Scapa Flow E-Book

Malcolm Brown

• Herausgeber: Spellmount
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 465

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Scapa Flow, a vast, natural harbour in the Orkney Islands, served as the Royal Navy's main base during the two world wars, from where ships sailed to the Battle of Jutland in the First and in convoy to northern Russia in the Second. Thousands of men and women saw service in and around this remote anchorage, including soldiers and sailors who crewed the ships and manned the lonely batteries, and Wrens, nurses and civilians who were posted there. Scapa Flow brings together their memories – the bleak isolation, its implacable winds and glorious sunsets, the camaraderie and good humour – forming a compelling portrait of a unique war station that left its mark on all who served there.

Leseprobe

First published in the UK in 1968 by Allen Lane The Penguin Press

This paperback edition published 2019

The History Press

97 St George’s Place

Cheltenham, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© Malcolm Brown and Patricia Meehan, 1968, 2001, 2008, 2019

The right of Malcolm Brown and Patricia Meehan to be identified as the Authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 0 7509 9279 4

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Map showing Scapa Flow

Extracts from A Memorial to the Lords Commissioners of Admiralty

Introduction

APPROACH TO SCAPA FLOW

1.   Scapa

2.   The ‘Jellicoes’

3.   The Pentland Firth

4.   ‘A City of Ships’

THE FIRST WORLD WAR

5.   Setting up the Base

6.   ‘No World Outside the Ship’

7.   ‘Hands Coal Ship!’

8.   Guarding the Fleet

9.   Libertymen

10. Jutland

11. The Hampshire Disaster

12. The Vanguard Disaster

13. ‘Waiting for Them to Come Out’

14. Strangers in the Flow

THE SECOND WORLD WAR

15. Loss of the Royal Oak

16. Bolting the Stable Door

17. The Orkney Barrage

18. ‘In from Out’

19. The Small Ships

20. ‘You Lucky People!’

21. ‘Orkneyitis’

22. The Suicide Run

23. Six Hundred Men to One Girl

24. Making the Best of It

SUNSET

25. Paying Off

List of Contributors

List of Illustrations

  1.   Winter dawn, Stromness.

  2.   Evening view of Scapa Bay.

  3.   The cliffs at Yesnaby.

  4.   The Old Man of Hoy.

  5.   The old town, Stromness.

  6.   A street in Kirkwall.

  7.   St Magnus’ Cathedral, Kirkwall.

  8.   The Churchill Barrier in Water Sound.

  9.   Water Sound, 2001.

10.   The Ness Battery during the Second World War.

11.   The Ness Battery in the 1960s.

12.   Exterior of the Italian Chapel.

13.   Interior of the Italian Chapel.

14.   The St Ninian.

15.   Marines drilling on a quarter-deck during the First World War.

16    The ‘Green Room’ of a battleship.

17.   Concert-party programme from H.M.S. Benbow.

18.   Coaling ship.

19.   ‘Holystoning’ the decks.

20.   Lord Kitchener leaving the Oak.

21.   Marwick Head, with Kitchener Memorial.

22.   Surrender of the German Fleet, 21 November 1918.

23.   SMS Friederich der Grosse, König Albert and Kaiserin.

24.   SMS Grosser Kurfurst, Kronpriz Wilhelm and Markgraf.

25.   König class battleship in Scapa Flow.

26, 27. SMS Seydlitz taking up her moorings.

28.   German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow.

29.   Deck-scene on an interned German destroyer.

30.   German sailors abandoning ship.

31.   SMS Bayern, 21 June 1919.

32.   The scuttling of the German destroyer G.102.

33.   The scuttling of SMS Hindenberg.

34.   Scapa Flow after the Great Scuttle of 1919.

35.   British soldiers guarding a beached German ship.

36, 37. Salvage operations between the wars.

38.   Libertymen leaving the Royal Oak.

39.   ‘Libertymen at Lyness’, by Charles Cundall.

40.   The triumphant return to Germany of U-47.

41.   Commander of U-47 being congratulated on his return to Germany.

42.   The commander and engineer of U-47.

43.   The Royal Oak memorial bell, St Magnus’ Cathedral.

44.   Concrete block casting yard at St Mary’s Holm.

45.   ‘Boom Defence Vessels’, by Charles Cundall.

46.   A typical front page from The Orkney Blast.

47.   A cartoon by Strube envisioning the worst exile for Hitler.

48.   Dame Vera Laughton Mathews inspecting Wrens at Lyness.

49.   Convoy PQ18 under attack.

50.   The effects of ice in northern waters.

51.   Capital ships steaming ahead in heavy weather.

52.   A film show below decks, in a drawing by Gordon Rowland.

53.   Scapa Flow at the end of the Second World War.

54.   Peaceful Scapa Flow. The view from Houton, 2001.

Acknowledgements

The authors and publishers are indebted to the following for their help in the provision of illustrations: Mr A. F. B. Bridges (17); the Ministry of Defence (48); Mr and Mrs Robertson Easton (32, 41), from the collection of G. Gordon Nicol; William Hourston of Stromness (36, 37); the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum (5, 16, 18, 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 41, 49, 50, 51); Herbert Johnston (38); Evan MacGillivray, Librarian of Orkney County Library (34, 35), from the Thomas Kent Collection; the former Mansell Collection (20); Ernest W. Marwick of Kirkwall (3, 5, 7); Gerald G. A. Meyer, Editor of the Orcadian, for the page from the Orkney Blast and the Strube cartoon (46, 47); the National Maritime Museum for the paintings by Charles Cundall (39, 45); the North of Scotland, Orkney and Shetland Shipping Company (14); the Hulton-Getty Collection (22); Gordon Rowland, who served in the convoys to north Russia in 1942 (52), his picture was drawn specially for this book; Vice-Admiral Friedrich Ruge (29); the Scottish Tourist Board (2, 4, 6, 8, 10), from the collection of William S. Thomson; Douglas Shearer of Kirkwall (13), Jenny Suddaby (9, 43, 54) and the estate of Hans Wessels (40, 42).

