Orkney At War (Aug-Oct 1914)

We have a new exhibition! 

"Orkney at War: August - October 1914" is the first in a series of new exhibitions in the Orkney Archive to commemorate WW1. This one concentrates on the first three months and the impact war had on these islands. We show extracts from three war diaries from very different perspectives, an article on the history of the postal service, emergency town council minutes on finding extra hospital accommodation, a plan of a hastily built seaplane station at Scapa, reports from the Orcadian newspaper on the war at home and abroad, and many more archive items.

This exhibition is available to see during Archive opening hours
(http://www.orkneylibrary.org.uk/html/archiveopening.htm)

For those of you who can't visit the exhibition I'll be sharing some of the documents used over the next few months.

Boom, bang a bang

American minesweeper clearing a mine, from the Tom Kent Collection

On this day in 1919 Kirkwall was officially closed as a British Naval Base after the First World War. The day after also saw the last of the American minesweeping fleet leave Orkney.

Massive quantities of mines were laid, by both sides, during the First World War with the Americans concentrating on the seas between Orkney and Norway. In 1918 alone they laid more than 56,000 mines in this area. As a result, after hostilities had ceased, the big clean up began in 1919 with a large fleet of American minesweepers operating from Kirkwall Bay.

The ships would leave Kirkwall Bay for three or four weeks at a time, with the working day commencing at sunrise and continuing until sunset. The fleet also celebrated Independence Day in Kirkwall. This was actually not the first time the 4th of July had been celebrated in Orkney. In 1918 thousands of american sailors, stationed in Scapa Flow, got leave to celebrate.

In 1919 the minesweepers had been at sea for three weeks and were looking forward to a well earned rest. Friday the 4th of July was declared a holiday for the Flotilla and the ships were all decorated with flags. The celebrations started in the morning with a regatta for rowing boats, and continued in the afternoon with sports at the Bignold Park. In the evening a banquet was held, at which the Freemasons of Kirkwall were entertained by the Freemasons from the Flotilla. Elsewhere, an evening of entertainment was enjoyed at the YMCA hut by a large crowd of crewmen. The entertainment provided included one Mademoiselle Peter, female impersonator, who danced the Salome Dance and the Dance of Death.

The minesweepers and their crews began to leave Orkney around the middle of September 1919. They had been popular visitors and many a local would have been sorry to see them leave. As the local newspaper rather quaintly put it, “more than one american had found his affinity in some fair Orkney maid”!

A Confession...

We get a lot of visitors each year who are researching family members who were stationed in Orkney during war time. Although we hold some interesting books and documents which illustrate the general themes and feelings of the time, we do not hold service records or specific information about military or naval personnel.

The place to go for that kind of thing is the National Archives at Kew, Surrey. This page shows the sort of information that is available there.

I thought that it would be useful to point this out as quite a lot of visitors are disappointed by the lack of personal information that we hold on the many men and women who spent their wars on the islands.

We do make up for the lack of cold, hard fact with lots of pictures of jolly parties though, look:

Stanger Head, Flotta, 1st World War.

Hatston Camp, Christmas 1947

Navy Camp at Yesnaby, 1943.

UPDATE: We are working to correct this. Some years ago we started a database and gathered a group of volunteers together to compile it. They painstakingly trawled through our archive items and if they spotted any service personnel mentioned, they added the information to the database. So, we may not have troop movements or know exactly they were based in Orkney, but we may know if they won a boxing match, appeared in a photo or starred in a play. (Dusty, 2024)

Battle Without Honour or Humanity

Okay, our twitter page, lovingly wrought by Stewart, has over 500 followers now. We made an agreement some time ago that we would force the twitter followers to battle the blog followers at Maeshowe on midsummer's eve. Hope that's okay.

The library lot shall wear spectacles and cardigans and shall be armed with hard backed Mills & Boons and specially customised 'loser' stamps to mark their kills. Archive blog followers, you may be few and some of you will have to fly hundreds of miles to join us, but there is a lot of smelly, dusty, old stuff that we can brandish and  loads of scary moths and caterpillars too, so don't worry, there is hope. I thought that you could wear archivists' gloves and 2B pencils tucked behind your ears.

We can probably rope in some volunteers if things get really desperate but all library and archive staff shall be watching from recliners on top of Maeshowe whilst barking strategies through a loud hailer.

The victors shall take home the weird smelly plant which keeps on growing even though we stopped watering it at Christmas. If you think about it, one plant between 12 is better than one shared between 500.

According to a newspaper article I found in the Ernest Walker Marwick collection, we may have company as, up until WW2, black magic rituals took place at the Stones of Stenness


"About 60 people were there" an RAF officer told the Empire News. " all their faces were hooded and wearing blankets. They held candles and incense was burning and it was so packed that some of them couldn't get in. One man with an Orkney accent read the Black mass. And they all chanted, and I swear I can't remember it happening, but certainly there was this brand mark on my leg - a burn- but not painful at all."

Hmmmm, they don't sound like they'll be much of a laugh but we'll see. Book your flights/trains/ferries now!

Information taken from reference: D31/47/3/29

War HUH! What is it GOOD for? Absolutely NUTHIN'.. (say it again wooooo)

If you have enjoyed watching Tony Blair squirm during the Iraq enquiry, or indeed, wish to have a break from him constantly referring to 911 in an attempt to link that event with Saddam Hussein in the public mind, then pop down to the Archive and read about all the other wars!

We have publications, personal documents, correspondence, diaries and photographs from World War 1 and World War 2. You can read newspapers clippings and telegrams which follow the process of the Spanish American war of 1898 and the Boer war (reference D47/2/11).

Why not come in and read the correspondence between Isabella Wilson and her brother Andrew who moved to America, ran up hideous debts and signed up for the American Civil War to escape them? (Reference D1/538)

We also hold a pair of medals from the Second Afghan War of 1878 - 1880 in collection D94.

And much, much more...