Late recruits to the most daring naval operation of the First World War, two civilian passenger ferries survived triumph and tragedy to be fêted for their valiant service. A century on, Steve Snelling salutes Merseyside’s improbable heroes of the raid on Zeebrugge.
The night was overcast with a mistle of rain resembling a Scotch mist. From behind a low ceiling of clouds the moon cast a faint glimmer of light to reveal, dim in the darkness, the shadowy shapes that made up the strangest of all naval armadas. Viewed from the cramped decks of the venerable cruiser Vindictive, they reminded Lieutenant Commander Robert Rosoman of “a bobbery pack”; a weird, almost “comical” collection of ships ranging from sleek modern destroyers to slowmoving blockships and waspish motor launches to obsolete submarines. Most incredible and incongruous of them all were a pair of bulbous, stub-nosed river ferries that were his immediate responsibility.
More at home on the sheltered reaches of the Mersey than the rolling waters of the North Sea, they were every bit as unwarlike in name as they were in appearance. Iris II and Daffodil IV, their ‘war paint’ and protective plating as fresh and bizarre as their Admiralty commissions, were joined to their ‘mother’ ship by cables stretching back like twin umbilical cords. All being well, it was Rosoman’s duty to unleash the two ferries on their unlikely mission and even more improbable place in the annals of naval warfare. It was the eve of St George’s Day 1918 and the final countdown to zero hour for the Royal Navy’s audacious attempt to block the German-held ports of Zeebrugge and Ostend had begun.
’OPERATION ZO’
Plans to neutralise the enemy’s twin submarine ports on the Belgian coast had been variously shelved or rejected throughout the war. But by the beginning of 1918 there was a renewed momentum for action. Rear- Admiral Roger Keyes, newly appointed commander of the Dover Patrol, was a committed advocate for tackling the growing U-boat menace head-on.
As the Admiralty’s Director of Plans, he had urged a bold assault, employing blockships to seal the harbours. Now installed at Dover, he set about turning his ideas into reality, adopting elements of his predecessor’s plan into a daring scheme of his own. A key feature of what would become ‘Operation ZO’ was the introduction of a substantial vessel capable of withstanding considerable punishment to deliver a diversionary force onto the mole at Zeebrugge in order to capture or at least distract the gun batteries which posed a major threat to the passage of the blockships into the harbour. The ship selected was the 20-year-old Arrogant-class cruiser HMS Vindictive and the officer appointed to command her was 36-year-old Commander Alfred Carpenter, a staff officer who had worked on the first draft of the proposal.
In many ways ideal for the job, Vindictivenevertheless possessed some significant disadvantages: her sheer bulk made her an easy target for the enemy guns and her deep draught rendered her vulnerable to mines. Acknowledging the danger, Keyes decided to spread the risks by dividing the landing parties among three ships.
Instructions were, therefore, issued to find two shallow-draught vessels that were capable not only of passing over minefields with impunity but also of delivering a sizeable force onto the mole. Such was the operation’s urgency and secrecy, however, it proved no simple task and it was not until February that a clandestine tour conducted by Keyes’ intelligence officer, Captain Herbert Grant, yielded results in the shape of two Liverpool ferries - the Irisand the Daffodil. Built on the Tyne in 1903, they had been plying the choppy waters of the Mersey between Wallasey, New Brighton and Liverpool for 12 years.
Though not exactly identical twins, they were both 154ft long and designed to carry over 1,500 passengers. More importantly, they were sturdy, handy and drew less than 8ft of water while also possessing double hulls which rendered them in the eyes of some virtually unsinkable. A cover story having been concocted, Grant persuaded local officials and councillors to loan them for temporary service. And with that, the re-christened HMS Iris IIand HMS Daffodil IVheaded off to war.
’NO JAM-PUFF RIDE’
Protective steel plates having been added fore and aft, scratch crews sailed the ferries to Portsmouth where they underwent a rapid conversion. Their hulls ‘grew’ armour skins, their bridges bulged with splinter mattresses and their decks sprouted anchor davits, scaling ladders and smoke-making apparatus. A lick of ‘warship grey’ and a profusion of sandbags completed their transformation in time to join the main force busy preparing for “hazardous” but as yet unspecified service. It only remained to assign men and material. The Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth, provided crews while Keyes relied on personal experience to select the Captains: Commander Valentine Gibbs for Irisand Lieutenant Harold Campbell for Daffodil.