We would also like to thank George Mackay Brown and B.B.C. Scotland for permission to print an extract from ‘The Winter Islands’, and Allie Windwick for permission to print ‘Lonely Scapa Flow’.

A Map of Scapa Flow showing the course of the Hampshire and U-47.

Extracts from A Memorial to the Lords Commissioners of Admiralty

Proposal for Establishing a Temporary Rendezvous for Line of Battle-Ships in a National Roadstead called Scapa Flow Formed by the South Isles of Orkney – most humbly submitted to the consideration of the Rt Hon. the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty and Presented to their Lordships by their most obedient and most humble Servant Graeme Spence late Maritime Surveyor to their Lordships.

If the peculiar situation of the Orkney Isles and the numerous Harbours they contain be duly considered with reference at the same time to Britain and Ireland and the West Coast of Europe as laid down in the annexed charts, it will not be at all surprising that the Northern maritime Nations of Europe such as the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians, should, from the earliest accounts we have of them have looked upon the Conquest of Orkney as an object of the first importance towards their obtaining that footing and possession which they ultimately got in Britain and Ireland . . .

Even the Romans so famed for their choice of eligible military stations, thought the Orkneys of so much importance that on the Division of the Empire among the sons of Constantine the Great, the Kingdom of the Orcades fell to the share of Constantine . . .

Our Neglect of them hitherto appears to me to Consist in our not availing ourselves of the Use that Nature seems to have intended them for, namely, a Northern Roadstead in which a Fleet of Men of War might Rendezvous and be ready to Act either on the offensive or defensive, from this Advanced post as circumstances might require. . . .

Scapa Flow is, in my opinion, admirably well adapted for a Northern Roadstead for a Fleet of Line-of-Battle-Ships; and it is doubtless the finest natural Roadstead in Britain or Ireland except Spit-Head, if all the Qualities which constitute a good Roadstead be properly considered . . .

Nature seems to have given every degree of Shelter to Scapa Flow that could possibly be expected in a Roadstead of such extent; and therefore it wants no artificial Shelter, a circumstance greatly in its favour.

The depth of Water is great, there being from 10 to 20 fathoms all over the Flow; the which in a more confined Anchorage would be rather a disadvantage; but as there is plenty of room here to stow the Anchor, I shall call it, in the Sailors’ phrase, a Good fault . . .

If we had a strong Fleet there in War time, it would prevent the Enemy from going North-about Britain to Ireland or elsewhere should he ever attempt it. Our Fleet there would also intercept and prevent all the Enemy’s Trade North-about Britain to Russia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Holland and Flanders, a Route which those Nations often take especially in War time.

When our Fleet, which is Blockading the Baltic and the Northern Ports of the Enemy, has occasion to quit these Stations, it might Rendezvous in Scapa Flow, in the greatest shelter and safety and secure from danger . . .

I have thus presumed to Present this Work to the Rt Honorable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty (whose Servant I have been in this line alone for the last 8 years of my life) from an idea that I could not discharge my Duty better than by submitting to their consideration a Scheme and Plan which has for its Object the Extension of the Maritime Power and Greatness of Britain; which, I beg, they will graciously condescend to Accept from the hands of their Lordships’ most obedient and most humble Servant Graeme Spence.

London, 4 June 1812

Introduction

This is a book of voices. They are the voices of men and women who served in two world wars in one of the bleakest and most remote places in Britain – Scapa Flow, in the islands of Orkney. They are the voices of the lower deck, the barrack room, the lonely gunsite and they are as fresh and alive as when we first heard them forty years ago.

It all began with a BBC TV documentary. The idea had come from the well-known writer and broadcaster Ludovic (now Sir Ludovic) Kennedy. He had been based in Scapa Flow as a lieutenant in destroyers from 1940 to 1943 and had never forgotten the enduring and particular fascination of the place. While planning the programme we, the producers, published an appeal in the Radio Times asking people who had served in Scapa Flow to send in their accounts of life there during the two world wars. What we were hoping for was a modest crop of nicely written reminiscences from which a handful of pungent and evocative quotations might be extracted for use in the programme. What we got was something quite extraordinary.

After a few days two or three letters arrived. The following day there were a dozen more. And then they came in a prolonged avalanche – everything from anecdotes pencilled on the backs of postcards to semi-autobiographies many pages long. It was an amazing and moving response. Altogether well over seven hundred replies were received. Roughly half the letters were about the First War, half about the Second. The Navy, as was inevitable, predominated, but the Army was extremely well represented, as were, to a slightly lesser degree, the Women’s Services and the RAF.

But it was not only the quantity which was impressive. Our appeal had somehow touched a nerve in the people who had responded to it. It had given the rank and file their chance and they had taken it.

What impressed us above all was the vividness of the material, and the vigour and energy with which so much of it was written. In many cases it was as though people had carried around their experiences with them for years waiting for someone to express an interest and at last somebody wanted to listen. But we were soon aware of something else: the freshness of the angle from which so much of it was written. This was war glimpsed from the lower deck or the ordinary barrack-room. Here was a view of war with the rawness and the sentiment, and the humour, left in. It showed that life in uniform was as likely to lead to boredom as to bravery. In short, this was war as it really was.

