The Churchill Barriers were constructed using Italian prisoners of war labour to help provide protection to the natural harbour of Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. The barriers connected the Orkney Mainland to the islands of Lamb Holm, Glimps Holm, Burray and South Ronaldsay.
The beach at the Churchill Barrier No 4, just take care if wading or swimming at the beach slopes steeply into deep water.
On 14 October 1939, the Royal Navy battleship HMS Royal Oak was sunk at her moorings within the natural harbour of Scapa Flow with the loss of 833 men, by the German U-boat U-47 under the command of Günther Prien. U-47 had entered Scapa Flow through Holm Sound, one of several eastern entrances to Scapa Flow.
The eastern passages were protected by measures including sunken block ships, booms and anti-submarine nets, but U-47 entered at night at high tide by navigating between the block ships.
To prevent further attacks, First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill ordered the construction of permanent barriers. Work began in May 1940 and the barriers were completed in September 1944, but were not officially opened until 12 May 1945, four days after the end of World War II in Europe.
The contract for building the barriers was awarded to Balfour Beatty, although part of the southernmost barrier (between Burray and South Ronaldsay) was sub-contracted to William Tawse & Co. The first Resident Superintending Civil Engineer was E K Adamson, succeeded in 1942 by G Gordon Nicol.
Preparatory work on the site began in May 1940, while experiments on models for the design were undertaken at Whitworth Engineering Laboratories at the University of Manchester.
The bases of the barriers were built from gabions enclosing 250,000 tons of broken rock, from quarries on Orkney. The gabions were dropped into place from overhead cableways into waters up to 59 feet deep. The bases were then covered with 66,000 locally-cast concrete blocks in five-tonne and ten-tonne sizes. The five-ton blocks were laid on the core, and the ten-tonne blocks were arranged on the sides in a random pattern to act as wave-breaks.
A project of this size required a substantial labour force, which peaked in 1943 at over 2,000. Much of the labour was provided by over 1300 Italian prisoners of war whom had been captured in the desert war in North Africa, and were transported to Orkney from early 1942 onwards. As the use of POW labour for War Effort works is prohibited under the Geneva Conventions, the works were justified as 'improvements to communications' to the southern Orkney Islands
The prisoners were accommodated in three camps, 600 at Camp 60 on Little Holm and the remaining 700 at two camps on Burray. Those at Camp 60 built the ornate Italian Chapel which still survives and has become a tourist attraction.
HMS Royal Oak websites - Underwater pictures of HMS Royal Oak
Information on the Churchill Barriers has been taken from from wikipedia.
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HMS Royal Oak
Created using Coral Painter
Duck on nest at the Ring of Brogar
Larger image of this computer generated picture of the small island off Stromness - Inner Holm.
