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The Bull and the Barriers by Lawson Wood
The Bull and the Barriers by Lawson Wood
The Bull and the Barriers, The Wrecks of Scapa Flow deals with the events leading to the surrender, scuttling and eventual salvage of the High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow after WWI. There are also chapters on Lawson Wood's diving experiences on the Royal Oak, Gunther Prien's attack on that battleship in his submarine U-47 and the building of the Churchill barriers alluded to in the title (the Bull was the design painted on the U-boat's conning tower).
If you find such historical topics interesting, you're in for a treat, because the book contains vast numbers of black and white photographs, especially of the fighting ships, including many I had never seen before. In certain chapters, the pages of pictures far outweighed the text.
Many underwater photos of the wrecks are also to be found, but this book is not designed as a dive guide to Scapa Flow, and only a few paragraphs are dedicated to diving the seven other big ships of the High Seas Fleet. The book also flits over other topics that would interest a diver; the Battle of Jutland, for instance, hardly gets a mention.
This is a book of general historical interest but divers will find more information about diving Scapa in the many established dive guides already available for the area.
Mike Clark
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| The Bull and the Barriers by Lawson Wood, Tempus (01453 883300). Paperback, 128pp, £15.99 |
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