Orkney Islands

You may never have heard of Skapa Flow, but it made you who you are. Without it, odds are you would not now be in North America, nor would you be speaking English. Arguably, it is the largest harbor in the world. The entire navy of any nation of the world could be assembled in this harbor, and have plenty of room to navigate. Some say the harbor at Sydney Australia is larger, but it depends on how you measure it. Even so, nothing ever happened in Sydney harbor that impacted you or your ancestors. Skapa Flow is another story. It is shown on this map by its local name, “The Clogg,” but by whatever name, Skapa Flow is more important to you than you realize.

It became important 1400 years ago when Viking raiders were ravaging the coasts of the British Isles. They would retreat to Skapa Flow to hide, nurse their wounds and distribute booty before the next raid. If you had any ancestors from England, Ireland or Scotland, then you have at least some DNA from the Vikings who pillaged the coastal towns to the south, then eventually remained to become farmers, sailors and parents. If you can feel a little bump on your palm near the base of your ring finger, then that is definite proof of your Viking ancestry. It is called Depuyten’s Contracture, and many of us in North America have it. Many of us are Vikings. The Vikings turned the Anglo-Saxons, Picts, Scots and Celts in the British Isles into sailors. Eventually these sailors allowed Britannia to rule the waves, and also to rule North America.

In both World Wars, this natural harbor constituted the largest naval base in the world. Skapa Flow attracted the attention of the world at the end of World War I. The Allies had won the war and the Treaty of Versailles was about to be signed. Some 70 German warships had been seized by the British. Most of the crew members were returned to Germany, but a few remained to provide a skeleton crew as the ships steamed to their final disposition in the Orkney Islands. They were sailed under British guard to Skapa Flow. The German admiral did not want his ships to be converted and reused. On 21 June, 1919 Admiral Ludwig von Reuter ordered a semaphore signal to be transmitted commanding the skippers of 54 of the vessels to scuttle their ships. They opened the seacocks and broke the pipes, allowing sea water to rush in to flood their vessels. Within half an hour all of the German ships were sinking, and it took only fourteen minutes for them to reach the bottom of the sea. Thus, he and over 2,000 sailors went down with their ships in Skapa Flow. The only witnesses to the event were a group of schoolchildren on an afternoon field trip to the ocean.

The harbor here made the news again at the outbreak of World War II. British public opinion was still waffling on whether Adolf Hitler was a Saviour or a Satan. Even former King Edward VIII was in favor of the Third Reich. On October 14, 1939 a German submarine U-47 torpedoed HMS Royal Oak while the British battleship was anchored in Skapa Flow, sending 835 of its crewmen to the bottom of the sea. The old battleship was no longer fit for front line duty, so the attack had little strategic importance. However, the direct attack of the German Navy on a British vessel had an enormous psychological impact on the British people, and Churchill ordered miles of massive concrete and steel barriers (called Churchill Barriers) to be installed at the mouth of the harbor. Churchill’s horror of Naziism seemed confirmed, and the British people committed themselves to the inevitabilty of World War II. Like the USS Arizona, HMS Royal Oak is still commissioned in the British Navy. She still lies at the bottom of Skapa Flow, and each year a local dive team goes down, takes her ensign off the mast, and replaces it with a new one. The old ensign is then displayed for the next twelve months in the memorial inside St. Magnus Church in Kirkwall. Had Great Britain failed to mobilize when she did, it is virtually certain that Hitler would have conquered the British, and with America as his next target, the outcome of World War II might have been completely different.
The British shut down their naval base here in 1956. Since then spy novels have kept alive the notion that Skapa Flow is the site of some sophisticated clandestine underwater activity. Whether this is true or not, Skapa Flow is an immensely important place.Read more