The Blocking of ZeebruggeCarpenter, Alfred Francis Blakeney
History
The Blocking of Zeebrugge
Carpenter, Alfred Francis Blakeney
World War, 1914-1918 -- Naval operations, British; Zeebrugge-Ostend Raids, 1918
The third portion of the Mole will require detailed description. In
peace days the Mole had been used as a commercial wharf as well as a
breakwater. Ships used to secure alongside its inner wall. All the
necessary facilities, such as bollards for securing hawsers, fixed and
travelling cranes for loading or unloading cargo, and arrangements for
embarking passengers, had been provided. A large railway passenger
station, nearly two hundred yards long, was situated near its
southwestern end; a goods station and a coal shed, both very large
buildings, stood further to the northeastward. The floor level of this
portion of the Mole was about nine feet above the level of high tide.
On the outer (seaward) side a high wall, of great strength and
thickness, had been constructed for the purpose of preventing rough
seas from breaking over the Mole and damaging the sheds or washing away
the railway. The top of this wall was twenty feet above the floor
level of the Mole and therefore twenty-nine feet above the level of
high tide: at low tide it towered forty-four feet above the sea.
The fourth portion of the Mole was really formed by a continuation of
the outer wall, which extended beyond the third portion to the
lighthouse.
{27}
The appearance of all portions of the outer wall, as viewed by anybody
situated in a boat alongside it, was exactly similar throughout its
entire length from the lighthouse to the railway viaduct. Thus the
individual in the boat, except in the unlikely event of being able to
see over the top of the wall, would be unable to tell, at all
definitely, whereabouts his boat was situated relative to objects on
the Mole. But this fact had not been accidentally overlooked by the
designer of the Mole; there was no object in taking it into
consideration, for there was then no idea of any vessel berthing
alongside the outer wall. For instance, there were no bollards, no
cranes, no capstans for working hawsers, in fact no arrangements
whatever for berthing a ship. I have already stated that this outer
wall was of great thickness, varying from twenty-five feet on the sea
bottom to ten feet in that portion standing above the floor level of
the Mole. Four feet below the top of the wall there was a pathway,
nine feet broad, running the whole length of the wall. This pathway
was known as the parapet. The parapet was bounded on its seaward side
by the four-foot wall just mentioned; on its inner side iron railings,
three feet high, were placed to prevent anybody falling from the
pathway to the floor of the Mole sixteen feet below. Flights of steps
led up from the Mole floor to the parapet, but these flights were very
few and far between.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account