The programme was also enriched by the on-screen accounts by a number of witnesses of crucial moments in the history of Scapa Flow. One was a German naval officer present at the scuttlng of the German fleet in 1919. Another had served in U-47, the U-boat which penetrated the Flow in 1939 and sank the battle-ship Royal Oak, with the loss of over 800 lives. Yet another was a British sailor who was one of the Royal Oak’s survivors.

A key feature throughout was the reading, by a range of sympathetic actors, one of whom had himself served in the Flow as a naval officer, of memorable and often moving extracts from the letters we had received. Add to these elements historic film and stills from the archives, and some fine photography by an accomplished BBC cameraman of Orkney’s striking landscapes and seascapes, and it is scarcely surprising that the film received considerable acclaim when it was shown in Christmas week of 1966, being credited with the exceptionally high audience figure for a programme of eleven and a half million viewers.

However, even at sixty minutes a TV documentary could include only a limited number of extracts from the mass of material we had acquired. Yet it was unthinkable to shelve what was basically a treasure trove of historical evidence, much of it vividly, movingly and often beautifully recorded. Hence our desire to put some of the best of the evidence we had acquired into a book to which we would supply the frame while the quotations would supply the flesh. It was our great good fortune that our proposal should have found its way to the desk of a publisher so sympathetic to its concept and style as Sir Allen Lane, creator of that remarkable phenomenon the Penguin paperback, at a time when he was moving into the publication of high-quality hardbacks.

Scapa Flow was first published by Allen Lane The Penguin Press, in 1968. We were especially gratified that when the book appeared it was well received in Orkney, a proud society not always happy with the literary intrusions of strangers who fail to show proof of adequate knowledge or research. The editor of its principal newspaper, the Orcadian, wrote of it that it presented ‘a picture that every former sailor, soldier and civilian will instantly recognize – mirroring accurately, vividly and movingly the 60-year period when Orkney was in the mainstream of world events.’

It is especially pleasing to us, the authors, that this book should now be reprinted, in a fine hardback, forty years after its first publication. Whether this allows us to claim ‘classic’ status for it is not for us to judge, nor is it a matter of importance. It is good enough for us to see the book back on the shelves. The republication of Scapa Flow is not simply a matter of plucking an ancient book from a dusty shelf because it has a decent yarn to tell. It gives new life and recognition to a work which, we believe, can genuinely be seen as a book of quality which is also an early example of a distinguished and vibrant tradition of popular history.

Malcolm Brown and Patricia Meehan

APPROACH TO SCAPA FLOW

A winter people, far in the north,

Severed from brilliant cities

By the slash and jab of the Pentland Firth –

Island severed from island

By crested Sounds . . .

The Atlantic, restless, nudges the western crags,

Till Yesnaby, Hoy, Marwick

Are loaded with thunder, laced with spindrift.

Twice a day, ebb and flow

Its slow pulse beats through the Sounds

Till the islands brim like swans,

Till the islands lie in their seaweed like stranded hulks.

You would not think this grey empty stretch

Where fishermen haul their creels

Sheltered the British Navy in two great wars,

And after the first holocaust

Imprisoned the Kaiser’s warships

Until the prisoners opened their veins and drowned.

Here Gunther Prien in his U-boat

Pierced the defences and sank the Royal Oak.

Then Irish labour sealed the Sounds

And exiled Italian prisoners

Returned their thanks to God with a tin chapel

Ablaze inside with saints and martyrs.

Old winters saw that agony, that glory . . .

From The Winter Islands, by George Mackay Brown

1

Scapa

Scapa left its mark on all who served there. To go to Scapa was to join a club whose membership you could never quite disown. Like Poona, Alexandria or Singapore, Scapa was a place to which it was impossible to have a neutral reaction. You either hated it, or you loved it. The evidence is that people usually did both. There were times when men spat the name out like a four-letter word. There were other times when they wondered how homely, familiar Great Britain ever came to have within its boundaries a place so serene, so different and of so special a flavour. Writing about it years afterwards some could still not surmount their loathing, but many remembered it with an almost surprised pleasure and discovered in themselves a deep longing to return. Yet side-by-side with the longing there was often a certain anxiety – that the place might be unrecognizable, that it would be so changed that they would feel they had ceased to belong.

To call it a place is a mistake, of course. Scapa – which should be pronounced to rhyme with ‘sapper’, in spite of the long ‘a’ given to the word by Cockney rhyming slang – is really just a sheet of water. It is a vast, almost landlocked anchorage, fifteen miles in length from north to south and eight miles broad from east to west, which on the map looks like a jagged hole punched in the southern half of the Orkney Islands. It is so big that it could have housed all the navies of the world in the great days of sea-power. It has three main entrances. Hoxa Sound, between the islands of South Ronaldsay and Flotta, was the front gate through which the battleships came and went. Switha Sound, between Flotta and South Walls, the fat little peninsula that juts eastwards from the southern end of the island of Hoy, was the narrower gate for the destroyers. Hoy Sound, between the northern end of Hoy and the large island which is known as the Mainland, was rarely used by naval vessels in time of war, though now it is the regular route through which the daily mail steamer approaches Orkney on its often boisterous journey from Caithness.

Until a generation ago, there were several other entrances to the Flow – tiny ones on the eastern side which were only wide enough to admit fishing boats or naval ships of the size of a submarine. Within six weeks of the outbreak of war in 1939 a German U-boat slipped unperceived through the northernmost of these entrances, Kirk Sound, and sank a battleship at anchor with the loss of over eight hundred lives. Subsequently a road was constructed, carried on huge concrete blocks from island to island, effectively ensuring that nothing so audacious could happen again. Called after the man who ordered that they should be built, these causeways are known as the Churchill Barriers.

