SCAPA FLOW, ONE of the greatest naval bases in history, resonates
through the annals of the Royal Navy during the two great wars of the
twentieth century. It was from there that the Grand Fleet sailed to
Jutland in 1916; from there that Russian convoys set off; and it was in
that beautiful, bleak anchorage that the German High Seas fleet
committed the greatest act of suicide ever seen at sea - 'The Grand
Scuttle' - before being raised and scrapped in one of the most
astonishing examples of maritime salvage. It was also in Scapa that we
have our last photographs of Kitchener before he boarded the Hampshire,
sunk by mine off Marwick Head. But it was also in this great anchorage
that many more human stories took place. Here lie the wrecks - now war
graves - of the Vanguard, blown apart by an explosion in 1917 and the
Royal Oak, sunk by Gunther Prien of U-47 in a spectacular raid at the
beginning of World War Two. Here too Italian prisoners of war built both
the spectacular Churchill causeways and the exquisite Italian chapel at
Lamb Holm crafted from Nissan huts. The text weaves eyewitness accounts
and personal experience into the larger narrative, and the photographs
capture the spirit and activity of Scapa Flow when it was the home of
thousands of service personnel.
