Scuttling of The German Fleet in Scapa Flow - The Fleet Is Scuttled

The Fleet Is Scuttled

Around 10:00 a.m. on 21 June 1919, von Reuter sent a flag signal ordering the fleet to stand by for the signal to scuttle. At about 11:20 the flag signal was sent: "To all Commanding Officers and the Leader of the Torpedo Boats. Paragraph Eleven of to-day's date. Acknowledge. Chief of the Interned Squadron." The signal was repeated by semaphore and searchlights. Scuttling began immediately: seacocks and flood valves were opened and internal water pipes smashed. Portholes had already been loosened, watertight doors and condenser covers left open, and in some ships holes had been bored through bulkheads, all to facilitate the spread of water once scuttling began. One German ship commander recorded that prior to the 21st seacocks had been set on a hair turning and heavily lubricated, while large hammers had been placed besides valves.

There was no noticeable effect until noon, when Friedrich der Grosse began to list heavily to starboard and all the ships hoisted the Imperial German Ensign at their mainmasts. The crews then began to abandon ship. The British naval forces left at Scapa Flow comprised three destroyers, one of which was under repair, seven trawlers and a number of drifters. Fremantle started receiving news of the scuttling at 12:20 and cancelled his squadron's exercise at 12:35, steaming at full speed back to Scapa Flow. He and a division of ships arrived at 14:30 in time to see only the large ships still afloat. He had radioed ahead to order all available craft to prevent the German ships sinking or beach them. The last German ship to sink was the battlecruiser Hindenburg at 17:00, by which time fifteen capital ships were sunk, and only Baden survived. Four light cruisers and thirty-two destroyers were sunk. Nine Germans were shot and killed and about sixteen wounded aboard their lifeboats rowing towards land.

1,774 Germans were picked up during the afternoon and transported by battleships of the First Battle Squadron to Invergordon. Fremantle had sent out a general order declaring that the Germans were to be treated as prisoners-of-war for having broken the armistice and they were destined for the prisoner-of-war camps at Nigg. Von Reuter and a number of his officers were brought onto the quarterdeck of HMS Revenge, where Fremantle gave a speech, translated by an interpreter while von Reuter and his men looked on "with expressionless faces":

Admiral von Reuter: I cannot permit you and your officers to leave naval custody without expressing to you my sense of the manner in which you have violated common honour and the honourable traditions of seamen of all nations. With an armistice in full operation you recommenced hostilities without notice by hoisting the German flag in the interned ships and proceeding to sink and destroy them. You have informed my interpreter that you considered the Armistice had terminated. You had no justification whatever for that assumption. You would have been informed by me of the termination of the Armistice and whether the representatives of your nation had or had not signed the Treaty of Peace. Indeed, letters in readiness to send to you to that effect as soon as I had received official intimation from my Government were written and signed. Further, can you possibly suppose that my Squadron would have been out of harbour at the moment of the termination of the Armistice? By your conduct you have added one more to the breaches of faith and honour of which Germany has been guilty in this war. Begun with a breach of military honour in the invasion of Belgium, it bids fair to terminate with a breach of naval honour. You have proved to the few who doubted it that the word of the New Germany is no more to be trusted than that of the old. What opinion your country will form of your action I do not know. I can only express what I believe to be the opinion of the British Navy, and indeed of all seamen except those of your Nation. I now transfer you to the custody of the British military authorities as prisoners of war guilty of a flagrant violation of Armistice.

Admiral Fremantle subsequently remarked privately "I could not resist feeling some sympathy for von Reuter, who had preserved his dignity when placed against his will in a highly unpleasant and invidious position".