Souls of Scapa Flow

9th July 1917

Alex MacKay should have been asleep in bed. It was nearly twenty past eleven at night, yet he was sat cross-legged in rough grass sweeping binoculars greedily over an array of warships at rest in the Orkney twilight. He had a practised routine of artfully placing two pillows lengthways in his bed, climbing out the bedroom window, shinning down the drainpipe, then sprinting low to his vantage point like a soldier under fire to avoid being seen. His evening perch afforded an elevated view beyond Hoy’s shores, out over the island of Flotta and the waters of Scapa Flow, to the dark, low folds of Orkney’s mainland beyond.

Scapa Flow, two Norse words the war had made common parlance across the British empire and beyond. Its wind-swept waters, largely enveloped by the islands of Orkney, offered a protected anchorage from which the Royal Navy could control the North Sea. At twelve years old, Alex didn’t really care about why the navy was there, only that it was. He devoured the newspapers for any news of the fleet, though didn’t need a broadsheet to tell him there were nearly two hundred ships in front of him that evening. 

Alex settled his magnified gaze on a battleship anchored close to Flotta and smiled to himself at the sight. HMS Vanguard was a ship he knew well. He’d seen it many times and could recite the details he’d written about her in his scrapbook:

St Vincent Class Dreadnought

Length: 536 feet

19,700 tons

5 pairs of 12 inch guns

14x4 inch guns

2x3 inch anti-aircraft guns

13x18 inch torpedo tubes

13x4 inch anti-torpedo guns

Top speed: 24 knots

Alex had seen her return to the anchorage earlier that evening, presumably after an exercise and though the light was fading, he could clearly discern the movement of sailors on her decks like busy ants, scurrying beneath the massive guns.

As he focused on the front turret, the great ship seemed to shiver for a moment, then a tongue of angry flame leapt skywards from behind the forecastle, quickly followed by an orange fireball and a thunderous boom that made Alex flinch and drop his binoculars, before a second explosion obscured the great ship in a burgeoning cloud of fire, smoke and debris. When he tried to refocus with trembling hands, HMS Vanguard was gone. A slew of floating wreckage amid a slick of oil was the only trace of her and of over eight hundred men.

Alex sat for a while, mouth agape, breathing and blinking rapidly as a collective wail of alarms rang from the surrounding ships as they moved to ‘Action Stations’. It was if the fleet was crying for her dead. He ran home, almost jumping tear streaked into his mother’s arms at the front door. There was no inquest into why he was outside past bedtime or a chastening slipper from his father as there had been when he was last caught. Nothing was said. It simply wasn’t important tonight.

Later, as Alex lay in bed, the incredible sight of the Vanguard’s last moments replayed in his mind over and again. It was several hours before he succumbed to a fitful sleep. As the days passed, the shock faded and Alex gradually thought less of what he had seen that July night, but he would never forget it, especially as there was never a definitive explanation for the sinking. The resulting enquiry concluded that unstable cordite had caused HMS Vanguard to explode at anchor, the images of which would always remain in Alex’s mind. They were always there, like a series of disturbing photographs in an inside pocket that once inadvertently touched had to be looked at again. 

Alex MacKay would live a long life tending his beef herd on Hoy, only leaving for his wartime service in the army. He saw the scuttling of the German fleet in Scapa Flow in 1919, survived the bullets and shells of Normandy in 1944 and became old enough to receive a birthday card from the Queen in 2005. Yet whenever he was asked about the wars by his family, HMS Vanguard were usually the first words he uttered. And sometimes, when those images flooded his mind once more, his eyes would brim with tears, just as they did on that hill side on Hoy in July 1917.

1

It began because of the seductive power of money. The lure of a fat, pristine wad of £5,000 had dissolved Callum Craigie’s principles and set him on a frightening course he could never have imagined. At this moment though as he steered the Peedie Star through calm waters under an open sky, life felt good. He smiled to himself at the idea of a week in Ibiza and some new alloys that he thought would take his VW Golf to a different level. 

HMS Vanguard’s marker buoy wasn’t difficult to find, bobbing gently just to the North of Flotta, its black and yellow top easily discernible in such fine September weather. Callum turned in the open cab and shouted over his shoulder to the two Americans sat facing each other on the bench seats at the stern, already in their dry suits and prepared to dive.

‘About five minutes!’ 

