Bernie Chowdhury

THE DEPTH IN ORKNEY

I was 20 feet inside the shipwreck SMS Markgraf and 120 feet below the water’s surface. I moved slowly -- cautiously -- methodically -- and breathed in steady, measured, rhythmic intervals. My exhaled air formed silvery, expanding bubbles that disintegrated into hundreds of small spheres upon contact with the aging steel above me. My light illuminated the darkness on the other side of a narrow doorway. As I pulled myself through the door and into a tight passageway, a fine, brownish silt stirred around me. I proceeded down the passageway and through another doorway. I was now 60 feet inside the wreck. Visibility had dropped to one foot when I turned to find my way out. I hovered motionless amid the brown silt, my light practically useless. At times like this, I think, “How did I get myself into this situation?” The fact is, I planned it.

From the moment I first heard about the German Imperial Navy’s World War I High Seas Fleet shipwrecks, I wanted to dive them. The wrecks rest in Orkney, a rugged, weather-washed archipelago of almost 70 islands located just north of the Scottish mainland. Orkney is closely associated with both World Wars because of its natural, deep water harbor, Scapa Flow, a bay 12 miles across and 150 feet deep. Scapa Flow became the northern base for the British Navy during both World Wars. It was here, from November 23rd, 1918 to June 21st, 1919, that the High Seas Fleet -- 74 warships in all -- was voluntarily anchored by the Germans and guarded by the British during the Treaty of Versailles negotiations to end the First World War. The internment of the Fleet was a provision Britain insisted on before it would sit down with Germany to negotiate an end to the War. The ships were disarmed and carried only the minimum number of crew to maintain them. When it seemed the Treaty negotiations were breaking down and hostilities might resume, Admiral Ludwig von Reuter realized that the impotent Fleet under his command would easily be captured by British Marines. Because all officers in the German Navy were under orders to prevent their ships from falling into enemy hands, Von Reuter made a plan to sink his vessels. He seized the opportunity and ordered his officers to act when the British squadron guarding the Fleet left Scapa Flow for military exercises.

Shortly after von Reuter’s order, many of the once proud German warships slipped beneath the waves, some capsizing and crashing into the water with more force than a breaching whale. Many others were left partially submerged and jutting out of the water at rakish angles. Some ships were concealed just beneath the surface, and British ships later ran aground on them. Many masts and funnels could be seen protruding from the water. Scapa Flow had become a ship graveyard.

War changed the landscape of Orkney and later bolstered a lucrative tourist economy. In addition to wildlife enthusiasts, nature lovers, and archaeology buffs, scuba divers have increasingly discovered Orkney and it has become Europe’s wreck diving Mecca.

There are countless wrecks in and around Scapa Flow. New sites are being discovered by adventurous boat skippers but most divers come to see the German Fleet first-hand. The war museum at Lyness, on the island of Hoy, and the artifact display in Stromness Museum, on the island of Mainland, are both compelling and worth seeing for diver and non-diver alike. Among the many artifacts from the German Fleet on display are dishes, cups, ornate silver bowls and a sailor’s cap. The immense ship’s bell and four foot high brass stand which houses a compass are striking.

The Markgraf is one of the largest wrecks in Scapa Flow: 575 feet long and 97 feet wide. As I descended down a line attached to the wreck, I let gravity, combined with over 100 pounds of equipment, send me speeding toward the intact wreck. I was warm and comfortable in spite of the 50° F water temperature. My drysuit, two layers of underwear that resemble ski suits and a neoprene face covering under my mask would ensure reasonable comfort for the two hours and fifteen minutes I planned on being in the water.

At a depth of 45 feet, the vague, gray outline of the Markgraf appeared and I soon reached the top of it at a depth of 70 feet. When the Markgraf sank, the heavy gun turrets dragged it completely over and up-side-down. As I swam over the side of the wreck and descended further, I could see 30 feet in either direction.

I saw the outlines of a gaping, jagged hole in the wreck’s side where salvagers had blown the ship open to get at the valuable metal of boilers and engines. Extensive efforts from 1923 to 1946 raised most of the High Seas Fleet intact. These once proud warships were then sold for scrap. Seven major German warships remain, firmly entrenched in the silty bottom. Three of the remaining wrecks, including the Markgraf, are dreadnought battleships, a class of vessel that boasted the most powerful armament and ruled the seas in the years leading up to and including the First World War. These massive tools of destruction were armed, floating cities capable of obliterating anything within a 12 mile radius. During World War I, these behemoths clashed with their British counterparts in the major naval confrontation of the war, which the British call the Battle of Jutland and the Germans call the Battle of Skagerrak. Historians still argue about who won the Battle.

