The Orkney Islands lie seven miles northeast of the town of John O'Groats, Scotland, separated from the mainland by the Pentland Firth. In the middle of the seven islands of Orkney is the large natural anchorage known as Scapa Flow. The area is largely deserted today, apart from the odd oil tanker serving North Sea oil rigs or, every two or three years, warships of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization meeting to conduct a joint exercise. But in its glory days, the Flow served as the main base for Britain's battle fleet during two world wars.
Just a few fathoms below Scapa Flow's dark surface lie the remains of another navy: four battleships and four light cruisers of the Imperial German High Seas Fleet, scuttled by their own crews 80 years ago this month in the largest act of self-destruction in naval history.
The fleet that died by its own hand on that first summer day of 1919 was the product of one of history's greatest strategic blunders. Between 1898 and 1914, a sudden surge of shipbuilding fervor expanded the Imperial German Navy from a largely coastal force to the second largest fleet in the world, equipped with some of the finest warships afloat.
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