Talk:Scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow

Gutter Sound
Please note that there is considerable overlap between this new article and Gutter Sound. Ben  Mac  Dui  18:46, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Nuclear weapons contaminated worlds steel supply?
Minor salvage is still carried out to recover small pieces of steel that can be used in radiation sensitive devices, such as Geiger counters, as the ships sank before nuclear weapons and tests irradiated the world's supply of steel.

The listed reference shows this came out of a book, but I couldn't confirm this fact anywhere online. Even steel that hasn't been made yet is contaminated? The buried iron ore steel is made from is more irradiated than the steel under a bit of water in the North Atlantic? --Fxer (talk) 17:39, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * That's correct. The background radiation in the atmosphere after the atomic bomb tests makes these wrecks important sources of steel that do not have this contamination. You might also try John Campbell's Castings: The New Metallurgy of Cast Metals for further confirmation. Benea (talk) 21:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Wow, I would figure iron ore buried under hundreds of feet of rock would be better protected from atmospheric radiation than steel under a hundred feet of water or so --75.148.92.149 (talk) 22:49, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, but how do you make steel out of iron ore? First you have to dig it up and smelt it, which introduces it to the irradiated external environment, and there you have the problem. Any steel produced nowadays will have this contamination, as will steel that was produced before the atomic bomb tests and has been exposed to the atmosphere. Steel that has been underwater has not been exposed in this way, and by removing it from the wrecks and installing them in geiger counters you get a far cleaner type of steel that is much more useful in detecting low levels of radiation. Benea (talk) 22:59, 22 October 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a strange and interesting topic that probably deserves its own article. Drutt (talk) 20:07, 19 November 2008 (UTC)


 * See here: Low-background steel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.7.147.13 (talk) 16:50, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Photos
Are there no photos available of the wrecks being raised in the 1920s and '30s? Sca (talk) 15:56, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

British attempts to stop scuttling
"Nine Germans were killed and another 16 wounded as the British attempted to stop them sinking the fleet"

Well, as far the German version of this Wiki article goes, British forces opened fire at the German sailors in the lifeboats (and on the ships?). Deserves to be mentioned, that the said nine dead Germans were shot at and did not just die somehow.

Chris 17 January 2009 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.55.92.60 (talk) 13:58, 17 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The Sunday Post newspaper of 21 June 2009 carried an article about this, including eyewitness accounts. The direct link to the article has expired but the text has been copied on the Fortean Times Message Boards as follows (it's quite long):

Scapa Flow shootings horrified schoolkids

By Craig Robertson

NINETY years ago today a party of Scottish youngsters woke excitedly on a beautiful sunny morning, looking forward to the school trip of a lifetime.

It was June 21, 1919 and the pupils from Orkney were about to go on a cruise in a small wooden boat to see the surrendered German fleet at Scapa Flow.

Little did they know that they were to have a front-row seat at one of the most astonishing moments in military history — and, in its aftermath, arguably one of the most shameful.

The German High Seas Fleet had been interned at Scapa Flow after the Armistice. In the intervening months it had become a tourist attraction with people taking boat trips out to see the warships.

By June 1919, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, the German officer in command at Scapa Flow, knew that Germany would have to accept surrender terms.

When the main part of the British fleet left the Flow for exercises he gave the order for the German fleet to be scuttled.

The boatload of children from Stromness unexpectedly became witnesses not only to the scuttling, but to a much less publicised event — the shooting of unarmed sailors in the sea and in rescue boats.

Posterity

The reactions of the horrified school pupils were recorded for posterity by Orcadian journalist Kath Gourlay who accompanied “the children”, who are now all dead, on a remarkable return voyage to Scapa Flow in June 1989.

“I was working as a trainee radio reporter for BBC Scotland when I went out in a boat with a party of divers,” remembers Kath. “In the boat with us were some of the ‘children’ — 10 to 12 years old at the time and by then in their early 80s.

“My main interviewees were Peggy Gibson, Kitty Tait and J.R.T. Robertson, a retired Stromness provost. They sailed out into Scapa Flow to recall what they’d seen at the time.”

