Interior. View of main oil receiving vessel

Description Interior. View of main oil receiving vessel

Date 3/10/1996

Collection Records of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Edinbu

Catalogue Number D 3105

Category Photographs and Off-line Digital Images

Copies SC 654375

Scope and Content Oil receiving tank, pumping station, World War I and II Naval Base, Lyness, Hoy, Orkney Islands At Lyness on Hoy, close to the sounds which made up the main fleet anchorage, naval quarters, stores and an oil depot were established during World War I and were considerably developed in World War II to become the Base Headquarters, HMS Proserpine. As a naval oil terminal the base came to include 16 above-ground oil storage tanks and, beneath the nearby hill of Wee Fea, six very large underground fuel tanks which were capable of storing some 100,000 tons of oil. In 1937 the contract for building the underground tanks went to Sir William Arrol & Co Ltd and work continued through to 1943 when the project was aborted. These tanks lie about 90m above and some 1.86km west of the original (1917) pumping station at the Lyness waterfront. An additional, intermediate pumping station was thus required; designed and built by Arrols in 1937, it stands on the hillside roughly halfway between the Lyness station and the tanks under Wee Fea. This is a detail of the main oil receiving tank, a large riveted steel cylinder which served as an anti-surge vessel, reducing the pulsing of oil in the pipelines. It is set in a sunken area of a projecting wing on the 'downhill' side of the T-shaped building, its position marked on the 1937 plan. At the heart of the Orkney archipelago, Scapa Flow was the main fleet anchorage for the Royal Navy during both World Wars. Its vital importance led to the creation of one of the most concentrated defence networks in Britain. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

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