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Scuttling Of The German Fleet At Scapa Flow
On 21 June 1919, shortly after the end of the First World War, the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet was scuttled by its sailors while held off the harbour of the British Royal Navy base at Scapa Flow, in the Orkney Islands of Scotland. The fleet was interned there under the terms of the Armistice of 11 November 1918 while negotiations took place over its fate. Fearing that either the British would seize the ships unilaterally or the German government at the time might reject the Treaty of Versailles and resume the war effort (in which case the ships could be used against Germany), Admiral Ludwig von Reuter decided to scuttle the fleet. Intervening British guard ships were able to beach some of the ships, but 52 of the 74 interned vessels sank. Many of the wrecks were salvaged over the next two decades and were towed away for scrapping. Those that remain are popular diving sites and a source of low-background steel. Background The signing of the Armistice of 11 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scapa Flow
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 and Hoy. Its sheltered waters have played an important role in travel, trade and conflict throughout the centuries. Vikings anchored their longships in Scapa Flow more than a thousand years ago. It was the United Kingdom's chief naval base during the First and Second World wars, but the facility was closed in 1956. Since the scuttling of the German fleet after World War I, its wrecks and their marine habitats form an internationally acclaimed diving location. Scapa Flow hosts an oil port, the Flotta oil terminal. In good weather, its roadstead (water of moderate conditions) allows ship-to-ship transfers of crude oil product. The world's first ship-to-ship transfer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) took place in Scapa Flow in 2007 transferring 132,000m³ of LNG. This occurred in 2007 by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Low-background Steel
Low-background steel, also known as pre-war steel and pre-atomic steel, is any steel produced prior to the Trinity (nuclear test), detonation of the first nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Typically obtained from ships (either as part of regular Ship breaking, scrapping or shipwrecks) and other steel artifacts of this era, it is often used for modern particle detectors because more modern steel is contaminated with traces of nuclear fallout. Rationale History of the modern steel industry, From 1856 until the mid 20th century, steel was produced in the Bessemer process, where air was forced into Bessemer converters converting the pig iron into steel. By the mid-20th century, many steelworks had switched to the Basic oxygen steelmaking, BOS process, which uses pure oxygen instead of air. However, as both processes use atmospheric gas, they are susceptible to contamination from airborne particulates. Present-day air carries radionuclides, such as cobalt-60, which are deposite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harwich
Harwich is a town in Essex, England, and one of the Haven ports on the North Sea coast. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the north-east, Ipswich to the north-west, Colchester to the south-west and Clacton-on-Sea to the south. It is the northernmost coastal town in Essex. Its position on the estuaries of the Stour and Orwell rivers, with its usefulness to mariners as the only safe anchorage between the Thames and the Humber, led to a long period of civil and military maritime significance. The town became a naval base in 1657 and was heavily fortified, with Harwich Redoubt, Beacon Hill Battery, and Bath Side Battery. Harwich is the likely launch point of the ''Mayflower'', which carried English Puritans to North America, and is the presumed birthplace of ''Mayflower'' captain Christopher Jones. Harwich today is contiguous with Dovercourt and the two, along with Parkeston, are often referred to collectively as ''Harwich''. History ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reginald Tyrwhitt
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Reginald Yorke Tyrwhitt, 1st Baronet, (; 10 May 1870 – 30 May 1951) was a Royal Navy officer. During the First World War he served as commander of the Harwich Force. He led a supporting naval force of 31 destroyers and two cruisers at the Battle of Heligoland Bight in August 1914, in which action the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron under Sir David Beatty sank three German cruisers and one German destroyer with minimal loss of allied warships. Tyrwhitt also led the British naval forces during the Cuxhaven Raid in December 1914, and at the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 1915, in which action Tyrwhitt again supported Beatty's powerful battlecruiser squadron. After the war, Tyrwhitt went on to be Senior Naval Officer, Gibraltar, commander of the 3rd Light Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean Fleet and then Commander-in-Chief, Coast of Scotland. He also served as Commander-in-Chief, China during a period of disturbances and tension with the Nationalist ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flagship
A flagship is a vessel used by the commanding officer of a group of navy, naval ships, characteristically a flag officer entitled by custom to fly a distinguishing flag. Used more loosely, it is the lead ship in a fleet of vessels, typically the first, largest, fastest, most heavily armed, or best known. Over the years, the term "flagship" has become a metaphor used in industries such as broadcasting, automobiles, education, technology, airlines, and retail to refer to their highest quality, best known, or most expensive products and locations. Naval use In common naval use, the term ''flagship'' is fundamentally a temporary designation; the flagship is wherever the admiral's flag is being flown. However, admirals have always needed additional facilities, including a meeting room large enough to hold all the captains of the fleet and a place for the admiral's staff to make plans and draw up orders. Historically, only larger ships could accommodate such requirements. The ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty
