I have embarked on a new project in January 2021, a month in which I found myself reflecting on the damage that countries inflict upon themselves when arrogant and vainglorious men hold sway; the month of Brexit, and the violent, chaotic end of the gangster presidency of Donald Trump. I keenly felt the idea of “the ship of state” being sailed into treacherous waters; of wreckage, loss and waste.
In 1919, the huge natural harbour of Scapa Flow, Orkney, became the final resting place of the German High Seas Fleet. Built over the preceding twenty years or so by Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tirpitz. the fleet was intended as Germany’s challenge to the dominance of the British Navy, to be the guarantor of German imperial might, and the protector of its overseas possessions. And it was a proxy for the Kaiser’s own personal prestige in the twisted psychodramas and personal enmities of the intertwined British and German royal families. (Wilhelm was a grandchild of Queen Victoria, and an admiral of the Royal Navy.)
It was the High Seas Fleet that faced and outmatched the Royal Navy at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. Arguably it won a tactical victory in terms of men lost and ships sunk, but it lost the strategic battle and never made another aggressive move again. The Kaiser would no longer risk the annihilation of his precious fleet, even in the pursuit of victory.
The terms of the 1918 Armistice required the internship of the German Fleet under the watchful (yet neglectful) eyes of the Royal Navy, pending a decision by the victorious Allies on its fate. Some, like France and Italy, coveted the ships as war reparations, or additions to their own navies. Others, especially the British, wanted the fleet destroyed - it was still a potent threat to British naval supremacy. Thus, while never definitively defeated, the High Seas Fleet became a prisoner, its dwindling numbers of sailors neglected, malnourished and forgotten on decaying ships in a distant outpost, far from home. From being a symbol of national pride and prestige, the fleet in its surrendered, rusting state became a source of national shame.
Thus it was that in 1919, the remaining Germans scuttled (i.e. deliberately sank) their fleet, one last defiant gesture as the Allies bickered over the ships. You can read more about the incident here. Some of the ships were effectively brand new, only recently completed as part of the war effort and a culmination of the huge naval arms race begun when Britain launched the game-changing HMS Dreadnought just 13 years ago, in 1906.
I am forcibly struck by an enormous sense of waste and futility when I consider this whole remarkable and sad story. The labour, the materials, the expense and of course the terrible waste of human lives is staggering. This is what gives it such contemporary resonance for me today, just over one hundred years later.
I look forward to seeing where this new voyage takes me.