Ahoy-hoy was the suggestion of the inventor of the telephone Alexander Graham Bell for the greeting people should use when answering the telephone. I couldn’t avoid thinking of it as we approached the island of Hoy across Scapa Flow on the ferry crossing from the terminal at Houton to Lyness.

Hoy from ferry:-

Approaching Lyness:-

Plaque at Lyness Ferry Terminal commemorating the salvaging of ships from the scuttled German High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow. Apparently the metal from the ships found use in the space programme as it was uncontaminated by radioactive fallout:-

Old Fortified Building on Hoy seen from Lyness Naval Cemetery. This must have been to do with either or both of the World Wars:-

The Hoy Hotel. Art Deco/Moderne style. We met an Australian photographing the building. He had come to Hoy as that was his surname:-

Photo in the Lyness Naval Museum of the Garrison Theatre, Hoy, built by the Royal Marines. Now no more except for the foyer:-

On the night of 8^th October, 1939, the German submarine U-47, under the command of Günther Prien, penetrated the defences of Scapa Flow, Orkney, through Holm Sound and Kirk Sound. Her first two torpedo salvos missed all but an anchor chain but her third struck HMS Royal Oak. Within fifteen minutes the ship had sunk with the loss of 833 British sailors out of the crew of 1,234 men and boys. Many of their bodies were unrecoverable and remain on the ship. A few are interred at Lyness Naval Cemetery on Hoy.

For his feat Prien was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, the first sailor of a U-boat and the second member of the Kriegsmarine to receive this decoration.

To prevent any further such attacks a series of barriers known as the Churchill barriers was built between four of the southern Orkney islands to connect them to each other and the mainland. The one shown below (picture from the Royal Oak’s Wikipedia page) crosses what was Kirk Sound.

For decades afterwards the Royal Oak, a designated war grave on which diving is therefore prohibited, leaked oil into Scapa Flow before the leak was sealed off.

A memorial to HMS Royal Oak is set into the north wall of Kirkwall’s St Magnus Cathedral. There is a dedication plaque, a book of remembrance listing the names, with a page turned every day, surmounted by the ship’s bell.

Further along the same wall lies another site of more general remembrance, a niche containing poppies and candles.