Location: Stroud to Scapa the Enigma Delivers

0 of August 2006 to 0 of August 2006


You drop down through green water twinkling with curtains of fish then comes the sea bed …only it’s rusty, dusty big and bulky…it’s a German WW1 Battleship….WOW!

I had organised this expedition to Orkney with the Stroud Valley Sub Aqua Club in August 2006 to coincide with Neap tides, warm seas and Teacher’s Holidays in the hope that I would have a good mix of happy, bright minded communicators. My dreams came true when I was joined by a behavorial correctionist, a neurologist, engineers, managers, young students, retired folk, and a marine, all diving with a skipper called Roy aboard MV “Triton” from Stromness.

Wind the clock back 87 years to 21st June 1919, the interned German Imperial Navy’s Fleet lay at anchor in Scapa Flow. It consisted of 74 warships made up of 5 Battlecruisers, 11 battleships, 8 cruisers, and 50 destroyers, their guns disarmed and manned only by a skeleton crew. Believing that hostilities were to resume, the commander of the Fleet Rear Admiral Ludwig Von Reuter raised the international code flags on his flagship “Emden” , and so the pre-arranged coded order to scuttle the Fleet was given. 52 of the warships sank completely and the remaining 22 were beached or saved by Royal Navy boarding parties. The Fleet ranged from massive 656ft long Battlercruisers to smaller 26,000 ton Battleships, to Light cruisers of about 5000 tons and finally the Torpedo-Boat destroyers. Of the 52 ships that went to the bottom, 45 were raised in the greatest marine salvage operation in history, by the firm Cox and Danks which started in 1920 and continued until 1946. Today 3 Battleships, Konig, Kronprinz Wilhelm and Markgraf, 4 Light Cruisers, Brummer, Dresden, Coln, and Karlsruhe, 2 Torpedo – Boat Destroyers, V83 and S54 and 1 Submarine, UB-116 remain on the sea bed. We dived most of these plus the amazing block ship “Tabarka”!

Depths of 30metres 1st dive and 20metres for the 2nd dive average were easily managed by all in the group as we all had BSAC Advanced or PADI Advanced qualifications plus recent comparable experience. Half of us decided to offload some nitrogen on what we termed “the deep day” when the Triton delivered divers to the crystal clear waters surrounding “The James Barrie” resting in 41metres in Hoxa Sound. Allegedly promotional hats were being handed out from another dive group at the base of the shot line!!

Our group comprised Kevin (Pirates of the Carribean Bootstrap Bill) Lea, Pete (Attenborough) Ball, Elizabeth (Formula One ) Norton, Georgie (Flintstone) Delaney, Mark (Gandalf) Barrow, Pete (Jim’ll Fix it) Barrow, Shelley (Vordemann) Rhodes, Christina (Min.Ag.) Warwick and Paul (Me) Spence. Assistance on board was provided by Andy (Mr Georgie) and the local boy Roy (Donald Bagpipes, Ya ####) skippered the boat with the precision of a jet fighter pilot!

The Triton, what an immaculate, spotless vessel. 58 foot with heated changing room, hot shower, large deck saloon, on board compressor, oxygen blending, tanks, weights and lashings of good humour is owned by Steve Mowat (01856 850 624) He skippers the little ferry the goes twixt the smaller islands of Orkney. Now, the accommodation was in the Ferry Inn, Stromness, just 100metres from the dive boat. This inn has the coveted good beer guide award 2005 and 2006 (Did anyone try the beer?) and laid on a delicious evening meal menu.

Dive sights included an amazing variety of filter feeders, big guns, wrasse, flatfish, huge lobsters, congers eating crabs, shoals of floor to ceiling fish, and other abundant marine life.
I must mention some of the extra curricular activity……
Picture , if you will the skipper whispering to me
“I’ll need a pound from each person for a little treat”
So, £11 later and a landing at Longhope jetty we all pile into the “Transport” a sheep truck complete with hay and slits to look out from running on chip fat………………..
“Who wants to go in the front” the two sharpest of our party (not from Stroud) opt for this.
“Which of you two wants to drive ‘cos I don’t have a licence”
Christina wants to, so off we go to the Longhope Lifeboat Museum.
At Longhope all the men were lost in a terrible storm so the old lifeboat house is a memorial to them. In the harbour a self-righting lifeboat out-oranges everything in view. It’s a sobering reminder of how brave men risk all to save lives in a harsh watery hell. We all stood inside the old style lifeboat and gave generously. Next it was the Martello Tower with it’s huge gun atop and clever design for preventing nasty accidents with naked flames and gunpowder!!!! Awesome. so back for the second dive of the day. On other days we had a less agricultural flavour with a visit to Lyness Museum. This is the old refuelling station for WW2 ships among other things. Going inside a fuel store 50metres across by 30metres high made of iron and hearing such booming echoes in the gloom was eerie. A simple case displaying one of each of the most commonly used hand rifles from the two world wars was arrestingly chilling. Just a crude pipe and a firing spring, yuk!

Thankfully we had Roy to cheer us up with his expletives and general pranks. He kept the whole week running very smoothly and on the last day out came the bagpipes which he proudly played as other dive boats took second and third place over the block ships in Burra Sound.

We costed this trip out at £280 per person based on 12 divers this included 12 dives air, weights, cylinders and B+B accommodation at the Ferry Inn, Stromness. Crossings were extra at about £22 each way per person in a car, also fuel to and from Stroud, Glos. worked out £60 round trip per person, and a crazy night in Edinburgh for £30 each way and lunch +evening meals. A humdinggahh of a trip and we all had a ball!

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