There and Back Again (In Mostly One Piece) – A Trip to Scapa Flow

Friday, Dive Day -3

It’s a long old drive from Lincolnshire up to Scrabster! With a 6am start, and a few comfort breaks along the way, I finally made it at 7:30pm, enough time for a quick bite at the hotel restaurant and a nice (very) early night!

Saturday, Dive Day -2

I popped up a day early to get a bit of exploring in before heading over to Stromness on the ferry. So with some snacks packed, and a raft of messages from the rest of the gang starting their journeys northward, I made my way east along the coast road to visit Dunnet Head (the most northerly point of mainland Britain), John o’ Groats and Duncansby Head (the furthest point from Land’s End), then south to Bucholie Castle, Old Keiss Castle, and Castle Sinclair Girnigoe.

Castle Sinclair Girnigoe – a little unstable now, but brilliant to explore! – Photo: Ben Green

Next on the list was Whaligoe Steps and Camster Cairns, but upon arrival back at the van, I received word that Joe had “had a bit of a bump in the car” and was in Wick Hospital! Not an ideal start to the trip! Being the closest person to Wick (everyone else was still on their way up), I popped in to pick him up and help him track down his car. Once back at the hotel we caught up with the rest of the team and had a nice group dinner, including meeting our first non-club member joining us for the trip, Kerry, before another early night ready for the ferry tomorrow.

Sunday, Dive Day -1

With the ferry loading at 11:00, we had a few hours to grab some breakfast and get Joe over to the remains of his car to pick up his kit and get back in time to jump in the queue. Unfortunately, he was carrying what I can only assume was a year’s supply of porridge oats, which burst all over him, his car, and subsequently my van – we spent the whole week spotting them dotted around the accommodation, and I’m still picking them out of the seats!

“The Old Man of Hoy”, an impressive pillar on the coast of Hoy, on our way to Stromness. – Photo: Ben Green

After a nice calm crossing, we meandered straight round to the Huskyan at the dockside to meet the skipper, Emily, and her team, and load our dive kit ready for the week’s activities. We also met our second non club diver for the first time, Julian! We have been chatting with Julian and Kerry for the last few months, but it was great to get some time to meet them both properly before we all got trapped on a boat together (Or maybe more importantly, for them to meet our eccentric group!) Once all sorted, we picked up keys to the apartment and walked up to let ourselves in – Number 15 (also run by Emily, and booked as part of a week on Huskyan), I have to say, is a beautiful place to stay, and very handy being so close to the dock. Room sharing had been planned by Tracey, but the snorers rapidly moved themselves into the couple of spare rooms – set aside for that exact purpose!

That evening we sat down to a lovely chilli, cooked by Julian, and chatted about our hopes and expectations for the week – excitement abound!

Monday, Dive Day!

After a quick boat tour and safety briefing, we set out on our way to our first wreck of the week, the Cöln class light cruiser SMS Dresden. Emily’s briefings are something to behold, expert knowledge combined with digital presentations, 3d renderings, and photogrammetry, really make dive planning a breeze. For each wreck she not only provided history, and a good idea of the layout, but also offered suggestions of the best routes to take to really maximise our experience given that eight out of nine divers had never been to Scapa Flow before.

That left us with enough information to concoct dive plans and get kitted up for our first dive onto the High Seas Fleet! The visibility was decent, but not amazing, we were still able to easily navigate to the stern to find the stern anchor, and both aft guns, then along the deck to find the conning tower, with the boat davits slightly forward of that. Her foredeck has peeled away from the hull – not surprising after over a hundred years underwater, so we first went over that, peering inside where we could, then came back underneath to look at the top of the deck, and quite an impressive sized bow anchor capstan. It seemed like a good idea to follow the anchor chain and go and look at the anchor, but through not paying enough attention, we (I) followed some random bits of metal out into the sea bed, where we decided to stop swimming around aimlessly, send up our SMBs and head to the surface for teas, coffees, hot chocolates (with cream, marshmallows, and a fudge stick!), and a chat about what everyone had seen! We arrived to find one of our friends breathing oxygen after a slight mishap on ascent – luckily it was precautionary, and he was otherwise unharmed, but elected to skip the next dive. They say trouble always comes in threes, and after a car accident and an uncontrolled ascent, something else was bound to go wrong at some point…

