Sir Roger Keyes for poor planning, her analysis of the exagerated battle claims made by both sides, and her evenly balanced analysis of the battle are excellent. Though her work is undoubtedly historically accurate, it suffers from the absence of a complete bibliography and her failure to cite her sources within the text. I infer from the text that her German sources came from the German navy's bi-weekly publication An Flanderns Küste, but I cannot be sure because no German sources are listed in her abreviated bibliography. She obviously did not use the captured German records found in the British Public Records Office, and the US National Archives. Had she used those records she would have found that the Britsh did in fact catch the Zeebrugge defenders completely by surprise. As it is, she dismisses that fact, asserting that the Germans were in fact fully prepared, which is the claim the Germans made in their post-raid propaganda. But it appears that she did make extensive use of Royal Navy records, which allowed her to draw well developed opinions--and support them--about Admiral Keyes failings as a leader. Her detailed analysis of Keyes' personality, attitudes, and behavior make this book an important contribution to the history of WWI.
Dwight R. Messimer, author of Find and Destroy: Antisubmarine Warfare in WWI, and Verschollen: U-Boat Losses in WWI, Naval Institute Press 2001 and 2002.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Biased Opinion, August 30, 2003

By A Customer

I have immediately to declare an interest as I met the author a little while back at a writers' bash. I put to her the comments about the PRO documents - in answer to which she sweetly informed me that her translation of the original German indeed showed they were surprised - flabbergasted in fact - by the Mole landing. Mainly because they could not conceive of anybody being that half-witted. Of course, as I was informed, the Germans did not realise at the time that the assault was way out of position. They were not surprised, however, in the military sense especially as the landing itself was such a slow operation. It gave them time to re-jig their defensive plan which assumed an assault, if ever it came, would be made on the guns at the lighthouse end.
The Germans, apparently, were well ready for such an attempt. The shore batteries had range and elevation already calculated for this eventuality. Large howitzer shells would have landed in short order if the assault had taken place at the Mole head.
Deborah said that, with the pressures on space (she was 3000 words over the agreed 75000 - itself an increase on the original 60000 maximum) she did not want to continually harp on the false picture disseminated by the UK propaganda machine at the expense of other detail. As she also did not wish to produce what could be described as an unremitting anti-Keyes diatribe, she omitted that angle. She considered that mistranslation an essentially minor aspect of the whole, no more than an additional arrow in the propaganda bow. In retrospect, as she said, a mistake.
If there's a second edition, she muttered, she would correct it together with a badly written conditional clause in Chapter 2! She would also add new information she had dug up from Belgium and Germany which underlined the general slapdash approach of the operation.
I told her that I thought she had done a good job, far better than any previous books on the subject which seemed to regurgitate the official line without criticism. Fot this praise, she allowed me to buy her a drink.
Interestingly, she did mention that the papers of the Dover Patrol are woefully inadequate. Many from January 1918 onwards went missing and records relating to Keyes' predecessor have apparently vanished. As she said, Keyes himself became the authority for much of the detail which credited the operation with tremendous success. She said that a Staff College appreciation in the 1930s was far more condemnatory than anything she wrote.
Apart from all that, a great book and a worthwhile addition to WW1 writing