Editing Scapa Flow (section)

==History==
===Viking era===

The Viking expeditions to Orkney are recorded in detail in the 11th century ''[[Orkneyinga saga]]s'' and later texts such as the ''[[Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar]]''.

According to the latter, King [[Haakon IV of Norway]] anchored his fleet, including the flagship ''Kroussden'' that could carry nearly 300 men, on 5 August 1263 at [[St Margaret's Hope]], where he saw an [[solar eclipse|eclipse of the sun]] before he sailed south to the [[Battle of Largs]].

En route back to Norway Haakon anchored some of his fleet in Scapa Flow for the winter, but he died that December while staying at the [[Bishop's Palace, Kirkwall|Bishop's Palace]] in [[Kirkwall]].<ref>Thompson (2008) pp. 141–43.</ref> In the 15th century towards the end of Norse rule in Orkney, the islands were run by the ''jarls'' from large manor farms, some of which were at [[Burray]], Burwick, Paplay, [[Hoy, Orkney|Hoy]], and Cairston (near [[Stromness]]) to guard the entrances to the Flow.<ref>Thompson (2008) pp. 223–34.</ref>

===Wars of the Three Kingdoms===

In 1650 during the [[wars of the Three Kingdoms]], the Royalist general [[James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose]], moored his ship, the ''Herderinnan'', in Scapa Flow, in preparation for his attempt to raise a rebellion in Scotland. The enterprise ended in failure and rout at the [[Battle of Carbisdale]].

=== First World War ===
====Base for the British Grand Fleet====

Historically, the main British naval bases were near the [[English Channel]] to counter the continental naval powers: the Dutch Republic, France, and Spain.

In 1904, in response to the build-up of the German ''[[Kaiserliche Marine]]'''s [[High Seas Fleet]], Britain decided that a northern base was needed to control the entrances to the [[North Sea]], as part of a revised policy of 'distant' rather than 'close' blockade. First [[Rosyth Dockyard|Rosyth]] in Fife was considered, then [[Invergordon]] at [[Cromarty Firth]]. Delayed construction left these largely unfortified by the outbreak of the First World War. Scapa Flow had been used many times for British exercises in the years before the war and when the time came for the fleet to move to a northern station, it was chosen for the main base of the [[British Grand Fleet]]—unfortified.<ref name="castles">{{cite book| title=[[Castles of Steel]]| author=Robert K. Massie| author-link=Robert Massie| year=2004| publisher=Ballantine Books| isbn=0-345-40878-0}}{{Page needed|date=May 2011}}</ref>

[[John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe|John Rushworth Jellicoe]], admiral of the Grand Fleet, was perpetually nervous about the possibility of submarine or destroyer attacks on Scapa Flow. Whilst the fleet spent most of the first year of the war patrolling the west coast of the British Isles, their base at Scapa was defensively reinforced, beginning with over sixty [[blockship]]s sunk in the many entrance channels between the southern islands to enable the use of submarine nets and [[Boom (navigational barrier)|booms]]. These blocked approaches were backed by minefields, artillery, and concrete barriers.<ref name="castles"/>

Two attempts to enter the harbour were made by [[Germany|German]] [[U-boat]]s during the war and neither was successful:
#{{SMU|U-18|Germany|2}} tried to enter in November 1914. A trawler searching for submarines rammed her, causing her to leak, prompting her flight and surfacing; one crew member died. 
#{{SMU|UB-116||2}} made a foray in October 1918 but encountered the sophisticated defences then in place. It was detected by [[hydrophone]]s before entering the anchorage, then destroyed by shore-triggered [[Naval mine|mines]], killing all 36 hands.<ref>{{cite Uboat.net|id=UB+116|name=UB 116|type=1sub}}</ref>

After the [[Battle of Jutland]], the German High Seas Fleet rarely ventured out of its bases at [[Wilhelmshaven]] and [[Kiel]] and in the last two years of the war the British fleet was considered to have such a commanding superiority of the seas that some components moved south to the first-class [[Rosyth Dockyard|dockyard at Rosyth]].

====Scuttling of the German fleet====

{{Main|Scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow}}
Following the German defeat, 74 ships of the [[Imperial German Navy]]'s [[High Seas Fleet]] were interned in [[Gutter Sound]] at Scapa Flow pending a decision on their future in the peace [[Treaty of Versailles]].