Peggy told Kath that the sights of that fateful day were “etched in my memory”.

“I was 10 and I was already beside myself with excitement that morning,” she’d said. “We’d been told we’d be able to see the British fleet guarding the German fleet but just after we left the harbour, a message came that the Royal navy were out and we’d only see HMS Victorious, a hospital ship.

“We were a bit put out but once we went down the Flow and began to see the German destroyers looming up we forgot about all that. They were absolutely massive alongside us.

Sinking

“The German ships were minutes away from sinking,” says Kath. “I remember Peggy Gibson cupping her hands megaphone-style and really getting into the action as she described a navy supply boat steaming towards them and a man shouting at them to get out of the area.

“But the skipper of their boat, the Flying Kestrel, thought he’d be safer heading back the way he’d come, which afforded his charges a sight they’d never forget.

“It was unbelievable,” Peggy told Kath. “I was too awestruck to be terrified, which I should have been as we could have been pulled into the undertow.

“I counted 12 capital ships going down. Some stood on their bows and turned over, some went over by their side, and some just sank. There was water boiling everywhere and horrible sucking and gurgling sounds.

“There were men in the water, on rafts and boats, hundreds of them.”

Those men, unarmed and posing no threat, ought to have been hauled to safety but not all were. Peggy didn’t recall gunshots but the other two children certainly did — sights and sounds that stayed with them their entire lives.

Crying

“One of my friends started crying because she’d seen British sailors shooting at men in the water,” Kitty had said. “She said she saw a man being shot and he fell out of the boat into the sea.”

Her memories were corroborated in what a British officer later described as “pandemonium with a strong dash of panic” among the British guard boats when it dawned on them what was happening.

“The officer commanding the Markgraf was shot as he walked on to the deck of the sinking warship carrying a white flag for all to see,” explains Kath. “What possible threat the hundreds of unarmed struggling sailors in the water could have been is a complete mystery.”

J.R.T. Robertson, the boy who was to become Provost, admitted being haunted by what he heard.

“As we got further away,” he said, “we heard machine guns rattling and stopping, rattling and stopping, over and over again — I never forgot that sound.”

Even when the surviving Germans were taken on to British boats they were still not safe. “At least one local boat was seen by one of the schoolkids with a sniper taking pot shots at the prisoners as they were taken ashore,” says Kath.

Last to die

In all, eight German sailors were shot dead and 16 wounded. However, that wasn’t the end of the killing.

Two days later, a rescued German named Kuno Eversberg became the last sailor to die as a direct result of a war that had ended nine months before.

He was a prisoner on HMS Resolution when a drunken able seaman named James Woolley marched in with a rifle and shot him in cold blood “to get his own back” — according to a witness, able seaman John Copeland — for the loss of family members during the war.

The Admiralty had no choice but to comply with the law and Woolley stood trial in Edinburgh. After just 20 minutes, the jury came back with a unanimous “not proven” verdict.

The court is said to have erupted in cheers and Woolley was dismissed from custody, justice apparently having been served. He was seen being heartily congratulated by his naval friends.

Admiral von Reuter accused his counterpart, Vice-Admiral Sir Sydney Freemantle, of atrocities. However Freemantle’s denials were — like those of James Woolley — upheld by the British military.

Brutal

“Historically speaking the events of that time are well documented and it would hardly be appropriate to comment 90 years later,” a naval spokesman said last week. “It was a totally different era.

“It was a brutal time and scars from the Great War led to other brutal things.

“You can’t compare it with today’s circumstances.”

“So much has been written about the scuttling of the fleet at Scapa Flow,” concludes Kath, “but what has never been featured is the ‘human rights’ side of the affair — the cold-blooded murder of unarmed men and the abuse and killing of prisoners in military detention.

“There was nothing officially acknowledged. The Woolley killing was just so blatant the Admiralty had no option but to go public — not that the public seemed bothered.

“Back in 1919, the hard-nosed attitude of civilians, members of the press, lawmakers and magistrates equally matched those of the military men — from naval ratings through to high-ranking officials — that this sort of treatment was par for the course.”


