ARGO: voyage à SCAPA FLOW (Ecosse)

Pour plongeurs expérimentés et en combi étanche.  Ne manquez pas cette aventure unique: plonger dans le nord de l’Ecosse, explorer les épaves de la flotte Allemande, coulée par les Allemands en 1919.  Plus d’infos suivront…

The scuttling of the German fleet[edit]

Following the German defeat in WWI, 74 ships of the Kaiserliche Marine‘s High Seas Fleet were interned in Gutter Sound at Scapa Flow pending a decision on their future in the peace Treaty of Versailles.

On 21 June 1919, after nine months of waiting, Rear Admiral Ludwig von Reuter, the German officer in command at Scapa Flow, made the decision to scuttle the fleet because the negotiation period for the treaty had lapsed with no word of a settlement (he was not kept informed that there had been a last-minute extension to finalise the details).

After waiting for the bulk of the British fleet to leave on exercises, he gave the order to scuttle the ships to prevent their falling into British hands. The Royal Navy made desperate efforts to board the ships to prevent the sinkings, but the German crews had spent the idle months preparing for the order, welding bulkhead doors open, laying charges in vulnerable parts of the ships, and quietly dropping important keys and tools overboard so valves could not be shut.

The British did eventually manage to beach the battleship Baden, the light cruisers Nürnberg, and Frankfurt together with 18 destroyers, but the remaining 52 ships, the vast bulk of the High Seas Fleet, were sunk without loss of life. Nine German sailors died when British forces opened fire as they attempted to scuttle their ship, reputedly the last casualties of WWI.

SMS Emden was amongst the ships the British managed to beach. This Emden should not be confused with her predecessor, destroyed in the Battle of Cocos on 9 November 1914 by the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney.

At least seven of the scuttled German ships, and a number of sunken British ships, can be visited by scuba divers.