On 21 June 1919, after seven months of waiting, German Rear Admiral [[Ludwig von Reuter]] made the decision to scuttle the fleet because the negotiation period for the treaty had lapsed with no word of a settlement. He was not kept informed that there had been a last-minute extension to finalise the details.

After waiting for the bulk of the British fleet to leave on exercises, he gave the order to scuttle the ships to prevent their falling into British hands. The Royal Navy made desperate efforts to board the ships to prevent the sinkings, but the German crews had spent the idle months preparing for the order, welding bulkhead doors open, laying charges in vulnerable parts of the ships, and quietly dropping important keys and tools overboard so valves could not be shut.

The Royal Navy managed to beach the battleship {{SMS|Baden||2}}, the light cruisers ''Emden'', ''Nürnberg'', and ''Frankfurt'' and 18 destroyers whereas 53 ships, the vast bulk of the High Seas Fleet, were sunk. Nine German sailors died on some of these ships when British forces opened fire as they attempted to scuttle the ships, reputedly the last casualties of the war.

{{SMS|Emden|1916|6}} was amongst the ships the British managed to beach. This ''Emden'' should not be confused with [[SMS Emden|her predecessor]], destroyed in the [[Battle of Cocos]] on 9 November 1914 by the Australian light cruiser {{HMAS|Sydney|1912|6}}.

At least seven of the scuttled German ships and some sunken British ships can today be visited by divers.

===Salvage operation===

Although many of the larger ships turned turtle and came to rest upside down or on their sides in relatively deep water (25–45 m), some—including the battlecruiser {{SMS|Moltke||2}}—were left with parts of their superstructure or upturned bows still protruding from the water or just below the surface.

These ships posed a severe hazard to navigation; small boats, trawlers, and drifters regularly became snagged on them with the rise and fall of the tides. The Admiralty initially declared that there would be no attempt at salvage, that the sunken hulks would remain where they were, to 'rest and rust.' In the first few years after the war, there was abundant scrap metal as a result of the huge quantities of leftover tanks, artillery and ordnance. By the early 1920s, the situation had changed.

In 1922, the Admiralty invited tenders from interested parties for the salvage of the sunken ships, although at the time few believed that it would be possible to raise the deeper wrecks.<ref name=george/> The contract went to a wealthy engineer and scrap metal merchant, [[Ernest Cox]], who created a new company, a division of Cox & Danks Ltd, for the venture, and so began what is often called the greatest maritime salvage operation of all time.<ref name=george/>

During the next eight years, Cox and his workforce of divers, engineers, and labourers engaged in the complex task of raising the sunken fleet. First the relatively small destroyers were winched to the surface using pontoons and floating docks to be sold for scrap to help finance the operation, then the bigger battleships and battlecruisers were lifted, by sealing the multiple holes in the wrecks, and welding to the hulls long steel tubes which protruded above the water, for use as airlocks. In this fashion the submerged hulls were made into air-tight chambers and raised with compressed air, still inverted, back to the surface.

Cox endured bad luck and frequent fierce storms which often ruined his work, swamping and re-sinking ships which had just been raised. At one stage, during the [[General Strike of 1926]], the salvage operation was about to grind to a halt due to a lack of coal to feed the many boilers for the water pumps and generators. Cox ordered that the abundant fuel bunkers of the sunken (but only partly submerged) battlecruiser {{SMS|Seydlitz||2}} be broken into to extract the coal with mechanical grabs, allowing work to continue.

Although he ultimately lost money on the contract, Cox kept going, employing new technology and methods as conditions dictated. By 1939, Cox and Metal Industries Ltd. (the company that he had sold out to in 1932) had successfully raised 45 of the 52 scuttled ships. The last, the massive {{SMS|Derfflinger||2}}, was raised from a record depth of 45 metres just before work was suspended with the start of the Second World War, before being towed to Rosyth where it was broken up in 1946.

