A Brief History
Scapa Flow in the Orkney
Islands off the North coast of Scotland had been a safe harbour
for British naval and merchant ships for many hundreds of years.
The Royal Navy considered
itself the most powerful navy in the world and had not been
significantly attacked since beating the combined forces of France
and Spain at the Battle Of Trafalgar in 1805.
In 1939 The British
Warship,
HMS Royal Oak was moored in Scapa Flow when the German Submarine U47
took advantage of a high tide and slipped by the defenses to sink
the the Battleship with the loss of 833 British sailors. Soon after
this Prime Minister Winston Churchill visited the Orkney's and ordered the
construction of barriers which would restrict entrance to Scapa
Flow.
There was a shortage of
labour for the project so in 1942, 550 Italian prisoners of war were
sent to The Orkney Islands and stationed on the island of Lambholm. Because prisoners of war were not
permitted to work on military projects, the barriers became
causeways linking the islands together.
The prison camp lacked a
chapel so two POW huts were constructed end to end with a view that
at one end would be a chapel and the other end a school. It was
agreed that in their own time and using scrap materials the
prisoners could decorate the huts. It soon became clear that the
school was being left behind and so the second half of the
building was decorated and soon became part of the chapel. The
results can be seen in the pictures below.