 * Hope this is of interest/use. 87.81.230.195 (talk) 13:48, 6 September 2009 (UTC)


 * As the old saying goes, there's nothing more unreliable than an eye-witness. Especially a child.  Or even worse, a witness in their eighties recalling memories as a child in a deliberately staged trip over Scapa Flow.


 * "The Admiralty had no choice but to comply with the law … " An unveiled accusation that the Royal Navy intended to cover-up the murder?  Shame the reporter didn't quote the navy spokesman on that.


 * It's also noteworthy that the reporter doesn't comment on the legality of the scuttling, or the fact that the Germans, "unarmed and posing no threat" had technically restarted the war. The inability to spell Fremantle's name is amusing - indicative of his approach to reporting I assume.  Kath Gourlay obviously never read Van der Vat's book, "but what has never been featured is the ‘human rights’ side of the affair — the cold-blooded murder of unarmed men and the abuse and killing of prisoners in military detention."


 * Thank God Wikipedia can bring some measured accuracy to the table compared to the above rot. --Simon Harley (talk | library | book reviews) 14:48, 6 September 2009 (UTC)


 * Always the same! The Brits are always as eager for pointing out the wrongdoing of others as they are to deny or hide their own atrocities! How could someone restart a war being unarmed and in a lifeboat? Your attempts to try to hide this massacre are disgusting! --92.223.57.205 (talk) 13:03, 24 May 2011 (UTC)


 * One officer, Lt-Cdr Walther Schumann was waving a white flage, when he was shot in the head. Dan van der Vat: The Grand Scuttle. The sinking of the German fleet at Scapa Flow. Naval Instiute Press, Annapolis 1986. Page 176. Library of Congress 85-60374.--85.180.30.114 (talk) 17:40, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

The mechanics of scuttling
How, exactly, were the ships sunk? The interned sailors drilled holes in the hull from the inside? -Freekee (talk) 03:09, 6 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I've added a little detail on this. Scuttling has more on how a ship may be scuttled, but in the case of the German warships each watertight compartment had a flood valve which allowed the compartment to be flooded, usually for fire-fighting purposes. These were opened, as were the seacocks and condenser valves, while watertight doors were left open. Holes were drilled through some bulkheads, but this was to allow water to spread from one compartment to another, rather than being a method of water ingress to the hull itself. Benea (talk) 17:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Seemed like an important detail. :-) -Freekee (talk) 19:44, 6 June 2009 (UTC)


 * I saw an interesting chart of the SMS Seydlitz showing how watertight compartments were deliberately flooded to counterbalance compartments flooded by battle damage in the Battle of Jutland: the goal was to keep the ship from listing: deliberately flooding a compartment to counter balance a compartment flooded by torpedo or shell damage appears to have been an important part of battle damage control. Naaman Brown (talk) 13:48, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Barrel of Butter?
OK; What's up with the barrel of butter in the map of the fleet? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.254.147.116 (talk) 13:59, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * see Barrel of Butter. David Underdown (talk) 14:42, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

Unsalvaged ships?
I was looking at the FA nomination for the SMS Kronprinz (1914) and the SMS König which claims the ship was unsalvaged, and I notice this article says the same thing. Its true all of the remaining 7 ships were never raised to the surface and scrapped, but I think all have been partially salvaged, with the possible exception of the Markgraf. I'm going to update the table; however I don't have access to page 141 of Lost on the ocean floor: diving the world's ghost ships;the google book version indicates it appears to have some details about the salvage attempts on each ship which would be useful in this article. Kirk (talk) 17:50, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Weimar?
In what sense was the Weimar Republic a belligerent (see box)? As far as I can tell, the action was undertaken by the fleet in contravention of the commitments made by the Republic's representatives who had signed the treaty. And didn't the ships raise the ensign of the Kaiserliche Marine? Slac speak up! 06:41, 5 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, there was no such country called the "Weimar Republic" at any time in history. Jelay14 (talk) 18:52, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The Kaiser had released all military and naval personnel from their oaths of allegiance to him on 28 November, 1918, so the Germans at Scapa Flow certainly weren't operating under the orders of the German Empire. --Simon Harley (Talk | Library). 19:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not saying they necessarily were operating under the Kaiser's authority. I just question whether the "German Republic" could be listed as a belligerent.  It's not any more true that they were operating under the authority of the Ebert Regime. Slac speak up! 02:14, 6 May 2011 (UTC)