Scapa Flow is empty now. This immense anchorage, which twice in living memory was the home of one great Navy and which also became the graveyard of another, is almost as it was sixty years and two wars ago. Just occasionally a handful of frigates or a couple of destroyers will slip into the Flow to pick up fuel at Lyness, the old base on the island of Hoy, and the familiar grey silhouettes will be seen far out across the water, evoking a surge of memory in those who recall the days when Scapa Flow was in the mainstream of world events. But by the morning they will have sailed away, leaving Scapa to the sea-birds and the little local steamers like the Hoy Head and the Watchful which chug about between the islands with tourists and the post.

Here and there are relics of the great occupation. There is a litter of concrete gun batteries on the headland overlooking Hoxa Sound. A mile outside the old and lovely town of Stromness more batteries face out towards the open sea, with all the guns gone and the tall range-finder station standing there like a windowless signal-box beside some abandoned railway. In the entrances sealed by the Churchill Barriers and out in Hoy Sound, old block-ships lie rusting, reddish-brown skeletons which are slowly being eaten away by the sea and which take on a bizarre, abstract beauty at sunset or sunrise. On Hoy itself you will see clusters of half-fallen barrack-rooms in lonely fields, with occasionally a dazzlingly white enamelled urinal standing to one side like a slab of megalithic stone. And Lyness itself, with its huts and roads and huge corrugated-iron cinema and handful of people, is a ghost town, the scene of a gold rush long since abandoned, an Orcadian Dawson City.

One wonders what the men and women who served there would think of it if they did go back. Their Scapa Flow was crowded with ships that were anchored in rows like houses on an estate – battleships and carriers and cruisers and destroyers and mine-sweepers – while as many as three hundred drifters shuttled to and fro, carrying supplies and letters and bringing men to new postings or back from leave. So many barrage balloons hung in the sky that one might have imagined that the islands were suspended from them. Three-ton lorries rattled along country roads to where bulled and gleaming guns pointed to the sky or out to sea. The canteens were busy with egg and chips, beer and hot sweet tea and the cinemas ran a succession of films and ENSA concerts at which men starved of normal life whistled and stamped and cheered at Flanagan and Allen, Gracie Fields, Yehudi Menuhin and Evelyn Laye. And now the wind blows through the ruins and the rank grass and the Flow is wiped clean like a slate.

Of course, it is no use regretting it. No one wants those days back. It is better for the Flow to be empty than teeming with warships. Orkney was never so crowded and buzzing with activity but the animation was there for the wrong reason. The litter of concrete and rubble around the islands – fortunately there is not enough of it to spoil their beauty – is better than the smartest and tidiest gun emplacements ever made.

And the Orkney of peacetime is the real Orkney. Its role as a bustling Imperial stronghold was one alien to its character. These remote, unspoilt islands off the north coast of Scotland on the other side of the Pentland Firth are scarcely British at all. Their flavour is more like that of Scandinavia. Their names – Flotta, Fara, Graemsay, Westray, Shapinsay, Eynhallow and, of course, the name of Scapa Flow itself – have a Nordic ring. There are no highlands and few hills in Orkney, and what hills there are look as if they were shaped and smoothed by Arctic glaciers millions of years ago. Seen in winter under a covering of snow they are more what one would expect to see in Greenland or the Lofoten Isles than within the boundaries of Great Britain. Orkney is essentially a quiet, uncrowded, uncluttered place. It has lonely though well-metalled roads which run with an almost Roman straightness. It has two miniature and attractive towns, Kirkwall and Stromness, where the main streets are narrow and paved with flag-stones and where pedestrians exercise an almost undisputed right of way. It has long stretches of empty undulating land which look ordinary enough in winter but which produce an astounding range of colours in summer from gorse and heather and an abundance of wild flowers. It has isolated grey farm-houses with patchwork fields where seagulls swarm around tractors. It has wide lochs with names like Stenness and Harray where fishers bob about in boats bringing in splendid trout that are subsequently displayed for view in comfortable fishing hotels much loved by gentle Buchanesque men from Perth and Glasgow. Always, at the end of every perspective, is the sea – sometimes beating against huge cliffs as at Yesnaby or Marwick and the coast of Hoy, those mighty western ramparts that contrast strangely with the gentler contours prevailing everywhere else in Orkney; sometimes curving into tiny, sandy beaches littered with sea-wrack as at Skara Brae or Birsay; sometimes boiling in an almost perpetual turmoil as off Cantick Head or in Hoy Sound.

And when one turns inwards away from the North Sea or the Pentland Firth or the Atlantic, there, dominating the scene by its sheer empty vastness, is Scapa Flow.

Perhaps the best way to see the Flow is to go south from Kirkwall towards the Churchill Barriers on one of those evenings in summer when the sky over Hoy is a mixture of clouds and sun. Then every movement in the Flow will be caught by sunlight and the water will become a silvery plasma stretching away for miles, with little, treeless islands dotted here and there, and the long, undulating outline of Hoy will lie silhouetted on the horizon like a sleeping whale. Or cross over to Hoy early one morning – there are boatmen in Stromness who will take you across – and look eastwards from the old H.7 Battery or from the road that rises steeply up from Lyness. From either vantage point you will see a huge panoramic picture of many colours, ranging from the pastel greys and greens and ochres of the islands to the deep blues and astonishing turquoises of the Flow. You will appreciate at once why Scapa is the sort of place that people do not easily forget.

But the Orkney of today, the real, permanent Orkney, is only incidentally our concern. This book is about the Orkney of two short, intense interludes in this century, when thousands of people from the cities, towns and villages of Britain were taken from their ordinary civilian lives and sent northwards to crew the ships and man the defences of Scapa Flow.

