On the morning of June 21, 1919, the German High Seas Fleet was the second most powerful navy in the world. By evening it was scrap metal on the seabed of a Scottish harbor.
The fleet’s own crews did it.
Prisoners at anchor
After the Armistice of November 11, 1918, the Allied powers interned 74 German warships at Scapa Flow, the Royal Navy’s main base in the Orkney Islands. Eleven battleships. Five battlecruisers. Eight light cruisers. Fifty destroyers. The ships anchored in long rows across the harbor with skeleton crews aboard, stripped of ammunition, watched by British guard vessels.
Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter commanded the interned fleet from the light cruiser Emden, named for the raider that shelled Penang in 1914. Repatriations had cut his crews to skeleton strength, and two more transports took men home on June 18. What remained was enough to operate seacocks and valves, not enough to fight. The Allies were negotiating the Treaty of Versailles. If the treaty was signed, the ships would be divided among Britain, France, Italy, and Japan.
Von Reuter had no intention of letting that happen.
Paragraph Eleven
The Versailles signing deadline was June 21. Von Reuter had been planning for weeks. Crews quietly loosened seacocks, prepared internal valves, and removed manhole covers below the waterline. Bulkhead doors were wedged open so water could flow freely between compartments. Watertight fittings were sabotaged. Everything was ready except the signal.
On the morning of June 21, Vice Admiral Sydney Fremantle took the British First Battle Squadron out of Scapa Flow for torpedo exercises. Their absence was the opening von Reuter needed.
At 11:20 on the morning of June 21, Emden ran up a signal to all commanding officers: “Paragraph Eleven of today’s date.” It pointed to a numbered paragraph in von Reuter’s written orders, which said he would sink the ships if the enemy tried to take them without the consent of the German government. To the British, if they noticed, it meant nothing.
To every German crew in the harbor, it meant open everything.
400,000 tons in five hours
The first ship to go was Friedrich der Grosse, von Reuter’s former fleet flagship. She capsized at 12:16. Then they went fast.
By 14:00, all five battleships of the 4th Battle Squadron were gone. The battlecruisers Moltke and Seydlitz followed. Von der Tann rolled over. Derfflinger sank before 15:00. Kaiser, Konig, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Markgraf, Grosser Kurfurst. One after another, 25,000-ton battleships heeled over and disappeared into the grey water of the Flow.
By 17:00, when the battlecruiser Hindenburg finally settled on the bottom, 52 of 74 ships had sunk. Fifteen capital ships. Five light cruisers. Thirty-two destroyers. Roughly 400,000 tons of warships, gone. It was the greatest loss of shipping in a single day in history.
The British managed to beach 22 vessels in shallow water. Everything else went down.
The schoolchildren
There were witnesses nobody expected.
That morning, a party of children from Stromness Public School (usually given as about 160) had boarded the tender Flying Kestrel for a day trip around Scapa Flow to see the German warships. Their teachers had arranged the excursion because what child wouldn’t want to see real battleships?
The children got more than they paid for. From the deck of the Flying Kestrel, they watched battleship after battleship roll over and sink. The sea filled with debris: hammocks, lifebelts, wooden chests, and hundreds of German sailors in the water.
It was the best field trip in the history of Scottish education.
Nine dead
The British guards were furious. The British guard vessels fired warning shots, then opened up with machine guns and small arms on German crews trying to abandon ship in lifeboats. Three German sailors in one boat were killed outright, four wounded.
In total, nine German sailors were shot dead and sixteen wounded. The Armistice had ended the war on November 11, 1918. The Treaty of Versailles would be signed on June 28, 1919, seven days after the scuttling. Those nine Germans are arguably the last casualties of the First World War.
Von Reuter was taken prisoner. He was unapologetic. In Germany, a special medal was struck in 1919 to commemorate the scuttling. He was treated as a hero.
The British reaction
Officially, the British were outraged. Vice Admiral Sydney Fremantle, returning with his squadron to find his charges sinking, called it “a treacherous act.”
Privately, the Admiralty was relieved. The question of how to divide the German fleet among the Allies had been poisoning negotiations for months. France wanted battleships. Italy wanted battleships. Japan wanted battleships. Nobody wanted the others to have battleships. Von Reuter had solved the problem by putting the whole argument on the seabed. More than a century earlier, French cavalry had captured a Dutch fleet on a frozen harbor without firing a shot.
Raised from the dead
The wrecks didn’t stay down. Starting in 1924, a scrap dealer named Ernest Cox bought the salvage rights and began one of the most ambitious recovery operations in maritime history. His company, Cox & Danks, raised 25 destroyers, 1 light cruiser, and 6 capital ships by 1931. Metal Industries Ltd took over and continued the work. By 1939, 45 of the 52 scuttled ships had been salvaged and scrapped.
Seven remain.
Still there
Three battleships (SMS Konig, SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm, and SMS Markgraf) and four light cruisers (SMS Coln, SMS Dresden, SMS Karlsruhe, and SMS Brummer) still sit on the bottom of Scapa Flow at depths of 35 to 50 meters. They are Scheduled Ancient Monuments, protected by law.
They are also among the most popular dive sites in the world. Every year, thousands of divers descend on Orkney to swim through the corridors of warships that sank not from enemy fire but from the orders of their own admiral. At least twelve liveaboard dive boats operate out of Stromness, the same town the schoolchildren left from that morning in 1919.
The steel from the salvaged ships has its own strange afterlife. Because it was smelted before the first nuclear test in 1945, it is free of background radiation. It has been used in sensitive scientific instruments, including Geiger counters and space-based sensors, where even trace radioactivity would throw off readings.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Germany scuttle its own fleet?
Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter refused to let the Allied powers divide the German High Seas Fleet among Britain, France, Italy, and Japan under the Treaty of Versailles. While the British guard squadron was away on exercises on June 21, 1919, he signaled his skeleton crews to open seacocks and flood valves. He considered surrender of the fleet a greater dishonor than its destruction.
The full story: See “Paragraph Eleven” above for how the signal was given and the scuttling executed.
How many ships were scuttled at Scapa Flow?
Fifty-two of 74 interned German warships sank on June 21, 1919: fifteen capital ships (battleships and battlecruisers), five light cruisers, and thirty-two destroyers, totaling roughly 400,000 tons. It was the greatest loss of shipping in a single day in history. The British managed to beach 22 vessels in shallow water before they could sink completely.
The full story: See “400,000 tons in five hours” above for the full timeline of the sinkings.
Can you dive the Scapa Flow wrecks?
Yes. Seven ships remain on the bottom: three battleships (Konig, Kronprinz Wilhelm, and Markgraf) and four light cruisers (Coln, Dresden, Karlsruhe, and Brummer), at depths of 35 to 50 meters. They are Scheduled Ancient Monuments but open to recreational diving. At least twelve liveaboard dive boats operate out of Stromness, and thousands of divers visit Orkney each year to explore the wrecks.
The full story: See “Still there” above for details on the remaining wrecks and their unique radioactive-free steel.
Sources
- Scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow (Wikipedia)
- The Scuttling of the German Fleet: Eyewitness Accounts (Orkney Museums)
- Scapa 100: Salvaging Our Heritage (Stromness Museum)
Photo credit: SMS Hindenburg at Scapa Flow, 1919, Wikimedia Commons, public domain
