Possibly One Of The Saddest Things...

in St Magnus Cathedral is this... The memorial to the 833 servicemen lost during WWII when the Revenge-class destroyer, HMS Royal Oak was torpedoed during a daring attack by Günther Prien, in command of German submarine U-47:

It happened in the early hours of 14th October, 1939, on what is described as a moonless night, with an impressive display of the Northern Lights, and most of the Royal Oak's crew of 1,234 men would have been asleep... Günther Prien quietly guided his submarine into the safe harbour of Scapa Flow, negotiating a way between the blockships that had been sunk there to stop infiltration, and torpedoed the ship.

It took 1 hour, 2 minutes from Prien entering the Flow until Royal Oak sank, rendering her the first of the five battleships and battlecruisers of the Royal Navy sunk in the Second World War, only about a month after War had been declared.

Today HMS Royal Oak is a protected war grave, lying in comparatively shallow water in Scapa Flow, her hull barely 5m from the surface.

The memorial consists of a plaque dedicated to those that lost their lives, a book with the names of all the dead, and the bell from the ship, recovered in the 1970's and restored.

This memorial ties in with photos I've posted already of The Italian Chapel, because it was the sinking of HMS Royal Oak that led Winston Churchill to order the construction of The Churchill Barriers, to completely cut off access between the small islands. The contract for building the Barriers was awarded to Balfour Beatty, but much of the labour was done by the Italian Prisoners Of War held in Orkney... and it was some of those men that built and decorated The Italian Chapel on Lamb Holm.