The Iris had troubles of her own. Her first attempts to make fast to the mole ahead of the Vindictive failed, as her grapnels were not large enough to span the parapet. Two officers, Lieut. Commander Bradford and Lieutenant Hawkins, climbed ashore and sat astride the parapet trying to make the grapnels fast till each was killed and fell down between the ship and the wall. Commander Valentine Gibbs had both legs shot away and died next morning. Lieutenant Spencer, though wounded, took command and refused to be relieved. The Iris was obliged at last to change her position and fall in astern of the Vindictive, and suffered very heavily from fire. A single big shell plunged through the upper deck and burst below at a point where fifty-six marines were waiting for the order to go to the gangways. Forty-nine were killed. The remaining seven were wounded. Another shell in the ward-room, which was serving as a sick bay, killed four officers and twenty-six men. Her total casualties were eight officers and sixty-nine men killed and three officers and 103 men wounded. Storming and demolition parties upon the mole met with no resistance from the Germans other than intense and unremitting fire. One after another buildings burst into flame or split and crumbled as dynamite went off. A bombing party working up toward the mole extension in search of the enemy destroyed several machine-gun emplacements, but not a single prisoner rewarded them. It appears that upon the approach of the ships and with the opening of fire the enemy simply retired and contented themselves with bringing machine guns to the short end of the mole. BLOCKING THE CANAL Describing operations of the three block ships, the official narrative says: The Thetis came first, steaming into a tornado of shells from great batteries ashore. All her crew, save a remnant who remained to steam her in and sink her, already had been taken off her by a ubiquitous motor launch, but the remnant spared hands enough to keep her four guns going. It was hers to show the road to the Intrepid and the Iphigenia, which followed. She cleared a string of armed barges which defends the channel from the tip of the mole, but had the ill-fortune to foul one of her propellers upon a net defense which flanks it on the shore side. [Illustration: PLAN ILLUSTRATING THE FIGHT AT THE ZEEBRUGGE MOLE, THE BLOCKING OF THE BRUGES CANAL, AND THE LOCATION OF SUNKEN SHIPS]