With spirits high after the first dive, and everyone being ok, we had a bite for lunch (Emily and her crew prepare soup every day for lunch, and cake for pudding – I can’t remember what soup it was each day, but it was delicious, as was the cake!) and steamed onwards to our next wreck, another light cruiser, this time the Königsberg class SMS Karlsruhe. Unfortunately, there’s not a lot I can say about the Karlsruhe, due to a drysuit inflation issue, Luke and I had to abandon the dive before we really started, so I can say I’ve seen her bow, but that was about it! On the plus side, that’s three problems out of the way – hopefully we’d have an uneventful rest of the week! With any luck, we’d be able to dive her again later in the week and I’d get to see the capstan worm drive. (spoiler alert: this was not the last issue we would face!)

Once back ashore, we retired to Number 15, and Mark and Luke set about dinner, pasta bolognaise and garlic bread – as an avid anti-spaghetti man (food should not be actively trying to escape from your cutlery while you try and eat it!) I was quite pleased with the choice of pasta, and none of my peers had to watch me cover myself in sauce! We all then discussed our plans for the next day, the Kronprinz Wilhelm and the Cöln, put our batteries on charge, and turned in.

Tuesday, Dive Day 2

Our first wreck of the day was to be the SMS Cöln. Having dived the Dresden the previous day, we at least had some idea of what to expect on the Cöln, but we were informed that the conning tower had recently collapsed, and we would be some of the first divers to explore the newly revealed structure underneath – extra exciting! So with the prospect of seeing something never seen before, we kitted up and plunged into the depths. The shot line brought us down to just aft of the conning tower, so we took a quick look at that, and could clearly see where the deck had peeled away from the hull, and the tower itself had fallen top down into the seabed, then headed towards the bow. On the way we found the anchor capstans but missed the forward guns and machine gun mount. Once we hit the bow, we turned to head back to the conning tower and easily found the guns we’d missed – they were tucked under some fallen decking and so were covered when we swam over them from the other direction. We spent some time around the conning tower on our way back aft, we dropped down to find the rangefinder which once sat proudly atop the conning tower but had now been snapped off when the tower had hit the seabed – a bonus of this however was that you could see some of the inner workings of the rangefinder! We popped up to look in the hole left exposed by the collapse – there’s definitely some good penetration available there, but we hadn’t planned on that so just poked our heads in where possible and moved on to the collapsed bridge structure. The port gun had fallen into the wreckage, but was still clearly visible, and just above and along from that was my favourite find of the week – looking in through a doorway, you could clearly see an array of communication tubes used by the crew to communicate with other areas of the ship. Annoyingly however, I’d forgotten my camera! Discussing this later with Emily, she said they were probably only recently findable due to the conning tower collapse, so good timing! Carrying on toward the stern, we found the only remaining deck mounted torpedo tube in the flow (all others have been salvaged), one of the aft guns, and a torpedo storage crate. All in all, a very cool dive!

Ben: “Is my computer working?”, Luke: “Ima have a nap while I wait for you again Ben”, Kerry: “Can I get in the water soon please?” – Photo: Mark Connelly

Lunch today was spent at the Scapa Flow Museum in Lyness, a really interesting place that we just about managed to get round in an hour or so, but could happily spend a few more hours there, as I think could Rick, who spent a chunk of time helping the museum staff identify… something!

