Gutter Sound is a location in

Orkney Orkney (; sco, Orkney; on, Orkneyjar; nrn, Orknøjar), also known as the Orkney Islands, is an archipelago in the Northern Isles of Scotland, situated off the north coast of the island of Great Britain. Orkney is 10 miles (16 km) nort ...

, Scotland, part of the vast anchorage of

Scapa Flow Scapa Flow viewed from its eastern end in June 2009 Scapa Flow (; ) is a body of water in the Orkney Islands, Scotland, sheltered by the islands of Mainland, Graemsay, Burray,S. C. George, ''Jutland to Junkyard'', 1973. South Ronaldsay an ...

. It lies to the west of the main harbour between the internal islands of Cava and Fara, and the large outer island of Hoy. Gutter Sound was the one of the sites of the mass- scuttling of the interned

Imperial German ', literally translated "Germans of the ", is an archaic term for those ethnic Germans who resided within the German state that was founded in 1871. In contemporary usage, it referred to German citizens, the word signifying people from the Germ ...

High Seas Fleet in 1919, and the scene of a major salvage operation in the 1920s. Today the remaining wrecks make the Sound a popular diving location.

Location

Gutter Sound is a body of water some four miles long and a mile wide at its widest point, and has a depth of around 30 meters in places. It separates Hoy and Cava in the north, and Hoy and Fara in the south, opening onto the Flow between Cava and Fara. In the north it opens out into the Bring Deeps, while the south it joins Weddell Sound, between Fara and Flotta, and to Switha Sound, between Flotta and Hoy.

History

At the end of the First World War Scapa Flow was the anchorage for the surrendered German High Seas Fleet; these vessels were anchored around the island of Cava, in the Sound itself and in the Flow between Cava and the Barrel of Butter skerry. In 1919 this was the scene of the fleet's mass scuttling. 12 capital ships and a number of smaller vessels went down in the Sound itself, the remainder in deep water between Cava and the skerry. A number of the sunken ships were salvaged by

Ernest Cox Ernest Frank Guelph Cox (1883–1959) was an English engineer, with knowledge in electrical and mechanical engineering, which he notably deployed in marine salvage. Between 1924 and 1931 his Cox & Danks Shipbreaking Co. successfully raised 35 s ...

during the 1920s. He used a variety of techniques, lifting the smaller ships with floating dry docks and hawsers. With the larger ships he patched all of the holes and then pumped the hulls with compressed air to force out the water and make them float upside down. Seven of the wrecks are still at Scapa Flow, and are protected as maritime scheduled ancient monuments. During the Second World War the Sound was again used as a Royal Navy anchorage, being the site for , the

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ashore base at Lyness; it also served for the anti-submarine patrol forces and their depot ship, .Rayner p57 Commercial salvage work on the vessels ceased in the late 1970s and further salvage is no longer technically possible. Lyness is now the site of a Naval Cemetery, and a Heritage Centre detailing these events. it is also the site of a Dive Centre, as the seven vessels that remain are a popular target for divers.

Diving the wrecks

Today the seven remaining wrecks, though deep, make for popular and interesting dives for skilled

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divers. In addition, debris and wreckage left from the ships salvaged is sometimes dived as well.

Notes

References

* Rayner, Denys: ''Escort: The Battle of the Atlantic''. London:Kimber 1955 (reprinted Annapolis:U.S. Naval Institute Press 1999, )

External links

* ''The Grand Scuttle: The sinking of the German Fleet at Scapa Flow in 1919.'' Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1982 {{coord, 58, 51, 03, N, 03, 11, 14, W, region:GB_type:waterbody_source:GNS-enwiki, display=title Landforms of Orkney History of Orkney Royal Navy shore establishments Underwater diving sites in Scotland Ports and harbours of Scotland Protected Wrecks of Scotland Scheduled monuments in Scotland Sounds of Scotland Archaeology of Scotland Scapa Flow