2

The ‘Jellicoes’

The classic route to Scapa Flow was by train to the north of Scotland and then by boat across the Pentland Firth. Indeed, to go there in your own hammock in your own ship was somehow ordinary and unmemorable. It was not a proper initiation. Only those who had spent twenty-four hours or more in a special troop train and had then been bucketed across the boisterous waters of the Firth, really knew how far Scapa was from home.

In the First War they called the trains the ‘Jellicoes’, after the Admiral who assumed command of the Grand Fleet in Scapa Flow in August 1914. The name was revived in the Second. No one expects to travel comfortably in wartime, but these trains were worse than most; crammed, cluttered, cold, and interminable. If you started from London, you had seven hundred miles in front of you. If you were a naval rating drafted from Devonport to Scapa you were travelling from one end of Britain to the other. It was a Russian rather than a British experience.

Two of London’s famous Victorian terminus stations were the usual launching-points for this dreary trek north. Many servicemen left from King’s Cross, travelled to Scotland by the east coast route, and joined the ‘Jellicoe’ at Perth. But the official ‘Jellicoe’ – the through train from London to Thurso – started from Euston, striking north-westwards on the old L.N.W.R. line. For its innumerable passengers places like Crewe, Carlisle and Carstairs would always be inextricably entwined with this long journey to war. They were not towns, simply stations, where you woke from an uneasy sleep, and might, with luck, enjoy the incredible relief of a hot cup of tea.

But above all, the north of Scotland was the territory to which the ‘Jellicoes’ seemed particularly to belong. It was the least known and it was the last part of the journey. North of Perth the Highland Line took you on a slow sweep through the Cairngorms to Inverness and thence along the coast through Invergordon, Tain, and Golspie to Helmsdale. At Helmsdale the line turned inland through the bare, undulating hills of western Caithness and then swung back north-eastwards towards Thurso. Usually it was dawn when the trains came through this final lap. Small wonder that men waking after an uncomfortable, smoky night’s sleep and peering through the steamed-up windows felt that they had arrived at the end of nowhere.

If you talk to the men who work the Highland Line today they will speak of the ‘Jellicoes’ with affection. For those were the great days of the line when night after night, and sometimes twice nightly, the long double-engined trains rumbled north to Thurso. Now diesel engines pull the modern corridor stock of British Rail’s Scottish Region through this lonely and under-populated land, the trains are infrequent and half empty, and the little stations with gracious names like Kildonan, Kinbrace and Forsinard have all but closed down.

For countless men service at Scapa really began at Euston or King’s Cross. And like everything else associated with Scapa and the Orkneys in time of war, that long journey north was something that left an indelible mark on the memory.

These are the kind of things men thought about their journeys to Scapa over fifty years ago, in the days of the Great War.

¶ A draft of 200 ratings left Portsmouth, August 1914, for Scapa Flow. We were locked in the train for twenty-eight hours, twenty to a carriage.

We had a stop at Carlisle to change driver and take in water. The train was crowded with holiday-makers and a dear old lady spoke to me at the carriage window. She said: ‘Don’t move – I’ll be back’, and disappeared into the refreshment bar. Back she came with a wrapped box. A bottle of whisky, I thought, and thanked her. The train pulled out and with eager fingers we opened it. It was a box of Edinburgh rock.1

¶ Leaving Devonport late one night we eventually reached Scapa two nights later, having endured a train journey gruelling almost beyond imagination.

Movement in or out of your compartment or along the corridor was comparable to what now might be described as a Commando obstacle course. Men, bags, baggage of all descriptions everywhere, including kitbags and hammocks and the inevitable assortment of ‘empties’.

In the afternoon and more particularly at night, the whole train was strewn with ‘bodies’ trying to sleep. The air was dense with smoke and smelt more like a ship’s bilges than a train; but the thought of having a window open, even if one could get to it, was out of the question and asking for trouble. Little or no heat was provided by the train and it was a case of putting up with any discomfort to keep warm.2

* * *

¶ At King’s Cross, as well as those on draft were many returning from leave in all stages of sobriety (or insobriety). It always seemed a remarkable thing to me to feel one would soon be in the company of strangers, yet after a few minutes one would feel one had known some of them for years. After a few drinks I found myself in such company and we were soon looking for a suitable compartment to travel together.

The compartment into which we piled contained one other passenger, a young lady, but we soon settled down for the journey. It was not long, however, before nature began to assert itself and we realized we were in a non-corridor carriage. As the train did not stop long at any station this soon became an ordeal, then critical. As I was sitting next to the young lady I was given several nudges and whispers which put me in a predicament, but the situation was saved by the young lady herself who, after first telling me she had been travelling all day from France and fully under stood the position, said she would read her newspaper for a few minutes, which she did, and soon everyone was relieved and comfortable.3

* * *

¶ The memory I have of the journey north by special train from Portsmouth to Thurso in 1915 was of being confined to the train and living on pies for about three days, with an occasional wash by putting our heads out of the railway carriage window to catch the raindrops.4

* * *

¶ We arrived at Thurso at midnight and it was as black as the inside of a coal bag. Our guide told us to catch hold of the man in front and we set off. Arriving at the Town Hall we were given a hot drink and a couple of blankets and bedded down in what appeared to be orange boxes. It must have been close on 1 A.M. when we settled but at 4.30 A.M. we were exhorted to ‘Show a Leg’ and ‘Rise and Shine’. We rose but I don’t think we shone very much. Outside were some small wagonettes and we were loaded into these with our bags and hammocks, the drivers jogged the horses and we were on our merry way to Scrabster Harbour.5

The journey by ‘Jellicoe’ was much the same experience in both wars. The trains were, relatively speaking, more comfortable in the second, less likely to have locked doors and more likely to have corridors, so that it was no longer a standing joke that one daren’t put one’s head out of the window for fear of the spray. But essentially there was no difference, because in both wars men were leaving their homes and their wives and their sweethearts and all the consolations of civilization to spend months on end in uncomfortable ships and remote gunsites. In both wars there was the prospect of isolation and hardship and boredom (though there was also the prospect of good companionship and achievement), and some, though they could not know it even if they feared it, would be going to their deaths in a convoy run or a destroyer dog-fight or in some futile military or naval accident.

