History of Orkney - Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century

The islands cluster round the huge deep-water anchorage of Scapa Flow like a protecting hand, and in both World War I and World War II, the Royal Navy had a major base there, enabling them to challenge any attempt by German warships to emerge into the ocean through the Norwegian Sea. After the Armistice in 1918, the German High Seas Fleet was transferred in its entirety to Scapa Flow while a decision was to be made on its future; however, the German sailors opened their sea-cocks and scuttled all the ships. Most ships were salvaged, but the remaining wrecks are now a favoured haunt of recreational divers.

One month into World War II, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Royal Oak was sunk by a German U-boat in Scapa Flow. As a result barriers were built to close most of the access channels; these had the additional advantage of creating causeways whereby travellers can go from island to island by road instead of being obliged to rely on boats. In the course of the Second World War Italian prisoners of war were kept on Orkney Mainland; they improvised a chapel with elaborate architecture out of corrugated iron and other base materials, which is now a tourist attraction. The Scapa Flow base was closed in 1956.

In the 1960s and 1970s there were reports about the potential for uranium mining between Stromness and Yesnaby. Margaret Thatcher's plans to open such a mine were halted in 1980 after local campaigning, which included production of The Yellow Cake Revue by composer and conductor Peter Maxwell Davies, who lived on the neighbouring island of Hoy. The title refers to yellowcake, the powder produced in an early stage of the processing of uranium ore.