MAD Divers News from November 2004

Diving Scapa Flow - winter dive trip to Orkney

In both 2003 and 2004 MAD Divers organised diving trips to Scapa Flow, Orkney. Scapa Flow is now the home of the German High Seas Fleet, scuttled by the Germans in 1919 during negotiations after WWI. It is home to some of the most interesting wreck diving in the world today.

This is the story of our dive trip!

The MV Halton, our dive boat for the trip

 The wreck diving in Scapa Flow is concentrated upon what's left of the German High Seas Fleet.

Following on from the end of WWI there were negotiations over reparations to be made by Germany to the allies. During these negotiations the entire German fleet was to be interred at the British Naval base at Scapa Flow.

The Admiral of the German fleet was given strict orders that in the event of the negotiations failing it was of utmost importance that the fleet must not fall into allied hands

 Communications being a bit hit or miss in those days, there was a bit of confusion over what was happening in Germany and the Admiral gave the orders to scuttle the fleet.

Most of the scuttled ships were salvaged during the 1920's but there are still 7 of the wrecks in place and available for diving today.

The 3 battleships are the Kronprinz Willem, the Markgraff and the Konig . All the battleships are around 25,000T and around 40m depth. The wrecks were all top heavy due to their armour and they now lie on their decks, with the hulls the shallowest part of the dives around 20m. It's still possible to get under the wrecks and the dives as well as the history are very interesting.

There are also 4 cruisers - the Coln, Brummer, Dresden and Karlsruhe and they are lying on their sides in around 30m depth.

The wrecks are sheltered by the surrounding islands

There are a number of other wrecks available for diving, small cargo vessels sunk deliberately to stop enemy submarines entering the Flow, a few accidental sinkings and a WWII German submarine caught out by the British defences. All the wrecks offer great diving, both for the wrecks themselves and also for the marine life that populates the area.

There are lots of different dive boats that operate out of Orkney but we went on the boat pictured above in 2003, the MV Halton, skippered by Bob Anderson and we enjoyed it so much we made sure to dive from the same boat again this year. The website is MV Halton and the whole set up is very well done. The showers are hot, the coffee and soup plentiful and the frying pan is seldom empty. There's even space to have a 'siesta' between dives...

Whilst Mallorca can't claim to be the home of the German High Seas Fleet, we do have some fantastic reef diving around the National Park of El Toro and Malgrats. If you're interested in having a trip down to Mallorca and you want to know what's available have a look around our website and if you like what you see, drop us an e-mail.

To contact us you can follow this link to our 'Contacts' page.