What Was the Dover Patrol?

A Destroyer Torpedo Boat of the Dover Patrol Leaving Harbor

In late July 1914, with war looming, twelve Tribal-class destroyers arrived at Dover to join the near obsolete destroyers already at anchor in the harbor, most of them built in the late 1800s. These destroyers formed the nucleus of the fledgling Dover Patrol, which, from its early beginnings as a modest and poorly equipped ad hoc operation, became one of the most important Royal Navy commands during both world wars. Its first commander was Rear Admiral Horace Hood, who would later die aboard his battlecruiser squadron flagship, HMS Invincible at Jutland.

At its bases in Dover and Dunkirk, France, the patrol assembled cruisers, monitors, destroyers, armed trawlers and drifters, paddle mine-sweepers, armed yachts, motor launches and coastal motor boats, submarines, seaplanes, aeroplanes, and airships. With these resources it performed several duties simultaneously in the southern North Sea and the Dover Straits: carrying out anti-submarine patrols; escorting merchantmen, hospital, and troop ships; laying sea-mines and even constructing mine barrages; sweeping up German mines; bombarding German military positions on the Belgian coast; and sinking the ever-present U-boats. 

Admiral Bacon

Vice Admiral R.H. Bacon commanded the Dover Patrol from January 1915 until 31 December 1917, He had been one of the prewar Royal Navy's ablest officers, Director of Ordnance, an ally of Jackie Fisher, and ironically one of the founders of Britain's submarine service. His open-mindedness and willingness to work with General Douglas Haig helped to initiate and almost to pull off one of the most innovative concepts of the Great War, a plan to penetrate the enemy's rear along the Flanders coast with an amphibious, 15,000-man, tank-supported landing code-named "Operation Hush".  Sadly, for the Allies, that scheme had to be tabled due to the lack of progress toward the coastline by the main British forces during the battle of Passchendaele. Isolated, the landing force would have suffered a similar fate to the BEF of 1940 at Dunkirk.

In 1918 Vice Admiral Roger Keyes replaced Bacon and was charged with the special duty of blockading the German-held Belgian ports and the U-boats based there. This was to culminate in what was the patrol’s "finest hour," the raid on Zeebrugge and Ostend on 22/23 April 1918.

Sources: Over the Top July 2013; the Dover, England, Municipal Website