Diving Scapa Flow’s Big 7
Background
As I’ve always had an interest in the development of naval capital ships over the last 150 years or so, Scapa Flow has always been on my bucket list. However, I’d always perceived it to be a challenging destination to dive and had found it difficult to find somebody to dive with on it so when a diver from a nearby club mentioned that he was putting a trip together, it took me roughly 9 seconds to decide I was going.
The story of the German High Seas Fleet at Scapa Flow beings on November 11th, 1918 when the armistice was signed — ending the hostilities of the Great War. As part of the agreement, the Germans were to disarm their main High Seas fleet and sail to Scapa Flow where they would be arrested along with a skeleton crew until an eventual treaty formally ending the war could be thrashed out.
After the deadline for the peace talks was extended the following June, Admiral Von Reuter — the German commander decided that the talks had failed and that the fleet was to be handed over the Royal Navy. So on June 21st, he gave the order to scuttle the fleet and by the end of the day 52 of the 70 ships were on the bottom of the Scapa Flow.
These shops were the pride of the German Navy — most of them were only a few years old and really had only seen service in the Battle of Jutland so represented a collosal loss of investment. After the treaty was signed the wrecks became the property of the Royal Navy and the salvage rights were sold to commercial contractors who raised the majority of the wrecks between 1930 and 1970.
Of the 52 sunken ships, today only 7 major wrecks remain on the bottom and these are substantially intact aside from damage on most of them where the hulls were blown open to give the salvors access to the valuable non ferrous metals of the steam plant. The 7 ships are the battleships Kronprinz Wilhelm, Markgraf & König and the light cruisers Cöln, Brummer, Dresden & Karlsruhe. The battleships are all completely upside down thanks to immense weight of their turrets which capsized them as they sank while the cruisers are all on their sides. These make up what is known as the Big 7 of Scapa Flow.
Day 1 — Athlone to Scotland
We left Athlone at 8AM for the start of a long day’s travelling. We’d worked out that it was a fair distance from the midlands of Ireland but I hadn’t quite made the connection that the total distance was around 1,000 km each way — the distance from Dublin to Frankfurt by air.
The first leg was Athlone to Larne on relatively familiar routes. This was fairly uneventful and we were in good time for the 2 hour ferry crossing to Cairnryan where we arrived at around 4PM. This was the start of the long trek across Scotland. We stopped for a spot of dinner at a pub in Dunblane — the less said about that the better. We probably should have left when we noticed that the barman had a prominent black eye. We arrived into our hotel in the Cairngorms well after dark at around 10PM to find that they had apparently sold our rooms so it was a bit of a scramble to find beds. We got ourselves sorted, had a couple of pints and got ourselves off to bed.
Day 2 — The second half of the Journey
This was a second day of travelling and another early start. We were on the road by 7 as we had a ferry to catch in Scrabster at 12. This was a spectacular drive, mostly over A roads so a bit slower than yesterday but the scenary was amazing. Breakfast opportunities were few and far between but we eventually found a small hotel that relucantly served us a cooked breakfast. We rolled into Scrabster at 10:45 and after a quick stop at Tesco for supplies, got onto the ferry with a bit of time to spare.
This ferry was a much nicer affair than P&O and we had a pleasant 2 hour crossing. We had to drive about 50m off the ferry before a right turn onto the next pier got us to our home and dive boat for the week. Thanks to Ian and Fiona who showed us around the boat and help us load up, we got ourselves situated and went off to locate a bit of lunch. We had the afternoon to chill and visit the excellent local dive shop who offered to patch, pressure test and deliver a dry suit to the boat that evening — on a Sunday no less. It was a great reassurance knowing that we’d have that level of backup available to us.
Dive and Boat Setup
The boat we were on was the MV Invincible and was both dive boat and home for us for the week. We were lucky that there were only 6 on-board for the week so we had a bit of space to spread ourselves out with a private “cabin” for each of us. She is a 25m ex fishing vessel and is equipped with compressors, a lift and everything we needed for the week.
There were five divers in our group and another passenger on the boat.
Three of our group had recently completed technical training and were diving twin 12s with 11L stages. This group planned on doing longer dives and running up relatively long deco times. Due to gas costs, they mostly dived air on their back and 50% in the stages.
My buddy and I were diving a single 15L and twin 7s respectively and I took along a 7L stage for anything deeper than 40m. We were diving 28% for most of the week and dropping to 25% or 26% for the dives beyond 40m. I got the week out of my 7L stage which I had filled with 40% as that was the best I could do on my club compressor.
The other passenger was on a rebreather but doing short dives to build experience and mostly dived solo.