 * It was the German Reich, which is the formal name for Germany between 1871 and 1945. "Weimar Republic," just like "Second Reich" and "Third Reich," are names used as references for specific eras. Jelay14 (talk) 02:44, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Armistice
Quoting from another entry.

The original Armistice was prolonged three times before peace was finally ratified.

First Armistice 11 November 1918 - 13 December 1918. First prolongation of the armistice 13 December 1918 - 16 January 1919. Second prolongation of the armistice 16 January 1919 - 16 February 1919. Third prolongation of the armistice 16 February 1919 - 10 January 1920.

If the German fleet was scuttled in June 1919 was the German Admiral Reuter never informed that the third prologation of the Amistice was to last until January 1920? AT Kunene (talk) 06:58, 16 May 2011 (UTC)


 * You are confusing the Armistice with Germany with the Treaty of Versailles. The end of hostilities was a de facto reality, and had been since November 1918, the prolongations refer to its ratification by the countries involved. It was the Treaty of Versailles which concerned Reuter, since it set out the conditions under which Germany would surrender, and he assumed it would involve the order to hand over his ships. I think the article makes this fairly clear. Benea (talk) 09:18, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

Meaning of "Paragraph Eleven"
My recent edit regarding the meaning of the obscure code-word "Paragaph Eleven" which referred to German Wikipedia was just deleted, with the comment "German Wikipedia is not a RS".

Is "Ludwig von Reuter: Scapa Flow: Das Grab der Deutschen Flotte. K. F. Koehler, 1921" a RS? May I reinstate the edit with this sorce? Or do I have to provide an online source? -- 92.226.1.43 (talk) 13:03, 30 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, that appears to be a reliable source although you should provide the page number on which the information can be found. English sources are strongly preferred, if available. Reliable sources need not be available online, but in fact this one is: http://archive.org/details/scapaflowdasgra00reutgoog.--Srleffler (talk) 17:08, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Dentists
has been changing the text from 'and the British refused to provide one.' [a dentist] to 'and there were no British dentists.' The cite is to Massie on page 785, and I quote a larger section from his book verbatim. "There were doctors in the fleet, but no dentist, and the British refused to provide one. Men with decayed teeth or broken dentures had priority in going home." Van der Vat's The Grand Scuttle, p.138 has "There was not a single dentist in the fleet, nor were the British prepared to provide dental facilities ashore. No dentist volunteered to go into internment before the ships left Germany." At the very least a new source should be provided before the change is made. Otherwise further reversions will be treated as incorrect changes to sourced information in a good article, and reverted. Benea (talk) 01:02, 27 June 2012 (UTC)

New Ships
A point apparently not being made is that these were almost new warships. If these ships had been farmed out to several nations, these would have acquired new warships at minimal cost although spares would probably have to be purchased from Germany.

By contrast the ships of the RN would have been badly worn by four years hard and constant steaming. In the cash strapped years following WW1, sooner or later some British politician would have started enquiring about the RN taking over new ex German warships, the same ships that had formerly been the potential targets of RN guns.

To the neutral nations the "Great" RN being obliged to take over the warships of a former enemy to save new building cost would have had considerble political repercussions.AT Kunene (talk) 10:25, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

NPOV and reliability
The article has been rated as good. Yet it has its issues, some of which have even been brought up here on the discussion page. For one, it is pretty interesting to compare it with the more concise article in the German wikipedia. For another, it relies too much on Marder as a source, but Marder was, er, fascinated by the British side of history. For another, I wonder why the speech of the British admiral chastising the Germans is given in full whereas the death of the German sailors is not even given a cause (while we even learn the admiral had a human side and understood his adversary somehow). It has been brought up here on this discussion page without any effect. The article cares for the German side of things only when it can bring up Red Guards stomping, filth, the claimed total lack of discipline, and so on. Pretty much POV, if you ask me. The background - Germany had to provide the fleet with food - is addressed only in so far as the food was bad, but no mention of the blockade of Germany is made which was enforced since 1915 with desperate results on the general German public.

