Scapa Flow memorial to commemorate WW2 disaster
January 22 2025
Orkney Islands Council have shared early plans for a replacement memorial building commemorating the sailors who lost their lives on HMS Royal Oak.
A series of consultations will take place next month during which initial plans for a memorial hall and garden at Scapa Beach will be shared. Intended to provide a place for reflection for locals and visitors wishing to learn more about the tragedy the space is to be delivered in association with the HMS Royal Oak Association and is dependent on external funding.
Gavin Fraser, project lead for HRI Munro Architecture, stated: “The concept of the building, content and landscape are simple; to draw the visitor on a journey, informing them of the history and significance of location, ending on the final view over the harbour to the buoy marking the HMS Royal Oak’s final resting place.
“The building and landscaping utilise a limited palette of materials: Orkney drystone walls, black cladding and steel. The steel focuses on areas of particular significance; view, names of the lost, and information. “It will be a quiet thoughtful experience, a memorial with implicit muteness, stillness and gravity. Giving the visitor places to stop and contemplate the location, its meaning and impact.”
The memorial commemorates a World War 2 incident in which a ship anchored in Scapa Flow was torpedoed by a German submarine, resulting in the death of 835 crew members. Engraved panels will bear the names of each person who lost their life and a picture window is oriented towards the wreck site.
3 Comments
What you describe already exists in the newly renovated Scapa Flow Museum, which is sited just across Scapa Flow, on the island of Hoy. Its been there for decades and is well worth a visit. The people of Orkney are quite proficient at detailing the history of the islands.
'Scapa Flow Museum tells the story of a remote but immense natural harbour off the far north coast of Scotland as the centre of the British naval universe during both world wars'
https://www.orkneymuseums.co.uk/our-museums/scapa-flow-museum/
The sinking of the Royal Oak was not a one off event in Orkney and had a profound impact, not just in the lives lost in the attack, but in the following days in the field hospitals across Orkney and the future history of the islands. Bodies were recovered from Scapa for months following the sinking, causing great trauma to the local community. The sinking lead to the construction of the Churchill Barriers, linking the islands of Lambs Holm, Glimps Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay to the Orkney Mainland. The communities on those islands changed drastically with access to the larger Mainland and the capital, Kirkwall. Routes to and from the North Sea and Atlantic were blocked. The Italian prisoners of war who constructed the barriers also left the Italian Chapel as a memory to their work on the small island of Lambs Holm. The sheen from the leaking oil could be seen into the early 2000s coating the surface of the Flow above the wreck.
In addition... Kichener Memorial sits atop the cliffs at Marwick Head as a memorial to the loss of the Hampshire, and HMS Vanguard- Cross is located in the Royal Naval Cemetery in Lyness. There is further information in the aforementioned museum.
You can also find a memorial to HMS Opal and HMS Narborough down at Windwick in South Ronaldsay, and a memorial to the Longhope Lifeboat tragedy, also on Hoy. Stromness museum has numerous displays on shipping lost around the islands.
'Tragedy groupies'... A little rude in ill-informed, don't you think?
Is there a separate memorial for the Vanguard or the Hampshire?
Given its unique place in the naval history of the UK something more substantial is required. The sinking of the Royal Oak was a Treasury inspired tragedy with lessons to be learned today but it only scratches the surface of the part played by Scapa Flow in Britain's maritime history.
The focus on the Royal Oak just makes us look like tragedy groupies.