The little Belgian port of Zeebrugge fell into German hands in the Autumn of 1914, and, with the neighboring port of Ostend, became a thorn in the side of the Entente by reason of its increasing use as a base for enemy destroyers, submarines, and aircraft. The Germans, having seized the shipbuilding plants at Antwerp, began building submarines and small war craft, which could be sent by way of Bruges down the canals that connect the latter city with Zeebrugge and Ostend. Especially useful to them was the maritime canal whose mouth at Zeebrugge was protected by a crescent-shaped mole, thirty feet high, inclosing the harbor. On the night of April 22-23, 1918, a British naval expedition under Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, commanding at Dover, aided by French destroyers, undertook to wreck the stone mole at Zeebrugge and to block the entrances to the canals both at Zeebrugge and at Ostend by sinking the hulks of old ships in the channels. The episode, marked as it was by heroic fighting, proved to be one of the most thrilling and picturesque in the naval operations of the war. To Americans it recalled Hobson's exploit with the Merrimac at Santiago, while to Englishmen it brought back memories of Sir Francis Drake and his fireships in the Harbor of Cadiz. Though the fighting at Zeebrugge lasted only an hour, the British lost 588 men, officially reported as follows: Officers--Killed, 16; died of wounds, 3; missing, 2; wounded, 29. Men--Killed, 144; died of wounds, 25; missing, 14; wounded, 355. Six obsolete British cruisers took part in the attack. They were the Brilliant, Iphigenia, Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis, and Vindictive. The first five of these were filled with concrete and were to be sunk in the entrances of the two ports. The Vindictive, working with the two Mersey ferryboats Daffodil and Iris, carried storming and demolition parties to the Zeebrugge mole. The object was to attack the enemy forces and guns on the mole, along with the destroyer and submarine depots and the large seaplane base upon it, and thus to divert the enemy's attention from the work of the block ships. As the attack on the mole accomplished this, the main object of the operation was successful.