Then, points are missing such as that Beatty forced the fleet to sail under the British flag. It was seen as a major humiliation and fuelled German suspicions that the entire fleet would fall to the British. I could go on for long. But I think I made my point. -- Zz (talk) 21:59, 10 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Could you add the point about having to sail under the White Ensign to the main text with supporting references, - other accounts mention only that the Imperial flag was ordered hauled down upon the fleet's arrival in the Firth of Forth (though one can see that for practical purposes there might have had to be some means of distinguishing a fleet that had come out to surrender from one that had come out to go down fighting). The deplorable shooting of the nine German sailors has always been well known and generally attributed to panic and outrage amongst the handful of RN guard-boats present. The article as it stands seems to me to be a balanced account but you should not hesitate to edit doubtful passages - most readers will not think to go looking through the talk page for clarification. Buistr (talk) 09:10, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
 * There is no balance in giving a lengthy quote from the speech of the British commander while just making a short note of the death of the German sailors. It is telling to see that this has been pointed out on the talk page for years. Don't you think that an encyclopedic article should give more than a passing reference to "well known" events? And that is just one tree from the forest, so to speak. The article in its current status attempts to look good by by treating certain minor details extensively. This may look scientific, but it can also serve to hide a bias.
 * I think the speech is not of encyclopedic relevance, but that it reflects on a bias of the main author(s) and the over-reliance on one source. I want to delete that. More to come. -- Zz (talk) 15:54, 25 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Agree that Fremantle's speech needs to be cut: it gives undue weight to a small part of the entire episode. I have removed it and summarized with "Fremantle denounced their actions as dishonourable" instead (since the word 'honour' appeared FIVE TIMES). —Molly-in-md (talk) 15:14, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Gutter Sound
This article as it stands does not seem to contribute anything to our knowledge that is not already in the main article- nothing about history, geography, for instance; the only thing that makes this article notable is the sinking, and that is covered elsewhere. Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi  18:36, 5 June 2015 (UTC)
 * On edit: Err, sorry-! This note was meant to be on the Gutter Sound page of course, rater than here, which is of course a VERY contributory article!!! Fortuna  Imperatrix Mundi  18:40, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Closed; I've summarized the stuff on the scuttling there and re-written the Gutter Sound article as a location piece. I trust that resolves the matter, so I am deleting the Merge tags. Xyl 54 (talk) 21:19, 6 July 2016 (UTC)

Airships
The article is missing information on the deliberate destruction of airships in their hangars around the same time. If I get around to it, I'll look it up in my books, in what way the authors say it was connected to the Fleet's Scuttling at Scapa Flow. --BjKa (talk) 10:15, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

This article is an excellent example of the tyranny of the Anglocentric clique dominating the English language Wikipedia.
Despite the fact that there are more English speakers in the world outside the Anglosphere than within it, en.wikipedia has been dominated by a very English/British/UK/Commonwealth POV since Day One.

I find it fascinating, how a community so hellbent on stamping out blatant POV, is perfectly fine with POV that doesn't tarnish the clique.

Case in point; there is absolutely zero mention in this article of any of the German sailors shot in the act or executed after. Though I see in talk page history it's been mentioned; there's been plenty of time to have had it sourced and added to the article, but it has not been. I have been around Wikipedia long enough to know why. And long enough to know that any disingenuous retort to me insinuating that I should "be bold" and do it myself is a joke, because it would be edited right out.

