PARTING SHOT AT SCAPA FLOW

Though World War I hostilities came to a formal end on Nov. 11, 1918, the parting shots in that long and cataclysmic struggle did not come until seven months later. They did not sound on the former Western Front, whose trench-scarred fields had soaked up the blood of millions between 1914 and the signing of the Armistice of Compiègne. The final shots were triggered within the confines of a broad, sheltered bay in Scotland’s remote Orkney Islands.

That bay, a refuge for ships since the Viking era 1,000 years ago, is named Scapa Flow (from the Old Norse word , meaning “bay of the long isthmus”). As it was the designated anchorage of the British Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet during World War I, layered anti-submarine defenses—blockships, mines, nets and booms—sealed off the 125-square-mile body of water. Those defenses were effective at keeping enemy “wolf packs” out, though on June 5, 1916, the armored cruiser HMS had just left the sheltered harbor when it struck a mine laid in the open sea by the German submarine . sank by the bow within 15 minutes. Among the 737 crewmen and passengers lost with the British warship was Secretary