Both had served under him: Gibbs, a pre-war rider of the Cresta Run, had served in China and Campbell earlier in the conflict. Both were noted as redoubtable and resourceful officers. Their roles at Zeebrugge, however, were to be very different.
Iris’ sole focus was as a landing ship. As well as the 50 men of D Company, Seamen Storming Force, under Lieutenant Commander George Bradford, she carried the 165-strong A (Chatham) Company of the 4th Battalion, Royal Marine Light Infantry, commanded by Major Charles Eagles, DSO, two Vickers Gun sections and a couple of Stokes Mortar teams. Their objectives were two-fold. While the seamen were to storm the gun batteries at the seaward end of the mole, the marines were to advance in the opposite direction to capture a seaplane base and subdue the defences which lay between them and the shore. With a smaller complement, Daffodil had a unique double role to play.
Aside from carrying 30 seamen from a specially-trained demolition unit, officially styled C Company, the ferry was tasked with acting as a tug to ensure Vindictive’s successful berth alongside the mole. Unglamorous job though it was, it was a duty upon which the entire diversionary operation hinged. For everything depended on Vindictive’s ability to anchor and hold her position against the tideway long enough to disembark her landing parties. As such, Daffodil and Campbell were to operate under the direct orders of Carpenter aboard Vindictive, with instructions to maintain her ‘holding’ role for as long as was necessary.
Planning complete, it was time to turn brave conception into daring reality. As Petty Officer Harry Adams, one of the bluejackets assigned to Daffodil, put it: “Truth to tell, we wanted more than ever now to get on with the job; whichever way it was going to end for us… I’m sure it began to dawn on every man separately - in his own way - that it was no ‘jam puff’ ride…”
’JUST PLAIN HELL’
A frustrating wait followed until, at the third attempt, the order was received at 10:45 on April 22 to proceed. Disposed in three lines were 142 vessels carrying 1,784 officers and men with the central column led by Vindictive. Behind her trailed Daffodil and Iris, their lack of ‘steaming power’ and uncertain reliability for the longer sea run necessitating a tow. The passage was largely uneventful if uncomfortable for the men crowded aboard the pitching and rolling ferries. Tots of neat rum were distributed and officers moved among the men, seeking to lighten the mood and relax tightening nerves.
With 90 minutes to go to midnight’s ‘zero hour’, the flotilla was through the main minefield and within 15 miles of Zeebrugge. The intention was to slip the ferries’ tows 45 minutes later. But fate intervened. Some 15 minutes short of the appointed ‘release’, Iris was seen to “haul out to starboard”.
Moments later she signalled: “Tow has parted.” Too late and too dangerous in the rain and darkness with so many ships around to attempt to reconnect the lines, Iris and Daffodil had no option but to start their lonely approaches earlier and further out than planned. Things were happening fast. Not long after, Vindictive, her protruding brows giving the impression of a lop-sided beetle “with fourteen legs on one side”, vanished from view, a gun “barked” and a star shell “burst high in the sky”. “This was it”, wrote George Warrington, a 19-year-old petty officer in charge of Iris’ foremost flamethrower. “In a flash”, recalled marine Ernest Tracey, “the darkness… was converted into day by scores and scores of the brightest star shells.”
The mole was still invisible. Searchlights stabbed the covering fog of smoke. “High explosive shells began to fall”, added Tracey, “and just over to the right of us, no more than 100-200 feet away, a whopper dropped into the water.” “Check lifeboats”, came the call. “Had it been a bit closer”, thought Tracey, “it could have been liferafts or gone forever.” The shelling was “frightening” in its ferocity. “It was just plain hell”, wrote Warrington. “An old marine shouted to me, ‘Keep yer bloody head down lad, or one of those shells will whip it off…” Another voice sounded above the din. “If any of you young bastards have prayers, now’s your chance. We’re right on top of the b*** s***…”
With barely 300yds to go, the wind changed direction, blowing the smoke away to leave the raiders “fully exposed”. The results were terrible and terrifying. To Carpenter, the flashes from the enemy guns seemed “within arm’s length”. “They literally poured projectiles into us”, he wrote.