Day 3 — SMS Cöln and SMS Brummer
We had an early departure for the day’s diving at around 8AM which was nice and relaxed as we had most of an hour to get some breakfast and sort out our gear during the trip out. Our first dive for the day was to be on the SMS Cöln (sic — the city of Cologne was briefly spelled this way instead of Köln at the start of the 20th centuary). The Cöln was a light cruiser dispacing around 5,600 tons at normal load and measuring 510ft in length and 47ft across the beam. She lies on her side in around 36m and was a good choice for the first of our big 7.
We entered the water shortly before 9 and dropped in on the shot amidships. We were immediately greeted with the sight of the massive lifeboat davitts. We worked our way towards the bow. There was great life on the wreck — lots of anemone and great shoals of small fish. The bow was the deepest part of our dive at around 34m. From there we returned higher on the deck and came across the rangefinder — well half of it. We had a bit of a look inside at some jumbled wreckage. We finished up at the shot in around 18m and bumbled around for a bit before leaving the bottom after around 30 minutes. We had 4 minutes of mandatory deco and anotehr 3 minutes of saftey stops on the way up. After a bit of fun on the diveboat lift we got ourselves squared away and a nice cup of soup between dives.
Our second dive was on the SMS Brummer which we were informed was also a slang word in German for flatulance. I don’t think this is actually true but it became the running joke for the week — partially due to the copious quanties of beer being consumed by most of us.
Anyhoo, we dropped down the shot near the bow. We went right to the bow and followed back aft. We quickly came across the famous searchlight iris. It was hard to identify a lot of things on the ship as she was a bit of a mess despite the hull up forwards being mostly in one piece. It was still quite the experience exploring the wreckage. We left the bottom at around 26 minutes but the line was a bit congested so between delays in getting past people and a conservative computer, we had a quite a lot of stops to do. We ended up shooting an SMB from the shot line as there were too many below us blowing bubbles. This was our longest deco for the week and I ended up going into my reserve a little. After this we agreed to leave the bottom once we hit 5 minutes mandatory deco or 80 bar.
That ended up the diving part of the day and we had a hot shower and a bit of lunch as we headed back in to port. We got back in around 2PM and had the afternoon to ourselves which would prove to be the pattern for the week. We had a bit of dinner out and a few pints of beer to wash it all down.
Day 4 — Kronprinz Wilhelm & Karlsruhe
We had a fairly early start again but it was all very easy. On the agenda for today we had the Kronprinz Wilhelm and the Karlsruhe. The Kronprinz Wilhelm was to be our first battleship and it was a seriously impressive sight. We dropped amidships on the shot line and went aft on a fruitless attempt to find D & E guns. There was a fair current going and the drag from my stage made it hard going. We turned after about 7 minutes and made our way forwards where we found the mast with an armoured crow’s nest on it. There was lots of life on the wreck with abundant anemone and plenty of fish life. We called time at around 25 minutes and did an SMB ascent with about 5 minutes’ mandatory deco.
For our second dive, we were on the Karlsruhe — a light cruiser. We descended on the shot line onto the bow and into a mess of divers which was a bit confusing but we found a big gun almost immediately. The current was very strong when you left the wreck at all and the wreck itself was a bit of a jumbled mess. We went aft until we found some hatches to have a look in and then we realised the hull plating had all fallen off the bottom so we went over the side to have a good look inside. There was an odd sight of a toilet sitting upright on the bottom beside the wreck but it seemed to have nothing to do with the wreck given that it was an English make. We had a little deco on this dive but it cleared by the time we both finished deep stops.
We decided to eat on the boat for the evening so I headed to the shops and bought the makings of chilli, guacamole and salsa and made a big pot of chilli in the galley on the boat. That went down nicely and we headed off to the pub for the evening after a good feed.
Day 5 — Markgraf, F2, YC21 & Museums
For dive day 3, we were off to another of the big ships — the Markgraf. Like the other battleships she lies upside down in around 44 metres of water. We were diving her on low slack so the max depth was about 42m. We dropped in on the stern shot line and went aft to the rudders for a look. As we weren’t the first down, the visibility was too poor to take pictures between. the twin rudders. Then we dropped over the side to explore the casemate guns. We covered the whole wreck at a clip thanks to the strong current and found the forward shot on the anchor chain. This was right beside where the hull was blown open so we had a quick look there before making our way up. This was a short bottom time of around 12m which gave us around 4 minutes of deco on a 26% mix but we ended up clearing that on the first deep stop.
Between dives we went ashore to the Scapa Flow Museum which was a fascinating exhibition of the history of the Royal Navy in Scapa Flow. They had interesting stuff like anti-submarine netting and a lot of artefacts from both the Royal Navy and the German navy. The story of the Royal Oak was particularly poignant.
