SM U-5 (Germany)

MS Herald of Free Enterprise was a roll-on/roll-off (RORO) ferry which capsized moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on the night of 6 March 1987, killing 193 passengers and crew.The eight-deck car and passenger ferry was owned by Townsend Thoresen, designed for rapid loading and unloading on the competitive cross-channel route. As was common at the time, it was built with no watertight compartments. The ship left harbour with her bow door open, and the sea immediately flooded the decks; within minutes, she was lying on her side in shallow water. The immediate cause of the capsizing was found to be negligence by the assistant boatswain, who was asleep in his cabin when he should have been closing the bow door. However, the official inquiry placed more blame on his supervisors and a general culture of poor communication in Townsend Thoresen. The vessel was salvaged, put up for sale, and sold to Naviera SA Kingstown on 30 September 1987, renamed Flushing Range. It was taken to Taiwan on 22 March 1988 to be scrapped. Since the disaster, improvements have been made to the design of RORO vessels, with watertight ramps, indicators showing the position of the bow doors, and banning of undivided decks.

HMS Thetis was an Apollo-class second-class protected cruiser of the Royal Navy, launched on 13 December 1890. Her first significant mission was service in the Bering Sea Patrol with American warships in a combined effort to suppress poaching in the Bering Sea. She served on the Mediterranean Station until relieved in March 1901. She was paid off at Chatham in early June 1901, and was placed in the Fleet reserve. She was commissioned at Chatham on 25 November 1902 with a complement of 273 officers and men for service on the China Station. She left Sheerness on 14 December, stopping in Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said, Aden and more places before arriving in China the following year.The latter half of her career was spent as a mine-layer. Laden with concrete, she was deliberately sunk as a blockship in attempt to block the canal in the Zeebrugge Raid during the First World War, on 23 April 1918.

The Zeebrugge Raid (Dutch: Aanval op de haven van Zeebrugge; French: Raid sur Zeebruges) on 23 April 1918, was an attempt by the Royal Navy to block the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge. The British intended to sink obsolete ships in the canal entrance, to prevent German vessels from leaving port. The port was used by the Imperial German Navy as a base for U-boats and light shipping, which were a threat to Allied control of the English Channel and southern North Sea. Several attempts to close the Flanders ports by bombardment failed and Operation Hush, a 1917 plan to advance up the coast, proved abortive. As ship losses to U-boats increased, finding a way to close the ports became urgent and the Admiralty became more willing to consider a raid. An attempt to raid Zeebrugge was made on 2 April 1918 but was cancelled at the last moment, after the wind direction changed and made it impossible to lay a smokescreen to cover the ships. Another attempt was made on 23 April, with a concurrent attack on Ostend. Two of three blockships were scuttled in the narrowest part of the Bruges–Ostend Canal and one of two submarines rammed the viaduct linking the shore and the mole, to trap the German garrison. The blockships were sunk in the wrong place and after a few days the Germans had opened the canal to submarines at high tide. Lessons were learned during the operation that would be put to use in the Second World War.

SM UB-10 was a German Type UB I submarine or U-boat in the German Imperial Navy (German: Kaiserliche Marine) during World War I. UB-10 was ordered in October 1914 and was laid down at the AG Weser shipyard in Bremen in November. UB-10 was a little under 28 metres (92 ft) in length and displaced between 127 and 141 t (125 and 139 long tons), depending on whether surfaced or submerged. She carried two torpedoes for her two bow torpedo tubes and was also armed with a deck-mounted machine gun. UB-10 was broken into sections and shipped by rail to Antwerp for reassembly. She was launched in February 1915 and commissioned as SM UB-10 in March. The U-boat was the first of her class to commence operations when she entered service on 27 March 1915. UB-10 was the first boat assigned to the Flanders Flotilla, the unit in which she spent her entire career. Her first two commanders were Otto Steinbrinck and Reinhold Saltzwedel, fifth and eleventh, respectively, among the top-scoring German submarine commanders of the war. UB-10 was credited with sinking 37 ships, about two-thirds of them British fishing vessels. The first ship sunk, the neutral Dutch steamer Katwijk, provoked outrage in the Netherlands and helped turn Dutch public opinion against Germany. That sinking was also the impetus behind a renewed effort to avoid attacking neutral ships by U-boats. In a 13-day span in July and August 1915, UB-10 sank 23 ships, and by herself accounted for nearly all of the tonnage sunk by the Flanders Flotilla in the latter month. She was also responsible for sinking the British destroyer HMS Lassoo in August 1916. UB-10 had two close calls with British submarines near the Schouwen Bank off Zeebrugge in 1916 and 1917, but survived both. By 1918, UB-10 had been converted into a minelayer by the replacement of her torpedo tubes with four mine chutes. UB-10 was seriously damaged in a British air raid on Flanders in July 1918, and was decommissioned in September 1918 in a worn out condition. She was not deemed seaworthy to sail to Germany when the bases in Flanders were being evacuated by the Germans in October 1918 and was scuttled off Zeebrugge in early October.

Zeebrugge (Dutch pronunciation: [zeːˈbrʏɣə]; from Brugge aan zee [ˌbrʏɣə ʔaːn ˈzeː], meaning "Bruges-on-Sea"; French: Zeebruges) is a village on the coast of Belgium and a subdivision of Bruges, for which it is the modern port. Zeebrugge serves as both the international port of Bruges-Zeebrugge and a seafront resort with hotels, cafés, a marina and a beach.

The Schipdonk Canal (French: Canal de Schipdonk or Dérivation de la Lys; Dutch: Schipdonkkanaal or Afleidingskanaal van de Leie) is a canal in the Belgian provinces of East Flanders and West Flanders. With a length of 56 km (35 mi), the canal runs in a northerly direction from Deinze, turning to a north-western direction roughly halfway along its route to the North Sea with which it meets on the coast near to Heist. It crosses both the Ghent-Bruges Canal and for its final 20 km (12 mi) runs parallel with the Leopold Canal as it approaches the north Belgian coast. For most of this final section the two canals are separated only by a dyke.

SM UB-59 was a German Type UB III submarine or U-boat in the German Imperial Navy (German: Kaiserliche Marine) during World War I. She was commissioned into the Flanders Flotilla of the German Imperial Navy on 25 August 1917 as SM UB-59.She operated as part of the Flanders Flotilla based in Zeebrugge. UB-59 scuttled 5 October 1918 off Zeebrugge at 51°19′N 03°12′E during the evacuation of Belgium by German forces.

Heist-aan-Zee, Heist or Heyst, is a town (formerly a municipality, until 1971) in Knokke-Heist, West Flanders, Belgium. It was a prominent summer beach resort in the 1890s. It had a beach front lined with hotels and a "dike" paved walked way on a storm fender. Fishing boats were moored on the beach, and one could purchase a ticket to bathe in the sea.

Heist is a railway station in the town of Knokke-Heist, West Flanders, Belgium. The station opened on 29 June 1920 and is located on line 51B. The train services are operated by National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS).

Zwankendamme is a village in the municipality of Bruges, West Flanders, Belgium.

Lissewege is a village and a subdivision in the municipality of Bruges, Belgium. Lissewege also includes Zeebrugge and Zwankendamme.

Blankenberge railway station (Dutch: Station Blankenberge, French: Gare de Blankenberghe) is a railway station in Blankenberge, West Flanders, Belgium. The station opened on 16 August 1863 on railway line 51. It is run by the National Railway Company of Belgium (NMBS/SNCB) as a terminal station located on the railway line from Brugge and has services to Brussels-South and beyond to Leuven.