Twelve of the ship’s 14 landing brows were smashed and heavy casualties sustained but Vindictive held her course, ploughing on through “the full blast of the hurricane fire”, to reach her destination just a minute behind schedule. However, her troubles were far from over. With one anchor jammed and the other insufficient to hold her, Vindictive’s stern yawed away from the mole. Putting the helm amidships corrected the line, but the gap between ship and mole was too wide for the surviving gangways to reach. Moments later, Vindictive swung away again. But then, with disaster looming, salvation arrived in the ungainly form of Daffodil.
The ferry’s approach had been hardly less eventful. Half-blinded and in excruciating pain from a head wound suffered by a direct hit during the run-in, Campbell pressed on, determined to accomplish his mission at whatever cost. Five minutes after Vindictive reached her objective, Daffodil loomed out of the darkness, steaming straight for the beleaguered cruiser’s foremast. As the ferry’s bows bumped, hawsers were passed down and Daffodil began “shoving” Vindictive “bodily” alongside the mole “exactly in accordance with the plan”. To Carpenter, Campbell’s astounding achievement represented a marvel of courage and seamanship.
“Really”, he wrote, “he might have been an old stager at tug-master’s work, pursuing his vocation in one of our own harbours, judging by the cool manner in which he carried out his instructions to the letter.” With Vindictive’s remaining brows now bridging the gap, so the order went out to “storm the mole”.
’A SPLENDID FIGHTER’
A hundred yards to the west, Iris was undergoing trials of her own. Having run alongside the mole at 00:15, Gibbs had immediately dropped the starboard anchor only to find the swell too powerful. Warrington reckoned there was an “8-knot current running along the wall” and “the great hook fixed to the derrick was not strong enough to hold us in position”. Iris lurched perilously back and forth, smashing a number of the scaling ladders needed for the marines and seamen to reach the mole. Heavy machine gun fire swept the parapet and casualties mounted but Gibbs refused to give in. Time and again, grappling irons were thrown over the wall only for them to fall back. The situation appeared “hopeless” to almost everyone aboard Iris. But not George Bradford.
Renowned as “a splendid fighter”, the Blue Jackets’ Commander came of heroic stock. Thus far, his warrior brothers had accumulated a Victoria Cross, a Distinguished Service Order and two Military Crosses at the cost of two killed. He was not about to besmirch so proud a reputation by giving up without a struggle. Iris was rocking almost uncontrollably with one anchor precariously secured, when suddenly Petty Officer William O’Hara heard “a cheer”. Looking up, he was astonished to see Bradford “climbing up our derrick which was trained over the mole”. Warrington watched him, too, “slowly” hauling himself up even as the ferry crashed against the mole. To the young petty officer it seemed “he hadn’t a hope in hell’s chance”. But he reckoned without Bradford’s agility, strength and sheer willpower.
Incredibly, despite a hail of fire, he made it all the way to the heaving top from where he then contrived to lower himself onto the fore davit’s No 2 anchor swaying wildly above the ferry. “Here for a few moments he swung like an acrobat”, wrote the Official Historian, “and then leapt on to the parapet and placed the anchor.”
It hardly seemed possible. Bullets were peppering the mole as he made fast the grapnel. He had barely finished when his luck ran out. As he stood up, he was caught by a burst of machine gun fire and fell wounded into the “dark surging waters”. According to O’Hara, “we managed to get a line to him which he grasped but as he was badly wounded he did not have the strength to hold on and be pulled up”.
Still they battled to save him. One of the storming ladders was lowered over the side and a gallant Irishman, 28-year-old Petty Officer Michael Hallihan, was climbing down when “a heavy swell dashed Iris against the mole and he was crushed between”. Shortly after, in a further tragic twist, the anchor Bradford had secured “bent” under the strain and “slipped off”, leaving the storming parties marooned aboard the hapless ferry.
Even then, one man refused to accept defeat. 22-year-old Lieutenant Claude Hawkings, Bradford’s second-incommand, snatched a ladder and, while others struggled to hold it steady, “swarmed” up and onto the mole. It was another forlorn gesture that ended all too predictably. “When last seen he was defending himself with his revolver”, wrote Iris’ Number One, Lieutenant Oscar Henderson, “and I fear was killed.”