They both nodded, Dwight O’Neil gave a thumbs up and a Hollywood grin, while Remi Binks immediately went back to checking his kit. They sat opposite one another which summed up so much about them. Dwight was a big, blonde, bluff New Yorker, flush with money from trading on Wall Street and Remi was a slight, dark-haired and serious ICT Manager from Boston who had to squirrel money away for his diving holidays. While Dwight was single and loudly declared his hobbies as wine, women and diving, Remi was contentedly married to Kim and spent most of his leisure time with her and their baby daughter Holly. Remi also liked Baseball and followed the Red Sox on TV, while Dwight was a former Princeton Tigers quarter back and had a season ticket for the Jets. 

However, they had two things in common; both were thirty-three and they loved diving. They’d met in 2022 on a dive boat taking them to Iron Bottom Sound where the wrecks of the Battle of Guadalcanal littered the ocean floor. It had been Dwight’s first trip since qualifying and he appreciated the calm reassurance of an old hand like Remi who had been PADI qualified since he was a teenager. They stayed in touch and 2023 saw them dive to the famed Thistlegorm in the Red Sea after which Remi had piqued Dwight’s interest when he talked about the wrecks of Scapa Flow where the Germans had scuttled their fleet in 1919. 

The pair had been in Orkney almost a week, enjoying the diving to the British blockships and the German warships, Dresden, Cӧln and Karlsruhe. Yet in the evenings at The Murray Arms where they stayed, Dwight had repeatedly talked about HMS Vanguard, the British dreadnought that mysteriously exploded in 1917. As they sat at a corner table in the cosy old bar, Remi reminded him it was a protected site. 

‘Come on Remi, salvage divers have been to it time and again until the ‘80s. Heck the British navy dived on it in 2017!’ implored Dwight.

‘Yeah, to survey it and put a new Ensign on the hull as a memorial. It’s a grave site Dwight, forget it.’

Earlier that day, Dwight had asked the skipper of their dive boat from Scapa Adventures to name his price for a dive to the Vanguard and the glare he received in response led Dwight to think the guy was going to hit him. Undaunted, he had rung every other wreck diving company in Orkney, asking and received the same swift, blunt rejection from them all. One guy had even shouted at him. The accent meant Dwight couldn’t fully decipher the words, but the message was clear enough.

‘Orkneyian dumbfucks!’ spat Dwight when recalling the conversation in the bar later.

‘Orcadians’

‘What?’

‘The locals are called Orcadians,’ replied Remi evenly, ‘and keep your voice lower.’

‘Whatever! They’re still dumbfucks!’

‘Come on Dwight. There’s no need for the prejudice and the language.’

‘Gimme a break man. You get called a jerk every second block in New York.’

‘Maybe that’s just you,’ said Remi with a grin and Dwight laughed aloud.

‘Dwight, the site’s a war grave. Diving to it’s illegal. No one’s gonna agree to take us and I don’t know if I wanna go anyway.’ 

Yet a day later Dwight and Remi were putting their fins on and preparing to step off the Peedie Star, a small blue fishing boat with a white open cabin, wallowing close to the buoy that marked the resting place of HMS Vanguard. Pure chance had brought all three men to this point. Callum was a dive boat crewman for Scapa Adventures, lived in St Margaret’s Hope and frequented The Murray Arms where Dwight and Remi were staying. Dwight recognised the short, stocky frame and cropped ginger hair when he entered the bar, bought him a drink and an hour and two further bottles of Skull Splitter later, Callum had agreed to take them to HMS Vanguard for a fat fee if he could get a friend to lend him his boat. 

Yet Callum wasn’t so affected by his rapid consumption of Orkney’s strongest brew that he didn’t set some clear stipulations. He would drop them near the marker buoy and then move away under the pretence of fishing nearby and return after forty-five minutes at 6pm. The buoy was in clear sight of Flotta’s oil terminal after all and he didn’t want to be answering any difficult questions later. So, Callum insisted that it would be one short dive only and no use of a dive marker that showed their position. HMS Vanguard’s buoy was to be their point of reference for being picked up instead. 

As he’d swirled a single malt round his tumbler, Remi had remained dubious about the risks and the rightness of what Dwight had planned, while his companion clapped Callum on the back as they propped up the bar, saying.

‘Hell yeah! We’re in your hands man!’

Now they were indeed in Callum’s hands, dependent on him finding them after the dive amid strong currents, though visibility was good and the water mercifully calm with only a slight swell. As Remi stood at the boat’s stern and looked at the wreck buoy with its bright yellow panel declaring: VANGUARD WRECK in simple black letters, he felt uncharacteristically sick. He was an excellent diver, calm and economical with his breathing, but at this moment he was everything he didn’t expect or want to be, anxious and conflicted about visiting a war grave. Then Dwight broke his chain of thought. ‘OK bro. Let’s rock-n-roll.’