A [[Morse key]] recovered from the battleship [[SMS Grosser Kurfürst (1913)|''Grosser Kurfürst'']] during the salvage is displayed at a Fife museum.<ref>Museum of Communication, 131 High Street, Burntisland.</ref>

=== Second World War ===
[[File:USS Wasp (CV-7) with other warships at Scapa Flow in April 1942.jpg|thumb|Scapa Flow in April 1942]]
[[File:The King Pays 4-day Visit To the Home Fleet. 18 To 21 March 1943, at Scapa Flow, the King, Wearing the Uniform of An Admiral of the Fleet, Paid a 4-day Visit To the Home Fleet. A15117.jpg|thumb|King [[George VI]] visiting the [[Home Fleet]] based at Scapa Flow, March 1943]]
[[File:Block Ship, Scapa Flow.jpg|thumb|[[Blockship]], Scapa Flow]]
Primarily because of its great distance from German airfields, Scapa Flow was again selected as the main British naval base during the Second World War.<ref>''The Twilight War'': Winston Churchill 1948</ref>

The strong defences built during the First World War had fallen into disrepair. Defence against air attack was inadequate and [[blockships]] sunk to stop U-boats from penetrating had largely collapsed. While there were anti-submarine nets in place over the three main entrances, they were made only of single-stranded looped wire; there was also a severe lack of the patrolling destroyers and other anti-submarine craft that had previously been available. Efforts began belatedly to repair peacetime neglect, but were not completed in time to prevent a successful penetration by enemy forces.<ref>James Miller, ''The North Atlantic Front: Orkney, Shetland, Faroe and Iceland at War'' (2004)</ref>

On 14 October 1939, under the command of [[Günther Prien]], {{GS|U-47|1938|2}} penetrated Scapa Flow and sank the First World War-era battleship {{HMS|Royal Oak|08|6}} anchored in Scapa Bay.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://www.u47.org/english/index.asp| title=U-boat U-47| publisher=u47.org| author=Rick D. Joshua| access-date=16 October 2009| archive-date=9 July 2006| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060709000402/http://u47.org/english/index.asp| url-status=live}}</ref> After firing its first torpedo salvo, the submarine turned to make its escape; but, upon realising that there was no immediate threat from surface vessels, it returned for another attack. The second torpedo salvo blew a {{convert|30|ft|m|adj=on}} hole in the ''Royal Oak'', which flooded and quickly capsized. Of the 1,400-man crew, 833 were lost. The wreck is now a protected [[war grave]].<ref>David Turner, ''Last Dawn: The Royal Oak Tragedy at Scapa Flow'' (Argyll Publishing, 2008).</ref><ref>H. J. Weaver, ''Nightmare at Scapa Flow: the truth about the sinking of HMS Royal Oak'' (Cressrelles, 1980).</ref> [[John Gunther]] in December 1939 called the attack "the single most extraordinary feat of the war so far".<ref name="gunther1940">{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.149663/2015.149663.Inside-Europe#page/n19/mode/2up | title=Inside Europe | publisher=Harper & Brothers | author=Gunther, John |location=New York|author-link=John Gunther| year=1940 | pages=xxi}}</ref>

Three days after the submarine attack, four [[Luftwaffe]] [[Junkers Ju 88]] bombers of [[Kampfgeschwader 30|''Kampfgeschwader'' 1/30]] led by group commander Hauptmann Fritz Doench raided Scapa Flow on 17 October in one of the first bombing attacks on Britain during the war. The attack badly damaged an old base ship, the decommissioned battleship {{HMS|Iron Duke|1912|6}}, which was then beached at Ore Bay by a tug. One man died and 25 were injured. One of the bombers was shot down by No 1 gun of 226 Heavy Anti-Aircraft Battery on Hoy. Three of the crew died, while the radio operator Fritz Ambrosius was badly burned but managed to parachute down.<ref name="Haarr240">{{cite book|author=Geirr H. Haarr|title=The Gathering Storm: The Naval War in Northern Europe September 1939 – April 1940|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ft47BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA240|year=2013|publisher=Seaforth Publishing|isbn=978-1-4738-3131-5|pages=240–243|access-date=30 December 2015|archive-date=24 April 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424212230/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ft47BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA240|url-status=live}}</ref>

New blockships were sunk, booms and mines were placed over the main entrances, coast defence and anti-aircraft batteries were installed at crucial points, and [[Winston Churchill]] ordered the construction of a series of causeways to block the eastern approaches to Scapa Flow; they were built by Italian prisoners of war held in Orkney, who also built the [[Italian Chapel]]. These "[[Churchill Barriers]]" now provide road access from Mainland to Burray and South Ronaldsay, but block maritime traffic. An airfield, [[RAF Grimsetter]] (which later became HMS ''Robin''), was built and commissioned in 1940.<ref>M. Brown and P. Meehan, ''Scapa Flow: the reminiscences of men and women who served in Scapa Flow in the two World Wars'' (Allen Lane, Penguin, 1968).</ref>