This is how men saw this first stage of the journey to Scapa in the war of 1939–45.

¶ Those journeys to Stromness are etched deep. The miserable good-byes, the slow progress across London through Underground stations littered with bodies; King’s Cross with its hordes of Service personnel – people from the North going South, soldiers from Plymouth heading for Greenock – R.T.O.s, M.P.s, N.A.A.F.I.s – the lot!

You learned quickly in those days. You carried your little suitcase and your gas-mask and tin hat, and you looked pityingly on those loaded with full pack, kit-bag and rifle. When the barrier gate opened, you were through in a flash, while they groaningly tied themselves into webbing. You tore down the length of the train and hurtled into an empty compartment – the corner seats, on that trip, were priceless! In minutes the compartment was full: kit, kit-bags and great-coats piled up, pleasantries were exchanged about the size and manoeuvrability of legs and boots, and then we waited for the train to start.

Eight, ten, twelve hours of it. The blue, dim lighting that made reading impossible; the humped, shadowy figures in ungainly sleep; the snuffles and snores. The sailor’s head that lolled on one’s shoulder, open mouth blasting out the fumes of that last pint; the fug, the smell of damp uniforms, the acrid taste of tobacco and cigarette smoke. Sometimes a brave soul would lower a window, and the sweet cold night air would roar in – until a snarling, blasphemous, grunting chorus requested that it be closed again.

A short walk became imperative after an hour or so – clambering over enormous boots on sprawling, gaitered legs, squeezing past piled-up mountains in the corridor. Here and there a still, sad, lonely figure at a window, gazing blindly out at an invisible countryside. The firefly glow of a cigarette and the scrape and flare of a match . . .

The train slows down. A station! The static scene is galvanized into passionate life, for a station means TEA! The doors swing perilously before the train has even stopped; a swarm of khaki and two shades of blue converging on the trolleys with their gleaming urns; pint mugs flourishing, waving, thrust out imploringly like beggars’ bowls. The warning whistle – the toot from the engine – the unsteady trot with two brimming mugs of scalding tea and a couple of sticky buns, back to a train already slowly moving; the scramble into the doors – any door! – the inevitable couple left behind, racing madly along the platform.

Then again the dim blue darkness. On and on, hopeless, miserable, cramped, sleepless, gritty of eye and foul of mouth from the too-many cigarettes. Faint at first, then louder, the throb of aircraft engines. Clearly audible now – and a little buzz of chatter. Are they ours? Are they Jerries? Can they see us? But the roar dwindles, becomes a distant half-heard hum, vanishes. An airman says, ‘God, I wish I was up there with ‘em!’ A sailor grunts, ‘Go ahead, son – more room for us!’ and turns his head farther into his collar.

Then, in the grey gloom, we glide at last into Edinburgh. The carriage heaves and turmoils; an unreal fantasy of figures climbs stiffly down and a swelling crocodile surges down the platform. Journey’s end for some. Home for some. Just about halfway for us. We find the R.T.O., we enquire about our train – oh, God! Five hours to wait! You can do a lot in five hours. See the town, get a good meal, get drunk – me, I head for a special waiting-room. It’s in an odd corner; and it’s staffed by W.V.S. It’s got a couple of broken-down settees, some beat-up armchairs, some mattresses on the floor, a hand-basin and a bit of a cracked mirror. You queue for a few minutes, then the luxury of a wash and shave. Then you go to the motherly old body and you say, ‘One o’clock, Ma, please’, and then you collapse on to a settee or into a chair, or on to the floor, and you’re out. Asleep. Unconscious. Dead-o.

How they did it I don’t know, but there would come a gentle shake on the shoulder, a kindly voice, ‘Come awa’, sonny – train time!’ And a cup of hot sweet tea and a biscuit.

You stumble blearily, sleepily out and find your train. An R.T.O. corporal is calling endlessly, flatly, ‘Change at Perth for Thurso. Change at Perth for Thurso.’6

* * *

¶ Cold, my goodness it’s cold, and a spare blanket of very dubious appearance is at a premium. Snow outside now, but the fellow you’ve chummed up with has a hip-flask of the best rum in the world and he’s pleased for you to have a swig. He’s done this trip before, obviously.

What endless purgatory this really is and one’s newly married wife is being left farther and farther behind. For how long? Look through the window at the rolling white inhospitable hills of north-east Scotland. This is surely a war on its own.7

* * *

¶ I remember the train drawing into Crewe station with every door swinging open so that we could hop out and get a cup of tea, and then just stopping long enough for us not to be able to get one.8

* * *

¶ On one winter journey the train was unheated and by the time we reached Carlisle many hours later we were cold and hungry. The brightest prospect for hours had been the excellent meat pies which were usually on sale on the station platform. The window-spaces were jammed with troops of all three services and I was sharing one with a burly, three-stripe sailor, each of us clutching money to buy a pie.