Remi nodded, climbed on to the seat and stepped over the side. Once in the water, they fitted their masks and respirators, started their smartphone-like dive computers simultaneously and with a joint thumbs down, opened their buoyancy control vests and began their descent in a swirl of bubbles. It grew darker as they dropped deeper into this thrilling, different world and Remi now focused on the dive.

The plan was to stop first at 50 feet, where they should be level with the highest parts of the ship. Once they found the bow, descend another 55 feet just above the seabed and swim south from one end of the wreck site to the other. 

As they levelled off, they gave each other the OK sign to indicate there were no problems as a large pollock moved lazily in and out of view in the translucent green gloom. Dwight’s diving torch clicked on and Remi followed suit, the sharp shafts of brightness reflecting across a shoal of flitting silver bellies as the two beams crossed, probing the water ahead like ghostly searchlights. Almost immediately, the torches played over a sharp metallic shape and Remi felt a surge of adrenalin. Less than forty feet away, the bow of HMS Vanguard pointed upwards. It was as if the great ship was emerging from the seabed. 

Dwight made straight towards her, his light illuminating the rivetted, rusted plates encrusted with marine life. Remi was close behind, his eyes wide behind his mask. To him, shipwrecks were a curious combination of enthralling history and unsettling eeriness. HMS Vanguard proved to be no exception. As they came within touching distance, they were dwarfed by the detached front bow standing as high as a house. It was like a piece from some terrible jigsaw leaving Remi transfixed but also profoundly sad. 

Dwight seemed excitedly animated as usual, moving beyond the broken bow into an open area of water, before giving an extravagant thumbs down. He descended as soon as Remi reciprocated to confirm he too was ready to go deeper. It was a slow, careful manoeuvre with torch lights pointing down to avoid colliding with the wreck or hitting the seabed and throwing up a spray of blinding silt and gravel. Once they were nine feet from the bottom, they levelled out and set a southerly course with their compasses, before swimming steadily and studiously forward.

Within seconds they knew their course was correct as their lights picked out the remains of a gun turret rising drunkenly askew from the seabed like a massive, battered drum. As they moved past the neutered turret from which the guns had long been removed as salvage, they looked down on a debris field of tangled rusting remains. Much appeared as jumbled metal, but here and there, things were recognisable; the bent foremast, a twisted deck rail, a capstan with barnacles, while an encrusted brass porthole lay alone, its shattered glass glinting in the torchlight like a blinded eye. Things that were once pristine and alive with use now lay smashed and decaying.

Even though Remi had done some research, it still hadn’t prepared him for how little of the middle section was discernible as a ship. He shuddered inwardly at the magnitude of the explosion that had reduced her to this and condemned all but three of those on board to such an untimely end. Suddenly, he felt like an intruder, an unwanted guest at a funeral, observing the misery of others.

Dwight meanwhile, was revelling in the dive. It wasn’t the biggest wreck he’d seen, heck there wasn’t really a lot there, but to see what other modern divers didn’t and also what they shouldn’t was a definite thrill. After all, the sneaky joint behind the gym at college was always way better than one at a party. 

As he kicked languidly and scanned the scattered remnants of the ship, Dwight spotted something different; a small glimpse of white and blue among the rusting, broken brown. He dived down and shone his light close to, revealing the lip of a blue and white plate peeping out of the silt. Dwight smiled to himself and reached carefully for it, easing it upwards and trying not to disturb the seabed too much. As he freed it, he felt a sharp pain in his right index finger, like the piercing of a needle and dropped the object in a spray of silt. He assumed he must have caught the spine of a sea urchin, or a sharp remnant of mollusc, though couldn’t see anything stuck in his glove. As he was examining himself, the beam of Remi’s light moved over him and his buddy came close, concern clear in his eyes. There was no pain now and nothing to see, so Dwight responded with a thumbs up and looked for the object once more in the settling silt. He spotted it straight away. It seemed to sit looking at him. It was a mess plate, white, with the traditional blue floral pattern round its rim and MESS No. 12 under a blue crown in its centre. Dwight reached down, more tentatively this time, as if it were alive somehow, but this time he simply lifted it clear of the seabed. He held it up for Remi to see and could have predicted his reaction.   

