C O N T E X T 1 3 7 : N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 15 The first-phase defences consisted mainly of clusters of ships’ guns brought ashore and mounted in temporary earth-and-timber emplacements. Pending the creation of permanent batteries, additional cover for the main southern and northern entrances to the anchorage, Hoxa Sound and Hoy Sound respectively, was provided by guard ships anchored on picket duty. No known traces of this initial makeshift phase have been identified, although some improvised earthworks may still survive on outlying islands such as Auskerry. The permanent defences came to be centred around 13 coast batteries, the second largest concentration of coastal firepower in Scotland after the Forth. The batteries were organised into two fire commands, grouped around the main southern and northern entrances, and based respectively on Stanger Head Battery, Flotta, and Hoy No 2 Battery at Stromness, predecessor of the present Ness Battery. Unlike in other places where the Royal Artillery, that is, the army, assumed responsibility for Britain’s coastal defences, Orkney’s were under Royal Marine command.That arrangement reflected the Royal Navy’s special desire for Scapa’s shore batteries to be organisationally related to those of the fleet. Today there are surviving remains of all but two of the 13 batteries. Five of these are among the best-defined examples of their QF (quick-fire) type in Scotland, probably in Britain: two on the island of Flotta at Roan Head and Innan Neb, one on South Ronaldsay at Hoxa Head, and two inWest Mainland at Clestrain and Hoy No 3, the latter on the golf course close to Ness Battery. Abandoned at the end of the war and not later re-used, all these sites are of a characteristic horseshoe-shaped layout.They are fronted by two or three parapeted gun emplacements that faced seawards and were open to the elements, not protected from aerial strafing by canopies as became the norm in the second world war. Behind, the concrete-built gun emplacements were linked by curved trenches to shared and double-ended, semi-subterranean magazines, where the shells and cartridges were stored. Each set of guns was directed from a battery observation post, a timber hut mounted on or close to the magazine, where their surface imprints may still be traced. At Hoxa, an unmistakeable first world war aura still surrounds the specially deep, rock-cut access trenches of the four-inch battery. Our knowledge of this particular battery is enhanced by an abundance of contemporary photographs and a diary, ‘The Journal of Gunner FC Astles’, which presents a keenly observed, humorous and at times almost poetic record of daily life at the battery between December 1917 and November 1918. This period covers Astles’ third year of service in Orkney and what proved to be the last year of the war. Countering the sinister and dangerous threat posed by submarines was an aspect of coastal defence that remained relatively undeveloped and untested at the outset of war. Following his devising and laying of a prototype anti-submarine boom across the mouth of An anchor-point and chain cable of an anti-submarine boom on the foreshore below Innan Neb Coast Battery, Flotta. A view from the west, taken in 1998. (Photo: Geoffrey Stell) Remains of MV Reginald, one of the blockships sunk in EastWeddel Sound in September 1914. A view from the south east, taken in 2011. (Photo:The Orcadian) An anti-aircraft battery, Burray Ness, Burray. A view of one of the two gun holdfasts and magazine from the east, taken in 1998. (Photo: Geoffrey Stell)
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