After the signing of the Armistice that ended the First World War in 1918, the warships of the defeated German Fleet were interned at anchorage at the main Royal Navy seabase at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands in the north of Scotland. The ships were kept there with skeleton crews of German sailors to maintain them.
By June, 1919, the final peace agreement to end the war had still not been concluded and many in the German military were convinced that fighting could conceivably resume. On 21 June 1919, when the main British fleet left the area for exercises, Rear Admiral von Reuter, commander of the German fleet, ordered all 74 ships scuttled, rather than have them fall into British hands. You can see the battleship Bayern on its way down in the picture above.
Most of the ships were salvaged in subsequent years, but seven still remain at the bottom.
The BBC has a story on a high-resolution sonar study of the area that includes the spectacular 3-D image above. The ships are a popular scuba diving attraction, and the charts generated by the study will aid them and historic preservation officials.
1 comment:
It's a source of steel uncontaminated with isotopes of the A-bomb era.
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