The first thing we saw was a little, wizened old man pushing a barrow and shouting ‘Ices’. He was hailed by my friend the matelot in broad Cockney, ‘Got any ‘ot uns, mite?’9

* * *

¶ The one bright oasis to anticipate after the tortuous, slow journey northwards was the entry into a dark and deserted station called Perth, where a stop of some considerable length was made. Always the concerted dash to the temporary wooden building, with no lights to show its purpose, but well lit inside to reveal the welcome long counter, dispensing angels lined up to offer steaming hot tea, coffee or cocoa; a wonderful selection of cakes and sandwiches, sweets and cigarettes. A Forces canteen run by Church organizations, manned by volunteer ladies who waited patiently in the early hours of the morning for this train to come in. How grateful we all were.10

* * *

¶ Here it may be appropriate to append a tribute to the Scottish people. In spite of the necessary veil of secrecy regarding troop movements, they seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of our staging stops, which often were in isolated places – and from nowhere, it seemed, would appear tea, coffee, and baked Scottish delicacies, nicely served in spotless china-ware with a precision that would have foxed Rommel himself. And this in spite of the thousand or more troops involved and of the meagre rationing system which was equally applicable to them. This beneficent and welcome gesture was undertaken both by night and by day – even in the small hours.11

* * *

¶ I remember passing through Invergordon. At one point the train stopped at a wild remote moor, but beside the track stood members of the W.V.S. with tables full of cakes and sandwiches. We stopped for a meal, then all aboard, leaving them in that lonely place with the crusts and remnants of our meal.12

* * *

¶ From the end of 1940 a kitchen car was attached to the train, run by the Salvation Army, and twice during the night – each coach in turn – all could get a jolly good cup of tea and some food. Bless the Salvation Army, who did that magnificent job. I speak for hundreds of thousands who would have had a blessed awful journey but for their efforts.13

* * *

¶ On one trip we were held up for four days at Inverness because the preceding train was snowbound. The local authorities gave us a good time. Poor devils in the other train had a bad time from cold and hunger, and I believe a naval Captain died despite a valiant attempt to bring him to safety by sledge. I well remember travelling miles between unbroken walls of snow higher than the train.14

* * *

¶ Oh, that long haul from London to Thurso! Hour after hour incarcerated in the train with dreadful thoughts of the limbo to which I was being sent – Scapa Flow. And at Perth being turned out of the compartment which I had shared with two ladies – I was a serviceman and would have to sit elsewhere! Evidently someone thought that this dog-tired young A.C.2 would commit rape and murder on the next stage between Perth and Inverness. Or perhaps they were protecting me from what might be the embarrassing attention of two elderly ladies? ‘Hell!’ I thought. ‘Freedom!’ and hauled my pack and kit-bag to the other end of the train.

Another change at Inverness and then the night journey by military train to Thurso. A drunken Norwegian sailor snored like thunder all night and then spewed his heart out with the first streak of a bleak wintry dawn. Others, with army boots off, had added to the foetid atmosphere with the sweat of their feet and I retched inwardly, cowering in a corner despising my companions, despising myself and those who had sent me on this journey to God-knows where.15

* * *

¶ Thurso we reached in the early morning. It was a terribly rough day, with enormous waves crashing over the harbour, and after waiting for hours we were told that sailings were cancelled and that we must return next day to see if a crossing would be possible. Thurso, being a small town, was not accustomed to such a sudden increase in population and naturally it could not provide food or accommodation for so many troops. The police station and church halls were packed, so many of us were left out like tramps, but we did find some signs of a transit camp being built near the shore. It was a terrible night trying to rest in such bitter cold and rain, with the winds howling at what we estimated as ‘Force 9’. and us curled up in the bare protection of a Nissen hut in its early stage of erection, as yet without any ends built up – a man-made wind tunnel in effect. What a night!16

* * *

¶ It must have been towards the afternoon that we reached Thurso. We were herded into sheds where we were given what must have been a most unsuitable meal before a sea-trip – tinned herrings in tomato sauce. However, we were young and perennially hungry, so it was eaten.

We were then taken for a terrifying ride on flat lorries, tightly packed so that we had to stand, clumsy with kit-bags, rifles and webbing, over a heart-stopping road which seemed to be on the very edge of precipices with a grey sea beneath. We drove at a shocking speed, and it was with the greatest relief that we stopped at a little harbour.17

That harbour, Scrabster – two miles from Thurso on the northern coast of Caithness – became very familiar to the servicemen of both wars. From there the little ferry and supply ships went daily across to the Orkney Islands, which are plainly visible from Thurso in all but the murkiest of weathers. Indeed, there are times when the cliffs and hills of Orkney seem so near that a stranger might almost take them for an extension of the Scottish mainland. On such occasions the channel that runs between Orkney and Caithness – it is a mere six and a half miles wide at its narrowest point – looks beguilingly simple to cross. But two generations of servicemen know otherwise, for this is the Pentland Firth.

3

The Pentland Firth

The Pentland Firth is one of the most notorious stretches of water in the world. Here the North Sea and the Atlantic meet in a confined channel, and the result is an almost permanent turbulence. A calm summer day over Caithness or Orkney is no indication that the Firth is equally calm; a wild day is likely to mean that it is virtually impassable.

Crossing the Firth, like the ‘Jellicoe’ journey, became an essential part of the Scapa tradition. For a voyage scheduled at under three hours – though bad weather could make it five – it had a remarkably sinister reputation. It was the subject of innumerable jokes and much wry comment. One serviceman suggested that there must be more sea-sick in the Pentland Firth than in any comparable area of water on earth. But though the crossing was something to joke about afterwards it was not much of a joke at the time. It was not usually a dangerous experience, but it had its share of wasteful, unnecessary fatalities. Men sometimes gave up their leave because of it, or tried to beg or buy a seat on one of the few available aircraft going south. If, however, one was going to Scapa by the traditional route that began with the ‘Jellicoes’, there was no escaping it. Many a serviceman clambering off his three-ton lorry at Scrabster Harbour for the first time, with stories of the Pentland Firth’s vindictiveness firmly embedded in his mind by those who knew, must have gone on board his troop-ship in a state of acute apprehension, with more than a casual eye cocked at the weather.