This is an oojamaflip – very unusual to see one in such good condition! – Photo: Mark Connelly

Second wreck today would be the König class battleship SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm, the first of three König class battleships we would hopefully be diving in the Flow. I won’t go into detail on Emily’s briefings for every dive, they were all of the same excellent quality as the first, but they were also entertaining – this one in particular involved a discussion about stern mounted torpedo tubes, like a bumble bee, which rapidly turned into the phrase “Bumble Bee Butts”, and was a standing joke for the rest of the week! It also gave birth to the concept of “booping the nose and slapping the ass”, as compared to the other battleship wrecks, both ends are small and dainty… So, with that in mind, we set out on our dive. First things first, we had to go and see the only visible 12” guns still in situ across all the battleships – the Kronprinz sits slightly askew, compared to the others which are all fully inverted. They were huge and very impressive, but we decided not to follow the exposed barrel all the way under the wreck due to visibility. Heading astern, we gave the ass a slap as directed, and turned to head forward, up between the two huge rudders. Amidships, on the sea bed, we explored the mast, you can see inside it to the ladders, and up to the crows nest spotting area.

The ladder inside the mast. - Photo: Ben Green

Back to the hull we planned to move up shallower to explore inside some of the salvage damage around the engine rooms, but spent too long chilling in the current and wound up very near the bow. Too tempting to resist, we dropped down from the bottom of the hull to the bow, and gave it a boop. With nearly 20 minutes of deco, that was plenty and we headed for home and a nice cup of tea for me, and hot chocolate for Luke (he resisted temptation on the first day, but after seeing everyone else’s amazing drinks he joined in!).

Some extra-curricular activities were planned today, so we nipped to the local Chinese takeaway for a quick dinner and went out for an evening tour of Skara Brae – an uncovered Neolithic village. I would highly recommend an evening tour – because the site was closed to the public, the guide took us into some of the houses usually off limits to the public, so we got a great insight into the place. Only problem was 45 minutes was too short – I’ll definitely need to go back with more time to look around the rest!

Wednesday, Dive Day 3

Getting ready for departure. – Photo: Mark Connelly

A double battleship day today, first on the list, the SMS Markgraf. Emily advised us of an expected slight current running fore to aft down the exposed side of the ship, so the plan was to head to the bow from the shot line against the current (although my suggestion of booping her nose was quickly shot down with the simple fact of it being 16 metres high!), then follow the trail of starboard guns aft. This is affectionately known as “The Gun Run”, as you can spot six out of seven of her starboard 5.9” guns, but at over 40 metres below the surface, you have to get through them at a decent pace as you’re quickly racking up deco time as you go. After the guns, we would shallow up over the top to explore the exposed engine rooms with whatever gas we had left. A simple enough plan, and with lessons learnt from the previous two days diving (mine and Luke’s dives were significantly longer than the rest of the team), Luke and I were first to hit the water and get below. Well, things don’t always go to plan, and this was no exception. Once we got off the bottom of the shot, we found the current to be sneaking round the wreck the wrong way, and was in fact running toward the bow… Not insurmountable, but certainly a frustration! So, with a very easy swim to the bow, I tried to get some pictures to illustrate just how massive it was, but alas the vis was pretty poor, you can still just about make it out with Luke for scale though!

In this amazing vis, you can clearly see Luke and the enormous bow of the Markgraf.  – Photo: Ben Green

With that exercise in futility completed, we made our way back to the shot and continued on to hunt out the guns. It was a bit of work fighting the current, but as we made our way alongside the hull we were able to make out each of the six guns we were looking for – although no pictures as I didn’t fancy fighting the current, and the narcosis, for longer than required! Main objective successful, we manoeuvred up the hull and around the wreckage of the salvage damage where we found some respite from the current. Continuing aft, we found ourselves at the massive rudders, a bit further back than planned! We pootled round the rudders, and back with the current to take a look at the remnants of her prop shafts, and shot up our SMBs for a slow, 30 minute ascent to the surface. Luke’s main comment after the dive was along the lines of “While I enjoy staring into your beautiful blues, could we have a bit less deco on the next dive please?” So, with that in mind, we wolfed down our soup and cake and set about planning the next dive!