Worse still, at that moment, the ferry’s No 1 anchor “tore away… and the ship surged away from the mole”. Reluctantly accepting the inevitable, Gibbs ordered the starboard cable to be slipped and Iris, her funnel riddled, made for the shelter of Vindictive’s starboard quarter and a last hope of disembarking her storming parties onto the mole via the cruiser’s decks.
’JUMP FOR IT’
Through all of Iris’ travails, Daffodil had been engaged in an altogether different battle. Vindictive’s grappling anchors having either failed or been torn away by the heavy swell, Carpenter had no alternative but to order Campbell to maintain her position. In a miraculous feat of boat handling and steam power that confounded all expectations, the ferry strained her over-worked boilers to bursting point to hold the cruiser against the mole for the duration of the operation. The pounding she took was enormous.
Time and again, she shuddered as she bounced, “like a tennis ball from a racket”, against Vindictive’s side, sending men flying in all directions. “Great is the wonder she didn’t smash herself to bits”, wrote PO Adams, “her boilers must have been near explosion point - and the Huns [were] still blazing away unceasingly at us.” It was an extraordinary achievement that owed everything to Acting Artificer- Engineer William Sutton and his tireless team who managed to maintain an enormous head of pressure despite the engine-room being holed and two compartments flooded. But such selfless service came at a price.
Only a fraction of the demolition party - four stout-hearted seamen led by Sub-Lieutenant Felix Chevallier - managed to clamber up and over the ferry’s bows onto the Vindictive to join in the destruction being wrought by Lieutenant Cecil Dickinson’s decimated force. Of those who remained aboard Daffodil most had little option but to hold fast in whatever shelter they could find while a few bravehearts ignored the relentless barrage to dispose of the ferry’s lethal cargo of munitions. Their hazardous efforts were still going on at around 00:35 when Iris manoeuvred alongside Vindictive’s stern. From the cruiser’s deck, gunnery officer Lieutenant Edward Hilton-Young, his right hand shattered, saw the ferry struggling to make fast as she “danced in the swell like a cork”. Twice cables carried away and, wrote Hilton-Young, “it was some time before we could get a hawser on board from her or secure it when we had got it”.
Almost immediately, men from Iris’ storming parties began scrambling aboard Vindictive. Marine Ernest Tracey heard his sergeant cry: “Stand by to jump” followed by “jump for it”. They needed little urging. After an hour’s frustration, observed Tracey, “we were only too eager”. But it was all too little, too late. Tracey was one of only a few dozen men from Iris who made it onto the mole before, around 00:50, the ‘recall’ was ordered.
Having seen the blockships “proceeding shorewards from the Mole”, Carpenter reckoned his mission was “accomplished” and, fearful that serious damage to Daffodil would render any evacuation impossible, he decided it was time to go. “The order came that no more men were to land”, wrote Hilton-Young, “that the Iris and Daffodil were to blow their sirens (our own had been shot away) in order to recall the landing-parties, and that then the Iris was to go. “The sirens bellowed, we cast off the Iris’ hawser, and backing away from our side she turned and steamed out to sea…” He watched her leave with “a sinking heart”.
Iris was headed right across the front of the Mole batteries, the same course in reverse that Vindictive had followed at such fearful cost on her way in.
’A LONG HOUR’
Iris had not gone 500yds before Hilton- Young heard the “crash and bang” of the guns. “It was a terrible thing to watch”, he wrote. “At that short range the light fabric of the little ship was hulled through and through, flames and smoke spurting from her far side as the shells struck her.” According to the teenage petty officer, George Warrington, Iris was hit 16 times in close succession, 14 times by smaller 5.9inch shells and twice by 11inch shells. The slaughter all but beggared belief.
One of the heavier shells ripped through the ferry’s funnel, before bursting on the port side of the bridge, mortally wounding the ship’s Captain and Marine Commander and killing or maiming every other man near them. Scrambling up into the burning shambles, Iris’ Number One found Gibbs apparently dead, with both legs blown off, the fatally injured navigator, Lieutenant George Spencer, battling to con the ship, and the ship’s grievously wounded quartermaster, Petty Officer David Smith, struggling to steer with one hand while pointing a torch at the compass with the other.
Yet worse devastation followed when three shells burst almost simultaneously on the closely-packed main deck. According to one survivor, 49 out of a party of 56 marines were killed outright and the other seven injured. Such was the carnage that dead and wounded were piled “five and six deep”. George Warrington ‘came to’ beneath one heap of bodies.