There were two routes to Orkney from Scrabster. Ships bound for the Naval bases of Longhope or Lyness entered Scapa Flow through Switha Sound, the normal gate for the Fleet’s destroyers. Ships bound for the Orkney Mainland sailed along the western coast of Hoy, entered the Flow at its north-western gate, Hoy Sound, and berthed at Stromness.

This route in particular could at times take on something of the nature of an agreeable cruise. On sunny calm days – which can happen in January as well as June – it is an exciting experience to watch the great, red-brown cliffs of Hoy move slowly towards you across the turquoise sea. The Old Man of Hoy, a stack of rock as tall as St Paul’s Cathedral, stands clear of the coastline like a sergeant at attention in front of his men. Several miles farther on, the cliffs rise to an apex of over eleven hundred feet at St John’s Head, which is all the more impressive for being absolutely vertical. Here and there waterfalls find their way over terrifying heights down to the sea.

But this remote and strangely beautiful world can be viciously transformed when the Atlantic turns rough.

¶ The Pentland Firth is well-known by seamen as one of the worst stretches of water in the world. I have seen leave-taking or returning soldiers – and sailors – wallowing in the scuppers in a mess of vomit, or wedged in bunks, or even tied to stanchions, for the whole of the trip. That stretch of fast water makes a ship lurch and twist and bucket and bounce as no other that I know of.1

* * *

¶ As the stout little steamer heaved its ancient black sides through the crashing waves, skirting the swirls of maelstroms, one would cling to a stanchion and peer through the jagged, slanting rain at the formidable iron-clad heights of Dunnet Head and the gaunt, spray-shrouded cliffs. One felt a ghostly pity for the haggard shades of the Spaniards, fleeing fitfully westwards around the north of Scotland through these terrible seas, hungry, cold and desperate after the defeat of their Armada.2

* * *

¶ Blackout precautions were strictly enforced – there was even a ban on smoking – as we boarded a requisitioned M.O.W. Transport which was to take us across the Pentland Firth.

The boarding process is worthy of note. For the few – the more orderly method of the hand-railed gangway; for the majority – planks of wood slung from the quay to the side of the ship, with constant admonitions of ‘hurry, hurry’ – ‘get a move on’ – come on now – move!’ One of our men slipped and fell off an improvised boarding device and, due to the heaving of the ship, was crushed to death between ship and quay. With a full realization as to what had happened and the implications of his action, an officer of the Regiment was lowered, and recovered the body of the crushed soldier.3

* * *

¶ I remember an occasion when we were crossing the Firth, a young sailor attempted to pass some soldiers talking in the gangway when suddenly he fell into the sea, the gate which was put across the gap in the rails having collapsed. Lifebelts were thrown, and the cry went up ‘Man Overboard’. The boat had to travel a considerable distance before it was able to complete a circle to get near the position where he fell. It was of no avail, we couldn’t find him.4

* * *

¶ At Scrabster we boarded an ancient mailboat, and I noticed that several hardened sailors found convenient spots such as boat davits to wedge themselves between the posts and the rails – in a sitting position, feet resting on the rail. Not knowing why, I did likewise.

The old boat left and as it passed Dunnet Head we received the full welcome of the Pentland Firth – not just ordinary waves but hills and valleys of deep green sea – the meeting through thousands of years between the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea creating a nine- to ten-knot current. One minute we were gazing at the clouds and next minute almost dipping our feet in the Pentland – hence the importance of being wedged! And that old Labrador – the ship’s pet – walked up and down the deck in experienced salt-water style – eyes riveted on the horizon, head held erect, body likewise, legs bending to the angle of the motion.5

* * *

¶ What an uncomfortable and, to some, a miserable sea crossing that was. Even in the best of weather the sea carried huge billows which came broadside on, and the ship rolled like a barrel. To the fore of the main deck was the ‘saloon’ for the lower ranks. This tiny room was always full of khaki- and blue-clad airmen, the air was foul and thick with tobacco smoke, and any who went in because they felt ill would find the conditions added to their misery. Many, like myself, preferred to remain outside whatever the weather, and lean with our backs on the cabins and our feet nearly touching the rail, so narrow was the gangway. I have seen the time when the crossing was really bad, when the ship rolled so much that at one moment we were lying almost horizontally on our backs and the next standing on the rail which was now under us with the swirling waters seemingly only inches from our feet. It was always a relief when land hove in sight and we passed the Old Man of Hoy, a rock jutting out on our starboard side. On occasions when it was very rough, the ship was allowed to pass into the smoother waters of Scapa Flow, and so shorten the worst part of the crossing.6

* * *

¶ I was sailing back to Orkney during a south-west gale on the St Ola and as we passed St John’s Head on Hoy I saw the waterfall over the Head fall upwards. It fell down for a little way, then the force of the wind curved it round and blew it up the cliff again.7

* * *

¶ No sooner had the St Ninian left the safety of Scrabster Bay than the old girl started bucking and rolling and, with the exception of a handful of young Jack Tars bound for Scapa, we were a miserable sea-sick bunch. How all of us envied these young salts who stood on deck swaying with the movement of the St Ninian in best nautical style while we lay groaning. And then it happened. One by one the bold lads made for the rails and they were – each and every one of them – as sick as dogs, and when we reached Scapa they looked a bedraggled lot as they made their way down the gangway. I think most of us felt pleased that even those in a sailor suit could be laid low.

When we did arrive at Stromness I was surprised to see a fleet of ambulances awaiting the arrival of the St Ninian