"9 killed. 16 wounded." And you just leave it at that. Just leave it like that for the reader to assume all deaths and injuries were directly related to the acts of scuttling. No mention of unnecessary executions of sailors who were following their last orders. In a situation where, had roles been reversed, any RN sailor with any shred of pride would have done the same. Jersey John (talk) 11:45, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
 * Well,, although you have a robust political viewpoint, I'm not sure I disagree with the kernel of your remarks; Nine Germans were shot and killed is rather anodyne and anaemic. And completely begs the question: why? What had they done? If an article raises a relevant question, it should attempt to answer it. Not doing so makes something of a mockery of any claim to be comprehensive. —SerialNumber54129  paranoia / cheap sh*t room 11:54, 6 August 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the recent page move
Some of you might have noticed that the name of the article has been changed. I made the bold move to address its grammar because it was a sight for sore eyes. I've already renamed all related categories as well and updated the category links on all associated articles. This was a necessary change. If Scapa Flow had been preceded by a grammatical article (the), then one might speak of the scuttling of the fleet in the Scapa Flow. Although that's still up for debate.

What's funny is that I felt a bit a nagging doubt after I'd already changed the name, but now that I'm fixing links on mainspace pages, (not necessary—I know—if it weren't for the fact that the redirect is still grammatically incorrect) I notice most articles already use various piped links to get around this issue. Anyways, take care. Jay D. Easy (talk) 16:39, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Apologies if I took it too far with regard to the shipwreck categories at Scapa Flow (not the scuttling category). If consensus is to revert I will help out. Jay D. Easy (talk) 17:53, 7 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Hmmm. Necessary? Incorrect? Not in my grammar. Proper names in English for enclosed bodies of water do not usually take the definitive article and they are not a "place" that requires "at". "In" is the normal positional preposition: in Lake Ontario, in Ullswater, in Lough Long, in Plymouth Sound - and almost consistently used (references excepted), as I would have expected, in Scapa Flow, until today.  Per English Wiktionary:
 * in: Used to indicate location, inclusion, or position within spatial, temporal or other limits.
 * at: In, near, or in the general vicinity of a particular place.
 * I'll grant that both in and at are used in sources. Interestingly, while Cox's Navy uses "at" in the subtitle, it is "in" on the first page of the book itself, and then a random mixture of both - a bit like the present state of Scapa Flow. Davidships (talk) 21:21, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think either is right or wrong – both seem to be widely used – but for me "in" feels much more natural and idiomatic for an enclosed body of water. If the move had been proposed and discussed I would have opposed, but now that it's done I wouldn't make a fuss about it. --Deskford (talk) 22:30, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Agree that it seems to be one of these grammatical ambiguities where even the most pedantic of us cannot find a clear conclusion. Rather unhelpfully the Encyclopaedia Britannica, in its last hard copy edition, refers to the German fleet being interned in Scapa Flow and the British fleet being stationed at Scapa Flow.  Buistr (talk) 01:03, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Why was the order to scuttle issued?
Either my English is bad or the article contains a controversy that is not resolved. It's clear why Reuter would scuttle the ships but the decision seems to be against his own orders, the Paragraph 11 is quoted as: "'It is my intention to sink the ships only if the enemy should attempt to obtain possession of them without the assent of our government. Should our government agree in the peace to terms to the surrender of the ships, then the ships will be handed over, to the lasting disgrace of those who have placed us in this position.'" The treaty wasn't signed but neither did the British try to board the ships by the time the scuttling order was issued. I suspect – but only suspect – that the British torpedo excercise was mistaken as an attack by Reuter (2 hours after the Navy was already at sea?). Such an important information should be clearly stated. Or was it because the first peace treaty deadline was nearing without Germany agreeing to terms and Reuter was afraid that the British Navy will board the ships at that moment? Before the actual deadline or was 11:20 already 12:20 in Paris? -- Messlo (talk) 16:09, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

double sentence ?
"On that day he sent out orders, [...]. His orders were sent to the interned ships on 18 June." i would erase one of these, but the first would reduce the clarity and the second is separately sourced. maybe someone involved with the article could check if this really needs to be said twice in the paragraph. 84.215.194.129 (talk) 21:33, 20 July 2023 (UTC)