Two Royal Navy destroyers defeated a superior force of German Kaiserliche Marine torpedo boats.

[1] Two German torpedo boats were sunk; the British suffered damage to both destroyers.

On 20 April 1917, two groups of torpedo boats of the German Navy raided the Dover Strait to bombard Allied positions on shore and to engage warships patrolling the Dover Barrage—[2] the field of floating mines that prevented German ships from getting into the English Channel.

Two flotilla leaders of the Royal Navy — HMS Broke and Swift — were on patrol near Dover and engaged six of the German ships early on 21 April near the Goodwin Sands.

For a while, there was close-quarters fighting between the crews, as the German sailors tried to board the British ship,[1] before Broke got free and G42 sank.