The Markgraf fought valiantly at Jutland/Skagerrak. Although she was hit many times, she still made it back to Germany under her own power. During the scuttling at Scapa Flow, the Markgraf’s captain, Lieutenant-Commander Walther Schumann, was shot and killed after he refused to obey a British order to stop his vessel from sinking. Schumann’s only crime, like that of the other eight German sailors who were shot and killed during the scuttling, was in destroying his own country’s property, as he was sworn to do under the circumstances.

History has always intrigued me. As a child growing up in England, Canada and the United States, I was fortunate on several occasions to have been able to visit my German grandmother, who lived in West Berlin. After dinner, my relatives would frequently talk about the two World Wars and their experiences during and after these calamities. In one of my distant relative’s apartment sat a polished, spiked officer’s helmet from the First World War, next to a picture of the man who died in that conflict. I once gingerly -- reverently -- touched the helmet, as if it could bring me closer to the events of a past age. As my relatives continued to speak about their experiences, history became a living, breathing thing; and objects became a connection to past events.

The unaltered remnants of battlefields, airplanes and destroyed cities are rare, but shipwrecks remain in abundance, adorned with the accouterments of war and scarred by battle. Although my uncles and grandfather had fought on land and in the air, the ships left littered on the ocean bottom by both World Wars were the things from their time most accessible to me.

The necessity of wearing life support equipment to visit a site from the past might not qualify as accessible to many people, but to me it seems fitting. Scuba diving equipment offers me the opportunity to see and experience Germany’s Imperial Fleet. The limitations of scuba, which entails carrying a fixed air supply and staying at depth for short periods of time -- usually between a half hour and an hour -- means that it would take me a lifetime to become intimately familiar with any one of the three remaining dreadnoughts at Scapa.

As I proceed down the side of the Markgraf, I inflate my buoyancy compensator, a device that enables air to off-set the weight I carry and allows me to become weightless. I float down the wall of steel, at the edge of the salvager’s hole. Fish occasionally dart about and I spotlight them, creating my own underwater show. I reach the seabed and hover above the silty bottom, looking up at the giant man-made fish hotel. I check one of the three diving computers I always carry. The computers calculate the length of time I have been down and the length of time it will take me to safely reach the surface. I carry several computers: in the event that one -- or two -- malfunctions during the dive, I always have the ascent information I need. An incorrectly executed ascent could cripple or even kill me.

An underwater wreck presents a duality: it is intriguing precisely because it is underwater, yet poses problems unique to humans as a result. The deeper the wreck, the less time can be spent exploring it, because of the danger of decompression illness, otherwise known as the bends. As a diver descends, biologically inert gas -- nitrogen in the case of divers breathing air -- is forced into body tissues by the increase in surrounding pressure. This excess gas must be released by the body during the ascent in a process referred to as off-gassing, or decompressing. If the body cannot release the inert gas, it expands and forms bubbles in the blood and tissues, causing the bends, a painful and debilitating condition which may rob a person of some or all bodily functions, or life itself. Think of a soda bottle shaken and then opened and you can imagine the process of severe decompression illness. The longer one stays down, and the deeper one goes, the more time must be allowed on the ascent for off-gassing. It is not uncommon for me to spend 30 minutes exploring a deep wreck and then one or two hours ascending in increments designated by charts called dive tables, or by computer.

On the seabed, next the Markgraf, I read my computers and see that I am at 150 feet. My decompression obligation will increase rapidly at this depth and it will take me a long time before I can safely reach the surface. No matter how many times a diver has been deep, dangers still loom.

Deep is a relative term and is defined by United States recreational scuba training agencies as 61 feet or greater, with the maximum recreational limit set at 130 feet. This limit is suggested to recreational divers because of the effects of breathing air at depth, which causes a person to become intoxicated, or narced. Nitrogen is once again the culprit, which is why the condition experienced is more formally referred to as nitrogen narcosis. Clinically, nitrogen narcosis mimics alcohol intoxication, but the mechanics are not well understood. One theory suggests nitrogen molecules block the brain’s synapses, causing them to send and receive electro-chemical signals in a distorted fashion. The deeper the dive, the more severe the narcosis, just as drinking more alcohol makes for greater intoxication. Under water, a diver is always under the influence of nitrogen, even though he may not realize it, much as a person who has one or two alcoholic drinks may claim to be perfectly sober. A general rule of thumb, called “Martini’s Law,” states that every 33 feet of depth is equivalent to a martini on an empty stomach. In his book, Silent World, Jacques Cousteau called nitrogen narcosis “rapture of the deep” and claimed to be both very susceptible and afraid of its consequences.