He had no idea how long he had been unconscious and was certain only that the rest of his team of flamethrowers were dead. “Someone struck a match”, he wrote, “and a voice barked, ‘Put that bloody light out, we are sitting ducks… There will be no lights for an hour’. It was a long hour…”
Having seemingly vanished in a sheet of flame and smoke, Hilton-Young was convinced that Iris “had been sunk”. She almost certainly would have been, but for the timely intervention of Lieutenant Commander Lionel Chappell’s ML 558, which defied the close-range bombardment to shroud her in smoke, and the efforts of Australian Artificer Engineer William Edgar and Engine Room Artificer Stanley Odam, who braved “very heavy fire” to activate Iris’ own smokemaking apparatus.
Amid the wreckage of the ferry’s control station, Lieutenant Henderson set about engineering the ferry’s unlikely escape, helped by an able seaman who, after fighting fires and hurling live bombs overboard took over the ‘wheel’, and a signalman survivor from the original bridge party, who after being treated for his injuries insisted on being carried back to where he could send and receive messages.
Theirs was a Herculean effort matched by the tireless work of the ship’s sole-surviving medic. Captain Frank Pocock MC, was credited by Henderson with saving “many lives” from among the ship’s “frightful” list of casualties. But there was little he could do for either Gibbs or Spencer.
Iris’ indomitable skipper died at 09:00. Lapsing in and out of consciousness, his only concerns were for the fate of his men and the mission. He was among more than 70 dead and 105 wounded aboard Iris when the battered ferry, her forward compartments flooded, finally limped into Dover to a heroes’ reception almost six hours later.
Much the same welcome had been accorded to Daffodil some two hours before. In stark contrast to the ordeal of her sister ship which, in the words of one of her Marine landing party, had endured “nothing but misfortune”, Daffodil had enjoyed a charmed existence, holding Vindictive in position for more than an hour and then assisting her withdrawal before making a safe getaway with the loss of only one man killed. That she had escaped destruction given her prolonged and precarious exposure was, in Carpenter’s estimation, “little short of a miracle”. Small wonder that her Captain was later seen, smoking a cigarette with blood still streaming from his head wound while he sang: ‘The End of a Perfect Day’.
’GMAELMLOARNATB’ LE AND
Though only partially successful in sealing the harbour at Zeebrugge, the raid was a triumph of heroic endeavour that gave renewed hope to a war-weary people whose morale was being sorely tested by a wave of setbacks on the Western Front. And of all the gallant deeds performed on that glorious St George’s Day, none surpassed the courageous persistence of the two Mersey ferries and their brave companies. Against all the odds, they had contributed mightily to the mole diversion.
True, neither had succeeded in disembarking more than a fraction of their landing parties, but where Iris had displayed a relentless defiance in the face of near-catastrophe, Daffodil had single-handedly saved the operation from total disaster.
Without her, the mole could not possibly have been stormed from Vindictive and the blockships would most likely have been sunk before entering the harbour. Such achievements were out of all proportion to the forces employed and were more than worthy of the gallantry awards showered upon them. As well as a belated posthumous Victoria Cross to George Bradford, there were richly-merited DSOs for Campbell, Henderson and Pocock, four DSCs, three Conspicuous Gallantry Medals, all to men of the Iris, and 15 Distinguished Service Medals shared between the crews and landing parties. To these was added a further signal honour.
In August 1918, a little over two months after the partially-repaired ferries had staged a triumphant return to the Mersey, it was announced that King George V had awarded the sister vessels the distinction of a ‘Royal’ prefix. For the rest of their days, the ferries that went to war plied their peaceful trade with their remarkable services commemorated in bronze plaques unveiled by Admiral Sir David Beatty in undying recognition of their “important part in the memorable and gallant action at Zeebrugge”.
Thanks to the National Maritime Museum for permission to use Charles Dixon’s painting of the Vindictive, Iris and Daffodil alongside the mole at Zeebrugge on St George’s Day 1918.
NEXT MONTH, IN OUR SECOND FEATURE MARKING THE CENTENARY OF THE ZEEBRUGGE RAID, ROBERT MITCHELL LOOKS AT THE DRAMATIC ACTION ON THE MOLE.