Admiral of the Fleet David Richard Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, (17 January 1871 – 12 March 1936) was a Royal Navy officer. After serving in the Mahdist War and then the response to the Boxer Rebellion, he commanded the Battle Cruiser Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, a tactically indecisive engagement after which his aggressive approach was contrasted with the caution of his commander Admiral Sir John Jellicoe. He is remembered for his comment at Jutland that "There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today", after two of them exploded. Later in the war he succeeded Jellicoe as Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet, in which capacity he received the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet at the end of the war. He then followed Jellicoe's path a second time, serving as First Sea Lord—a position that Beatty held longer (7 years 9 months) than any other First Sea Lord. While First Sea Lord, he was involved in negotiating the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Von Hipper
Franz Ritter von Hipper (born Franz Hipper; 13 September 1863 – 25 May 1932) was an admiral in the German Imperial Navy, (''Kaiserliche Marine'') who played an important role in the naval warfare of World War I. Franz von Hipper joined the German Navy in 1881 as an officer cadet. He commanded several torpedo boat units and served as watch officer aboard several warships, as well as Kaiser Wilhelm II's yacht . Hipper commanded several cruisers in the reconnaissance forces before being appointed commander of the I Scouting Group in October 1913. He is most famous for commanding the German battlecruisers of the I Scouting Group during World War I, particularly at the Battle of Jutland on 31 May – 1 June 1916. During the war, Hipper led the German battlecruisers on several raids of the English coast, for which he was vilified in the English press as a "baby killer". His squadron clashed with the British battlecruiser squadron at the Battle of Dogger Bank in January 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugo Meurer
Hugo Meurer (28 May 1869 – 4 January 1960) was a vice-admiral of the Kaiserliche Marine (German Imperial Navy). Meurer was the German naval officer who handled the negotiations of the internment of the German fleet in November 1918 at the end of the First World War. Life Meurer was born in Sallach in Carinthia. On 16 April 1886 he joined the Kaiserliche Marine. During the First World War he served as commander of at the Battle of Jutland, and from 1916 to 1917 as captain of the battleship . In 1917 he was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral (''Konteradmiral''), as the second Admiral of the 4th Battle Squadron of the High Seas Fleet, which he remained until the end of the war. From 21 February to 2 May 1918, as commander of the special unit (''Sonderverband'') of the Baltic Sea, he led the naval expedition for the German intervention in the ongoing civil war in Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Arrival Of The German Delegates On HMS Queen Elizabeth 1918 By John Lavery
''The'' is a grammatical article in English, denoting nouns that are already or about to be mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with nouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of the archaic pronoun ''thee' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heligoland
Heligoland (; , ; Heligolandic Frisian: , , Mooring Frisian: , ) is a small archipelago in the North Sea. The islands were historically possessions of Denmark, then became possessions of the United Kingdom from 1807 to 1890. Since 1890, they have been part of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, although they were managed by the United Kingdom as a war prize from 1945 to 1952. The islands are located in the Heligoland Bight (part of the German Bight) in the southeastern corner of the North Sea and had a population of 1,127 at the end of 2016. They are the only German islands not in the vicinity of the mainland. They lie approximately by sea from Cuxhaven at the mouth of the River Elbe. In addition to German, the local population, who are ethnic Frisians, speak the Heligolandic dialect of the North Frisian language called . During a visit to the islands in 1841, August Heinrich Hoffmann von Fallersleben wrote the lyrics to the "", which became the national anthem o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grand Fleet
The Grand Fleet was the main battlefleet of the Royal Navy during the First World War. It was established in August 1914 and disbanded in April 1919. Its main base was Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. History Formed in August 1914 from the First Fleet and part of the Second Fleet of the Home Fleets, the Grand Fleet included 25–35 modern capital ships. It was commanded initially by Admiral Sir John Jellicoe.Heathcote, p. 130 The 10th Cruiser Squadron carried out the Northern Patrol between Shetland and Norway and cruisers from Cromarty and Rosyth operated a second line (and screened the fleet) in enforcing the blockade of Germany. The administrative complications of the distant blockade across the northern exits of the North Sea overwhelmed the capacity of Vice Admiral Francis Miller, the Base Admiral in Chief from 7 August 1914, devolving on the commander in chief, Admiral John Jellicoe. To relieve the administrative burdens on Miller and Jellicoe, the post of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rosslyn Wemyss, 1st Baron Wester Wemyss
Admiral of the Fleet Rosslyn Erskine Wemyss, 1st Baron Wester Wemyss, (12 April 1864 – 24 May 1933), known as Sir Rosslyn Wemyss between 1916 and 1919, was a Royal Navy officer. During the First World War he served as commander of the 12th Cruiser Squadron and then as Governor of Moudros before leading the British landings at Cape Helles and at Suvla Bay during the Gallipoli campaign. He went on to be Commander of the East Indies & Egyptian Squadron in January 1916 and then First Sea Lord in December 1917, in which role he encouraged Admiral Roger Keyes, Commander of the Dover Patrol, to undertake more vigorous operations in the Channel, ultimately leading to the launch of the Zeebrugge Raid in April 1918. Early life and naval career Born the youngest son of James Hay Erskine Wemyss and Millicent Ann Mary Kennedy Wemyss (née Erskine), Wemyss (''pronounced "Weems"'') he was raised at the ancestral home of Wemyss Castle on the Fife coast. He joined the Royal Navy as a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
