Dover Patrol

In late July 1914, with war looming, 12 Tribal-class destroyers arrived at Dover to join the near obsolete destroyers already at anchor in the harbour, most of them built in the late 19th century. These destroyers formed the nucleus of the fledgling Dover Patrol, which, from its early beginnings as a modest and poorly equipped command, became one of the most important Royal Navy commands of the First World War.

The Dover Patrol was first officially established as an independent command on 12 October 1914 in response to the German capture of Antwerp and Zeebrugge, as well as the impending fall of Ostend.[1] German possession of Belgian Channel ports and rising activity of U-boats led the British Admiralty to consider the Dover Straits vital enough to be distinct from the Admiral of Patrols. The first actions of the Dover Patrol included bombarding German coastal positions during the Battle of the Yser and defeating a German Navy detachment in the Battle off Texel.

The Dover Patrol assembled cruisers, monitors, destroyers, armed trawlers and drifters, paddle minesweepers, 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 U-boats. The Dover patrol was often attacked and took many casualties as in the action of 15 February 1918.

During the war, the Dover Patrol was maintained by the Dover Engineering Works, an Iron Foundry which employed and housed many hundreds of workers in Dover Town and was managed by Vivian Elkington, nephew of Walter Emden. The company still exists today, operating from a reduced premises at Holmestone Road, under the name of Gatic.[2] In March 1919 the Dover Patrol was renamed Dover Patrol Force.[3]

After the war, a fund was set up to erect a memorial to the Dover Patrol. In July 1921, a memorial at Leathercote Point near St Margaret's Bay was unveiled. Similar memorial obelisks stand at Cap Blanc Nez on the French channel coast, and at John Paul Jones Park near Fort Hamilton, overlooking New York harbour.[4]

Post holders included:[5]

• Rear-Admiral The Hon. Horace L. A. Hood, 12 October 1914 – 13 April 1915
• Vice-Admiral Sir Reginald H. S. Bacon, 13 April 1915 – 1 January 1918
• Acting Vice-Admiral Sir Roger J. B. Keyes, 1 January 1918 – 20 March 1919
• Vice-Admiral Cecil F. Dampier, 20 March 1919 – 15 October 1919

Dover Patrol was the name of a popular board-game, similar to L'Attaque, but based on naval warfare, devised by Harry A. Gibson in 1911.[8]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Dover Patrol.

• Charles Lightoller
• Northern Patrol
• Operation Hush

• Bacon, Reginald (1919). The Dover Patrol 1915-1917. (2 vols.). New York: George H. Doran Co. Vol. 1 • Vol. 2
• Dunn, Steve R. (2017). Securing the Narrow Sea; The Dover Patrol 1914-1918. Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 9781848322516.

• History of the Dover Patrol
• Excerpt from the First World War encyclopedia
• www.theotherside.co.uk Archived 30 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine

51°9′24.7″N 1°23′33.7″E