Words in Hand

That's right, in the past there were five islands in the Orkneys, south Orkneys, not the north, five Islands. That's right. So around the first world war time, you know Scapa Flow was famous as a great anchorage because it was shallow and calm water there and it was especially suitable for the British islands. The Orkneys are at the central point and they could send boats east and west, it was very easy for boats to be sent into action. and if they were on the other side of the British islands it would have been a problem, but they could go throughout the world from that point. Scapa Flow was the perfect anchorage and now there it was. And now it's called 'The Graveyard of the First World War. The German boats, it was terrible, they scuttled themselves and it was called 'A strike against themselves'. They blew out their hulls and the German boats sunk themselves. And you can imagine them lying there under the water. So why were there Churchill barriers, barriers, what were they for? Ahh... then I realised in the Second World War, HMS Oak Royal, a large boat there, was anchored at Scapa Flow with other British boats there. And there were good defenses against the U-Boats because the U-Boats had really been troublesome. The German boats had tried to get in, so they had the sunken ships there blocking the U-boats from entering into Scapa flow. But, what happened was, one day there was a freak wave and there was a high tide and U boat succeeded and took the chance and came in over the sunken ships, a U-Boat came in. And then the German commander just looked at this large beautiful boat, fired and it was sunk. HMS OAK Royal was sunk and they lost over 900 lives! 900 lives lost! (gasps) Quickly the U-boat escaped and there was panic all around. How did it happen? And they realised that there had been this high tide.

Churchill was mad and he ordered the building of the barriers! How? How? The sea? How are we going to build barriers? So just putting concrete blocks, bombed them in and until they hit the bottom of the sea and build up to prevent the U-Boats. Who'll do it? Ah... good idea! Getting the Prisoners of War. What? They're just walking around idly, get them into work. So there were a lot of Italian Prisoners of War there so they were ordered in to build it. So they made the concrete and then put it into the sea until the barrier rose through the sea and it took six years, after the war is finished, that that's to one side, but this happened during the war and they built these barriers. And there were four barriers because there were five islands, so that were four gaps so there were four barriers to connect the islands to prevent the U-boats to getting into (the) Scapa Flow.

So they built the barriers but then at night the Prisoners of War were wondering what to do? What can we do? So they had a great idea: they wanted to build a chapel because the Orkneys was very strongly Wee Kirk, Protestant religion, and there was no Catholics up there. So they asked permission to build a chapel. The commandant, the Prisoners of War, commandant, was sorry for them so he said okay, 'In your free time you can build a chapel' but warned them, 'You have to build it from scrap materials, what's left, you take it'. 'Eh? Okay'. They were willing to do that.

So they accepted that and when work had finished they quickly got together mixed their concrete and bricks and everything and they first got two Rannack(?) Huts, you know the Prisoner of War, Nissen Huts, the steel huts and put them back to back; welded them in the center and then built the front. Put bricks up in the front, plastered it and cemented it. And then inside they put plasterboard, finished it and then ordered in one of their skilled artists and they were lucky to have a skilled artist who was a Prisoner of War and he drew inside the church. You know what churches are like and we went in and we were just flabbergasted! I could even compare it with Michelangelo in Rome, I can compare it! I can! There was this Prisoner of War with what was left, scrap materials, scrap things and he could do it! And I was knocked out, I couldn't believe my eyes. I looked around in the chapel, I tell you, you must go! Firstly to see the Churchill Barriers, you'll be amazed at them and there are the sunken ships, and there's a U-Boat there, that one failed, but they built the concrete barriers you can still see them, they're still lying there, the boats. You must go, if you go north, please go to the Orkneys. Thank you.