The SMS König, lead ship of the three König class battleships interred at Scapa Flow would be our second dive of the day, and to Luke’s relief, she’s a fair bit shallower than the Markgraf, helped by all the interesting stuff being accessed from the top of the wreck (which is the bottom of the hull, as she, like all the others, rolled over as she sank due to the massive weight of the gun turrets.) We were first in again, and the shot line dropped neatly just above the first point of interest, the remnants of a large steam turbine. There were bits of machinery and broken turbine everywhere, enough to keep me happy poking around for ages – but there were two of us, lots to see, and a limited gas supply! Heading aft, the next port of call was the underside of one of the König’s main 12” gun turrets. It was a fair way down in the ship, possibly part of the shell elevator that took shells and propellant from their storage areas deep in the hull. It was big enough to drop into and have a look around, but it didn’t take too long, so once we’d both had a look, we continued aft to the thick armour plating that made up the stern section of “The Citadel” – the central section of the ship (from the forward gun turrets to the aft turrets) was contained in it’s own super armoured section, to separate it and the highly explosive propellant stores, from the also highly explosive torpedo stores! After a good look around there, we moseyed back on down to the shot line, where we met some other folks underwater! A quick hello / goodbye was waved to Tracey, Rick, and Pete, as we continued forward to look at an exposed water tube boiler (“The Centipede”) and the bilge keels, then followed those along to the “Prison Bars” – this looked like a nice stop for a photo shoot, and having forgotten the last thing on the list (another water tube boiler tucked further forward), we bagged off and went to collect our ready made hot chocolates (and fudge sticks!)

Help! I’m in Prison! Showcasing the amazing amount of marine life on these wrecks. – Photo: Luke Connelly

Unfortunately, even this didn’t go to plan! While getting myself back onto the lift, I managed to jar an old rotator cuff injury in my right shoulder, and went to rapidly get changed out of my dive kit so I could chill out and hope it magically went away (another spoiler alert… it didn’t)

No plans for local tourism this evening, Tracey made us chicken sweet and sour to go with the leftover Chinese and other bits, and we settled into a quiet evening of chatting, writing up dive logs, and nursing buggered shoulders…

Thursday, Dive Day 4 – sort of…

Having had a total of about 90 minutes sleep due to my shoulder injury, I elected not to go diving today, and instead get myself down to the local doctors to get it checked out. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew got packed up and headed down to the dock, only to be met with dire news – a storm had blown in overnight and the weather out in the flow was less than ideal for diving! Presented with two options, either head out and try to dive some of the more sheltered wrecks with the risk that even they may be blown out, or stay dry for the day and explore the island, they chose the more sensible option of having a look round topside.

Once I’d popped to the docs (appointment 20 minutes after I called!) and got a supply of painkillers, I got back to be presented with a few plans; there were two cars heading out to look at different bits. I jumped in Pete’s car to head out to Twatt (because we’re still children and wanted photos with the sign at the edge of the village… alas, there was no sign to be seen), up to the Kitchener memorial, over to the abandoned RNAS base “HMS Tern”, then to the Ring of Brodgar and Stennes Stones on the way back. The day was mostly dry, just incredibly windy – I’m not sure who thought it would be a good plan to hike up to the top of a cliff in gale force winds, but it was certainly an adventure!

Control Tower at RNAS Twatt, with Ben taking inspiration from the location’s name… - Photo: Pete Hotchkin-Jones

Stennes Stones, with a Ben for scale. – Photo: Pete Hotchkin-Jones

While we were off exploring the north west, Mark and his retinue opted to head south east to see the Churchill Barriers and the Italian Chapel, and Rick popped over to look round Kirkwall, which handily had a Tesco to pick up some bits for fajitas when we all got back, cooked by Joe and Rick. Despite Joe’s involvement, dinner contained thankfully few oats.