After returning to the boat, the second dive of the day was on an escort vessel called the F2 and a salvage barge that sank trying to recover parts of it. We descended on the YC21 barge in around 16m and had a bit of a bimble around it. We then went over the side and into the holds. This was a bit of fun as there were several safe swim-throughs. We spent around 15 minutes on the barge before swimming over to the F2 on the line connecting them. This was a cracking wreck — substantially intact forwards and then the stern in bits. We had a nice look around the front end. There were several hatches where you could have a look into various compartments but we behaved ourselves despite the obvious temptations. The best part of the dive was exploring the wrecked stern as there were bits of machinery, wiring, structure and plating strewn out over a substantial area of sea bed. We headed for the surface after around 50 minutes of this and surfaced after only a standard safety stop.
After getting back to port and cleaning ourselves up we set off to see a few of the sights of Orkney. We spent a nice afternoon exploring the Stones of Stennis and the Ring of Brodgor before heading into Kirkwall and having a walk round there along with some rather fine fish and chips. There is an interesting little museum in Kirkwall and St Magnus’s Cathedral is well worth a visit.
We then returned to Stromness and had a nice evening in the pub chatting to divers from Leeds and Detroit.
Day 6 — König and Dresden
For the our fourth dive day, the plan was to dive the König and the Dresden — the last two of the “big 7” and a battleship and light cruiser respectively. We had the usual early start and relaxed run out although the weather was a little rougher than the other days.
On the König we dropped in amidships and landed on a turbine. From there we moved aft down the broken bottom of the ship and quite quickly came across a turret barrette. Once done there we dropped over the starboard side of the ship and swam along near the bottom. We came to a mangled area and went back inboard looking for the rudders but had no luck with that. I think I saw one of them but it was hard to tell with the amount of steel plate lying about. At this point it was time to turn so we headed back towards the shot. We spotted some condensers on the way. We ascended on an SMB to minimise congestion on the shot line.
Our second dive was on the Dresden and it was a lovely dive. In general, we’ve found that while the massive scale of the battleships is awesome, the much smaller cruisers make for more interesting dives since they are on their side rather than completely upside down. They are still big ships at around 500 feet long and there is a lot more to see on the decks. On the Dresden there are a couple of 5.9 inch guns visible and you can see inside quite a bit on the forward section where the deck has peeled away and fallen to the sea floor. We spent the last 10 minutes of the dive admiring the abundant life on the shallowest part of the dive before ascending on an SMS just on the limit of going into deco on our computers.
This being our last night night in Stromness, we treated ourselves to a nice meal in the evening followed by a couple of beers and bed at 10pm.
Day 7 — Revisiting the Highlights
This was our fifth and final day of diving. We had the option to revisit a couple of wrecks for the day so we chose to do SMS Köln and the F2/YC21 combo again.
Starting off amidships on the Köln again, we had a much better dive the second time around. We found the torpedo tube and storage locker and also came across a couple of big guns. The visibility progressively got worse as we went after so we turned about about 10 minutes and headed forwards. Here we found the armoured fire-control area. The visibility was now close to 20 metres and we continued forwards to find some capstans. There were shoals of small fish absolutely everywhere. At one point I spotted what looked like a gun that had fallen through the deck with a conger in it. We finished up the dive with lots of bottom time and lots of air remaining.
For our second dive, it was back to the F2 and YC21 where we dropped in on the YC21 and had a bit of fun on the swimthroughs. As before we spent most of the dive on the F2 — mostly around the blasted end of it. At once point I got some video of a massive lobster and one of the other lads saw a very large octopus.
After the second dive, we returned to port and packed ourselves up in time for the 6PM ferry back to Scrabster and a few hours on the road towards home.
Day 8 — Aviemore to Athlone
The final day of our trip was the bulk of the journey from Aviemore to Athlone. Once again, the timing conspired to deny us the best scenary of the trip under cover of darkness but we had an uneventful trip home.
Conclusions
My first trip to Scapa Flow certainly lived up to my expectations. It was an incredible opportunity to dive some well preserved massive wrecks in relatively shallow water. Combined with the history of the place, it was a great trip. The biggest drawback is the distance. With 2,000km of driving and 4 ferry crossings for 5 days of diving, it takes a degree of committment but it’s not outragous if you can share the driving.
My main surprise was that it was kind of oversold and most divers seem to dive it with a much more technical approach that is really necessary. While the depths are at the limit of recreational diving, if diving with a group of like-minded skilled divers, it is perfectly feasible to dive it with a minimal amount of deco or even on no deco using relatively simple gear. Obviously when doing any deco, you’ll want some form of redundancy on your gear but for me, my trusty twin 7s did the trick nicely.