Though I don’t drink martinis, I like the calm and content that 4 1/2 “drinks” give me and I take in the sights next to the Markgraf at 150 feet. The odd shapes in the salvager’s hole in front of me look intriguing. I swim forward, ascending at a slight angle and enter the large hole, carefully avoiding the sharp pieces of metal and steel beams standing at odd angles. The hole is over 40 feet high, wider than the distance I can see and 20 feet deep, making a cavern of the wreck’s interior. I swim to a steel wall and notice the steel has been eaten away in spots by the salt water. In the woods close to my grandmother’s, I once nervously approached a section of the Berlin Wall and strained to see through the cracks. On the other side, I knew there were watchtowers and soldiers armed with machine guns. What is that world over there? How do those people live? Can they see me? Moving along the Markgraf’s steel wall, I come to a doorway leading further into the wreck. I use my light to illuminate the other side and see an unobstructed passageway. Do I want to see and experience what’s on the other side?

Although I have explored the interior of many shipwrecks, I always make sure I am completely comfortable before I enter. Too many things can go wrong in a tight space underwater. Safety is a relative term. Whenever humans explore an alien environment with life support equipment, something can and will go wrong eventually. Although exploring outside a wreck is fairly safe, penetrating far into the interior is more exhilarating, and more dangerous. It is also beyond recreational diving and falls into the category of technical diving, which requires greater training, equipment and planning. Once inside the wreck, I will not be able to make a direct ascent to the surface in the event of emergency. I have carefully considered potential problems beforehand and devised strategies to deal with them. Some of the hazards include catastrophic air failure, entanglement in netting, fishing line or cables, disorientation, and lack of visibility arising from poor propulsion technique, light failure or the removal of artifacts such as dishes, brass cage lights, or portholes.

Before I enter the doorway, I check my computers to see how deep I am and how long I have been down. I check the gauges of my tanks to make sure I have enough air to first continue onward, then to get out of the wreck and finally to decompress with.

To hedge my chances of survival inside a shipwreck, I use two, independent, primary tanks of air strapped to my back. This affords a completely redundant set of air: if anything mechanical fails on one tank, I still have a sufficient reserve to extract myself from the wreck and gain the surface. I carry at least two lights to illuminate the stygian darkness found in the recesses of wrecks. One light is a back-up in case my powerful primary fails. I carry two knives to cut myself out of an entanglement. To propel myself efficiently, I use various techniques invented by cave divers. My fin strokes are adapted to enclosed environments: I use the frog kick, which prevents me from disturbing the fine silt on the bottom and reducing my visibility to zero. Where possible, I pull myself along with my hands, keeping my feet together and straight behind me in a technique known as the pull-and-glide. This conserves my air supply because the arm muscles are smaller than those in the leg, and less exertion occurs when the arms are used. On my way in, a guideline is spooled from a reel and then, on the way out, reeled back in while I follow it to the exit. Too many people have not used a guideline, have become disoriented while searching for the exit, run out of air, and drowned.

Swimming into the Markgraf, I look for brass or ceramic wall signs and read the German writing on them. Who were the workers who made and installed these signs? I find a brass cage light, now covered in marine growth and sediment, no longer shiny. What did this light once illuminate? A sailor’s personal ceramic wash basin appears, half buried in the fine, brown silt. Whose basin was this? What were his thoughts, his feelings, his aspirations? I enter a washroom which still has five intact sinks. As a child, my grandmother cleaned me with a small hand towel while I stood in a basin placed on the floor. There was no bathroom or bathtub in her apartment. Two toilets were in the dark, damp basement, used collectively by the building’s inhabitants. I swim past defunct, precision-built machinery. Why were my relatives capable of building such masterful tools and machines, and falling so short in governing their use? Why were they not able to dictate their own destinies rather than let madmen destroy them, their country, and others’ countries? The silt and rust particles, dislodged by my air bubbles, cloud my view.

Dark flakes fall surreally and stir up swirls of silt from the floor. Behind me, visibility rapidly drops as I swim further in. I reach out to touch a pipe, intending to pull myself along. The top of the iron pipe disintegrates into a cloud of powder. The bottom of the pipe topples over. I turn to make my retreat and can see less than one foot in front of me. I am 60 feet inside the wreck. I have crawled through narrow doorways and swam down passageways to get to this compartment. I cannot rely on my guideline alone to lead the way out, because it may have gotten wedged under the disintegrating steel plates of the doorways. Or it may have shifted and gotten caught among the pipes and cabling that litter this area. As I reel the line in and follow it slowly, I close my eyes and swim onward. I imagine where I must be, based on a reverse image of what I saw on the way in. My forward momentum is halted as I collide with a steel bulkhead, producing a dull boom.