Time for our last cultural trip of the week, an evening tour of Maeshowe, a Neolithic burial mound which contains a large amount of Viking graffiti – apparently 60% of the extant Viking runes in the UK, and one of the largest collections in Europe! Because there were no children present, our guide was able to provide us with a more accurate translation of some of the more adult phrases – you’ll have to look them up though, I shalln’t repeat them here!

Friday, Dive Day 5? 4? Lost track now

Last diving day for most of the crew, or those that had survived the week at least! Mark went with Joe to the doctors for another checkup on his head injury, and I was sitting the day out with my shoulder, so only six were still standing for the final two dives.

It was suggested that we did the SMS Brummer, as the only cruiser in the High Seas Fleet we hadn’t yet got to, and revisited a previous wreck of our choice. This discussion was on Wednesday afternoon, so I asked for the Karlsruhe as Luke and I hadn’t really got to dive it the first time (I guess I’ll have to wait for the next trip to get a dive on it!) Nobody objected, so that wound up being the last dive.

The SMS Brummer was a minelaying cruiser, the lead ship of her class, and the only one of her type still in the Flow. There was plenty to see here judging by our briefing, including lots of opportunity to see the tracks the mines ran along while they were deployed into the water. Luke got out of the water here saying it was the best dive of the week! Thanks mate… They do say that every cloud has a silver lining though; I spotted a pod of dolphins while up in the wheelhouse chatting to Emily and got to see mummy (or daddy!) and baby dolphins playing in the bow wave while everyone else was getting kitted up, so that was a fun experience!

Emily once again demonstrated her expert knowledge by suggesting alternate routes on the Karlsruhe for everyone as it was at least their second dive on her, pointing out some of the harder to find goodies that would be much easier to spot now we had a bit more experience on the wrecks. Luke managed to find the correct response after this dive, saying something along the lines of “eh, you didn’t miss much”, and for that I was appreciative!

Having got the boat all unloaded when back at the dock, I felt like a bit of a chocolate teapot with my shoulder, just having to watch while everyone else got the kit all off and loaded onto their vehicles, and then helped pack mine. It is lovely to be part of a club where everyone helps each other out though, I would have really struggled without the assistance!

In the evening, we got our kit back at the house packed up (at least this is a lot lighter and I could manage on my own!), before heading to the pub over the road for fish and chip Friday! It was a nice pub to sit and relax in, with a beer and some tasty grub, before we headed back to prep for our early morning. Julian was on the evening ferry from Kirkwall, so he made his way out a little earlier in the evening after many hugs and “safe journey!”s. As Tracey says, we arrive as acquaintances but leave as friends.

We come as acquaintances and leave as friends. – Photo: Joe Geehan

Saturday, Hometime!

Very early start today, into the queue for the ferry at 0530, and quite a lumpy voyage back over the Penland Firth – Once I’d sat down, I decided it was probably best to stay there, and about half of us just sat in the café until we made our way into Stromness harbour! Those feeling slightly sturdier spent their voyage out on deck to get a few last views of the islands before stepping onto the mainland and beginning the long old journey home. Lots of hugs and goodbyes as we made our way down to the vehicles, I think everyone had a great time despite the challenges that were presented to us along the way!

smiles, bye bye Orkney, for now! – Photo: Mark Connelly

Due to being transportationally challenged, Joe hitched a ride with me down to Glasgow where he was able to pick up a courtesy car (well, a courtesy van – he couldn’t get all his kit into the suggested Fiat 500 the rental company offered him initially!) On the way, we stopped off at the Falkirk Wheel for an ice cream and a wander, and a quick bit of engineering geekery, but otherwise had an uneventful journey – exactly what was required after the drama of his journey up! With that, I continued home, with many food stops on the way, and eventually made it at just after eight, very knackered! Time for a cup of tea and some quiet reflection on the week’s adventures! (And perhaps thinking about the next trip… Once you’ve been, you will definitely want to go back!)