Dwight placed the plate in his dive bag and Remi shook his head violently. Damn you Remi, you’re not my dad, thought Dwight as he shone the light back to where he’d found the plate. There was a second glint of white and blue and when he felt into the silt, he discovered a second rim close behind the first. Dwight surmised the plates had been in some sort of rack or wooden cupboard long since rotted away. He was practically blind in a fog of particles as he felt for the second and third plates, placing them in his bag before ascending slightly so he could escape the silt storm he’d created. After adjusting the bag so it sat on his hip, Dwight checked his dive computer indicating they still had another eight of their fifteen minutes at 110 feet, enough time to reach the stern and cover the length of the dive site.     

Remi knew he was breathing faster than he should, but he was angry. An illicit dive was one thing, taking artefacts from a war grave something else entirely. At that moment he fought the urge to surface and wait to tell Dwight some home truths but knew they had to stay together for safety reasons. He too was keeping a close check on the time and the one consolation was there wasn’t long left for Dwight to do anything else stupid. 

So, Remi kicked on behind Dwight as they swam above the debris until they spotted what remained of X Turret. Like A Turret, the first one they’d seen, it was a large solid cylinder disgorging entrails of metal from the top and as they moved to its left, Y Turret also came into hazy view with the silhouette of the ship’s stern rising behind it. 

They closed on Vanguard’s stern lying on her port side as Dwight pointed his beam downwards to illuminate the port rudder half buried in the silt just as a large wrasse cruised past it, glinting in the shaft of light. Remi then gestured to Dwight to follow the curve of the stern round. It grew darker as they swam in the shade of the ship, their torches offering the only real illumination and the water became noticeably colder on their hands and feet.

On reaching the port side, Remi found what he was looking for, the word VANGUARD still showing in fading white letters despite the scabbing marine life mottling the ship. Remi shook his head at the sight, while Dwight was ruing the fact he’d agreed not to bring a camera. Time underwater was now short and they concluded the dive by swimming over the stern deck where a gun fringed with rusticles stood alone and redundant.

They ascended steadily to a depth of fifteen feet over three minutes, then levelled out for another three as a precaution against the ‘bends’. As they remained suspended in the water, the blurred outline of the wreck site just visible below, Remi was wrestling with mixed emotions. Seeing the Vanguard was an amazing experience, one few divers would ever have, but it just felt wrong. And as for Dwight’s pilfering, Remi was struggling to find the words for what he wanted to say once they were on the boat. 

When they finally surfaced, they were a hundred yards or so from the memorial buoy as expected. Remi pointed towards it and they swam face down to gain maximum power from their fins, pausing occasionally to check their course. As they raised their heads close to the buoy, they heard, then saw the blue hull and white wheelhouse of the Peedie Star, puttering towards them. Within minutes, with Callum’s help and the aid of a ladder, they were on board sitting opposite each other where Remi fixed Dwight with a glare.

‘What’s eating you man?’ asked Dwight.

‘You know what Dwight!’

‘A few freakin’ plates! What’s the big deal?’ said Dwight, as he brought them out of his dive bag. He held one up with a defiant smile. Remi’s face hadn’t changed and Callum, who had turned to see what the raised voices were for, frowned too at the sight of the mess plate. 

Callum turned back to the wheel with a slight shake of his head, keen to move away from the Vanguard’s buoy as soon as possible, but as he placed his hand on the shift lever the boat cut out. He reached for the ignition, then suddenly lurched sideways and staggered as a big wave slapped into them and the Peedie Star began to roll violently. 

Callum held on to the frame of the wheelhouse as he turned to look at the sky. The few high clouds moved slowly, yet the wind was suddenly whipping the waves into a frenzy and when he spotted a trawler a quarter of a mile away, there was no pitch or roll. He was an experienced sailor and knew the Flow as well as most, but this was like some strange micro-climate. 

Dwight and Remi had stopped changing and were holding on to the bench seats as they rose and fell opposite each other as if on a see- saw. Remi looked fearful as Dwight raised a quizzical eyebrow at Callum. At a loss, he turned back into the wheelhouse where thankfully the engine coughed, then fired and they started to move, corkscrewing forward with water spilling over the gunwales. Within a minute, the wind thankfully died and the sea was becalmed once again. 

Remi looked back towards the Vanguard’s buoy. It was swaying like a pendulum on a foaming whirlpool, yet the rest of the water was calm. Even Dwight looked unnerved. They all exchanged glances, but no one spoke until they stepped ashore half an hour later.