Orkney played an important part in both world wars.  The British Grand Fleet used the great natural harbour of Scapa Flow as a northern base in World War One.  In June 1916, Lord Kitchener, the Minister of War, left Scapa Flow on board HMS Hampshire.  Near Birsay, the Hampshire struck a mine, and just 12 men out of 665 survived.  The Kitchener Memorial at Marwick Head near Birsay commemorates the loss.  After the armistice, seventy-four ships of the German High Seas Fleet were interned in the harbour for ten months.  During this time, they became a tourist attraction.  In June 1919 Admiral von Reuter, the German Officer in command at Scapa Flow, gave the order for the German fleet to be scuttled.  They all sank.  Many of the German battleships were removed and in the 1920s, the firm Cox & Douglas began salvage operations, lifting many of the ships.  Only eight scuttled ships now remain in the Flow but they remain a tourist attraction for divers.

You can still see the legacy of World War Two above the sea and travel across the Churchill Barriers, causeways to the linked South Isles.  In 1939 a German U-boat broke the Flow’s defences and torpedoed HMS Royal Oak with the loss of 833 lives. Winston Churchill ordered the eastern entrances to the Flow to be sealed.  The barriers were constructed by Italian POWs based on the islands of Burray and Lambholm.  Their legacy is the Italian Chapel, Orkney’s most visited tourist attraction.  This iconic building formed from two Nissen huts symbolises hope and peace.  Artist Domenico Chiocchetti and fellow craftsmen created a masterpiece with a wrought iron rood screen, a painting of the Madonna and Child, a concrete statue of George and the Dragon and even lanterns made from bully-beef tins.

All around the Flow you can see fascinating remnants of the wartime defences and Orkney’s amazing wartime heritage.  At the Scapa Flow Visitor Centre and Museum at Lyness Pier in Hoy you can hear oral history accounts, see film footage, view photographs and enjoy a café and shop.  Up to 60,000 servicemen and women were stationed around Orkney during the war.

Remains from an earlier war can also be seen in Hoy at Hackness Battery and Martello Tower. They were built in 1813–14, at the height of the Napoleonic War to protect the Pentland Firth.