The collision and the noise startle me. The first time I heard a Soviet fighter jet break the sound barrier near Berlin, I was frightened. The windows, the china and the glassware in my grandmother’s apartment rattled. These windows had been shattered by allied bombings and artillery during the Second World War. This apartment, like so many others in Berlin, was appropriated by Russian troops when they captured the city at the end of World War II. My mother, aunt and grandmother were forced to live in the basement. Marshal Zhukov gave his troops three unrestricted days in Berlin after they crushed German resistance. Pillage, plunder, rape and murder ensued. The terror of a conquered city was too deep to fathom.

The silt is all encompassing. I barely see my guideline. It has shifted and become entangled. I reach for it, fighting panic. Perhaps this is what the sailors felt as their vessel was engaged in combat, the ship alternately resonating with the sound of their shells being fired and rocking with the impact of incoming enemy shells. I work slowly to untangle the guideline from the cable it is wrapped around and concentrate on keeping my breathing rate steady. If I rush, I will begin to breath hard, and my mind will become clouded with narcosis. I know a doorway must be to my right and I grope for it. Finding the opening, I pull myself through, and meticulously make my way out of the wreck.

As I ascend, I prepare for my one-and-a-half hour decompression. I attach my guideline to a bright yellow, vinyl bag, inflate the bag with air and let it rocket to the surface where it will mark my position. The dive boat skipper will see the bag and trail it at a distance. When his boat gets closer to the bag, I can hear the familiar sound of its diesel engines -- ka-chunk, ka-chunk, ka-chunk -- and think of the boat’s warm cabin and the skipper’s infectious grin. I will drift with the current among a hoard of jellyfish and strange, oblong, translucent creatures whose ancestors were probably here from the dawn of time.

Decompression is as much a mental as a physical process. I enter a trance-like state. My mind wanders to the people and the many historical sites of Orkney. I think of Robert Rosie, a tour courier who engaged my dive buddy and me in conversation on a previous trip, when he saw our diving bags. “So, you lads dived the Fleet wrecks? Let me show you a souvenir.” He pulled out a brass plaque. “My uncle was a salvage diver and he recovered this from a German WW I submarine.” He flipped the plaque over to reveal an emblem stamped into it. “That’s the Kaiser’s emblem, lads. I carry it with me everywhere. My uncle used to give me plates and cups he had recovered from the Fleet. I used to throw stones at them and I invited other boys to break the plates and cups. What fun we had! Now, of course, I wish I had all those smashed plates and cups. I’ve only got one cup and four plates left! One tour guide offered me money for a plate, but I’m not selling!”

I think of the young barmaid who greeted me with, “Hello, weren’t you here last year?” “Yes,” I replied, “You’ve got a good memory.” “No,” she retorted with a grin as she handed me a draft pint of locally brewed Raven Ale, “You’ve got a face that’s hard to forget!” I had burst into roarous laughter then and the thought made me chuckle now. Orcadians are so good-natured, so friendly. I wish I could spend more time here. It’s as close to idyllic as I’ve seen on my travels.

I ascend to my next stop, get comfortable and continue my decompression trance.

Visions of some of Orkney’s many historical sites come to mind. I see henge monuments called the Ring of Brodgar and the Standing Stones of Stenness. For what purpose were these slabs of stone erected in a mathematically precise circle some 5,000 years ago? Did a priestly people who possessed higher mathematical skills and knowledge of astronomy have the Circles built so they could perform rituals here? Skara Brae, a 5,000 year old Neolithic village, inhabited for 500 years, captures my thoughts. How comfortable and prosperous the people who built this well preserved village of six huts and a workshop must have been. The stone buildings, complete with enclosed passageways connecting the buildings, must have been cozy with the fireplaces burning. Their life must have been leisurely compared to the madness of working in Manhattan. I see the magnificent Cathedral of Saint Magnus, situated in the heart of Orkney’s largest town, Kirkwall. How was it that Magnus, who was such a good, learned and compassionate man, could be killed by his cousin, who co-ruled Orkney with him in the early 1100s? The timeless qualities of jealousy, treachery, greed and deceit.... I think of the Vikings’ runic inscriptions found inside the ancient chambered burial tomb of Maes Howe. These are the best preserved and most numerous runic inscriptions in the world. Did the Vikings really carry off a vast treasure from Maes Howe as they claimed in their inscriptions? Where has the treasure gone and is it still there?

When my decompression is complete, I ascend and the skipper steers the boat over to me. As I climb the ladder, my diving equipment becomes heavier and heavier as the water no longer supports it. I am assisted to a bench and sit. Physically and mentally, I am sated. I have traveled far.

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Further Reading

The Grand Scuttle by Dan van der Vat. Naval Institute Press, 1986.